I was in advertising for the last, maybe 15 years of my filmmaking career,
and I can tell you that nothing, and I mean NOTHING is too stupid to pitch
as necessary or life enhancing. We, as the working stiffs making the
machinery operate to capture the visuals and sounds and to tie it all up as
a shiny and colorful finished product to show to an almost defenseless
public, would often be dumbstruck by it all. From unimaginably bad food
products to plastiky googaws that often would not work long enough for us to
film them, to services that had so many legal problems that we had to have
lawyers on the set to interrupt for a quick re-write to avoid lawsuits and
arrests.
I personally worked on hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth
of product that was never allowed on a TV screen. So, just look at what is
there and imagine a whole world of crud not even that good.
The only real time I ever had, what we in the film business called a "job
job", where you actually went to work everyday and drew a paycheck, was for
Seven Eleven. They actually aren't the worst at filming commercials and
training films for colossally bad ideas, but they were no slouches either.
My crew and one of my directors is personally responsible for the fact that
Nachos are self-serve. And one of the defining dieing gasps of a huge,
multinational, multiBILLION dollar corporation (as they were collapsing and
being sold to the Japanese) was the pitch to sell to the world...GRAPE
FLAVORED BUTTERMILK. Which we, in an employee naming contest,
deemed.....QUICK VOM!!!
I just saw a television ad for a car - Avalon.
It has automatically sensing, and then auto turning on - windshield wipers.
After describing this feature, the voice says, "Imagine how much better your life will be".
Am I missing something here?
Would I be happier if I rigged my bus up with such an option, or have I had one too many glasses of home made dandelion wine this evening?
