Balloon Boy: That Was No Hoax, That Was a DVD Tie-In!

Sat., Oct. 17, 2009 4:00 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Disney/Pixar, ABC

Boy, some people are so suspicious...

We were shocked—shocked!—to hear young Falcon Heene and his family asked whether Thursday's helium balloon saga was a bit of fakery perpetuated for reality-TV gain.

And we were shocked—shocked!—to see a stray Heene comment to CNN's Wolf Blitzer about how "we did this for a show" used as ammunition against the boy and his nervous stomach on Friday's morning news shows.

But mostly we are shocked—shocked!—that people don't get it. The balloon-boy story isn't about a Family Swap family extending its 15 minutes.

It's about selling boatloads of Up DVDs just in time for Christmas!

Geez, do we have to explain everything?

Here's what went down, according to the same sort of circumstantial evidence and conclusion jumping that everyone else is using to further the hoax storyline:

• Fact: The DVD business is in the toilet. Fact: Disney/Pixar's Up is due out on DVD Nov. 10. Fact: Jeremy Piven's The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is due out the same day in rental stores. Fact: Piven is radioactive. Fact-ish: Radioactive people make regular people scared, and cause them to develop irrational fears—i.e., that somehow The Goods is a threat to a blockbuster like Up.

• Fact: Up is about an older man and a boy who embark an unconventional balloon adventure. Fact: Falcon Heene is a boy; his father, Richard Heene, is an unconventional older man who fancies himself a storm chaser—and helium-balloon designer.

• Fact: The Heenes and their storm-chaser gadgetry were featured twice on ABC's Family Swap. Fact: Disney owns ABC. Could be a fact: Disney doesn't have any trouble finding the Heenes' phone number. And asking if they still happen to have that helium balloon around.

• Fact: When you heard the news about the boy supposedly missing in the runaway balloon, you thought, "Oh, how horrible, I can't watch." And then you thought, "Wow, that's kinda like Up…Say, I wonder when that's coming out on DVD?"

So there you have it. When Falcon Heene says "we did this for a show," he's not talking about a backdoor, guerrilla pilot produced by his dad, he's talking about his presumably well-compensated Up gig.

And while we guess that would still qualify Thursday's events as a hoax, we like to think of it as outstanding outside-the-box marketing.

Then again…

At this time, local authorities in the Heenes' Fort Collins, Colo., are not accusing the family of faking anything, much less of participating in the world's best-worst tie-in campaign since the Cartoon Network "bombed" Boston in the name of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.

Richard Heene, meanwhile, has dismissed any notion that the balloon incident was anything more than kid stuff (a boy going into hiding after being scolded) meeting a misunderstanding (his parents thinking the boy was in the balloon when the craft took off).

Still, because of the uproar over the "we did this for a show" comment, the Heenes are going to get a return visit from investigators. And that's fine. There should be no rush to close this case.

Not when Up's street date is still about four weeks off.

And we have a 12 Monkeys connection to investigate, too.