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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (32212)	1/22/2003 12:53:14 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 59480

Commercial Appeal The one brand of big-budget filmmaking that takes artistic risks. BY JESSE WALKER Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110002945 There are people who will watch the Super Bowl this Sunday for the commercials, testily enduring every brilliantly executed pass while awaiting the next Bud spot. The strangest thing about this isn't that someone would watch a TV show for the ads. It's that only one show gets this treatment. Commercials may be crass, loud, an insult to our intelligence. They may even be a colossal waste of money. (In 1998, the Boston Phoenix noted that the priciest TV ad of the previous year had "a per-minute cost that, if extrapolated to the length of 'Titanic,' would clock in at somewhere over a billion dollars.") But they're also the one brand of big-budget filmmaking that regularly makes room for artistic risks, especially when compared with most of the programs that surround them. I'd rather watch a beer ad than any episode of "Friends," and not just because the commercial is shorter. When I say "artistic risks," I'm not merely referring to those pretentious spots that do more to demonstrate their creators' familiarity with Fellini than to make a case for the product. (Think Calvin Klein's Obsession, c. 1986.) I mean those casually surreal car ads that eschew narrative (think of the Jaguar spot that promises "the blending of art and machine"), or hint at book-length narratives without filling in the details (think of that Jetta ad with a man rushing to stop a wedding). I mean those minute-long movies that offer unusual animation (think EarthLink) or obscure but excellent music you'd never hear on commercial radio, from Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" (the Volkswagen Golf) to Jorge Ben's "Ponta de Lanca Africana" (Intel). And I mean sheer cheerful fun of a kind that so often eludes TV series and feature films. Consider those invisible lovers in the jeans ad, removing their Levi's to the strains of Marvin Gaye. Try to imagine the program it interrupted finding the gumption to include such a gloriously bizarre scene. That Levi's spot was directed by Michael Bay, the man behind such big-budget turkeys as "Bad Boys" and "Pearl Harbor." Ads have gotten a lot of attention lately for their role as a farm team for Hollywood. The relationship actually goes back to the days before TV existed--the animator Oskar Fischinger was brought to Los Angeles in 1936 not on the strength of his avant-garde experiments, but because of a clever promo he made for Muratti cigarettes--and more recently has given us the directors behind such quirky, challenging pictures as "Being John Malkovich" and "Fight Club." Less recognized is that commercial breaks have become the one venue for which men like Mr. Bay make films worth remembering at all. L.A. is filled with A- and B-list directors whose most interesting work is the ads they shoot on the side. If Mr. Bay seems too extreme an example, consider Ridley Scott instead. Mr. Scott has made movies that are genuinely good: "Alien," "Blade Runner," "Thelma and Louise." But for all he's done at the cineplex, the one film he's most likely to be remembered for may be his dystopian ad for the Macintosh, in which a lone athlete stands up against a sterile and conformist future society. Part Orwell and part "Metropolis," his stylish (if somewhat trite) ad debuted in 1984, during--of course--the Super Bowl. It ran only once, yet people still discuss it more than most of his feature films. Half a century ago, French critics praised filmmakers formerly derided as Hollywood hacks--Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk, Jerry Lewis--because they put a personal stamp on works made under the most bureaucratic corporate conditions. By that standard, any number of lowly admen should be heroes. Yet that hasn't happened, in America anyway. Fanatical followers of David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, or the Coen brothers might go out of their way to find their heroes' ad work, but no one seems to have inspired a cult by making ads and nothing else. The cinema canon now includes everything from music videos to Bugs Bunny cartoons, but commercials are still left in the cold. (The first Sight & Sound poll of the world's greatest movies, in 1952, did include Robert Flaherty's "Louisiana Story," a loving portrait of Cajun country that is also a 75-minute promo for Standard Oil. Flaherty fans prefer to pretend the film is a documentary.) The trouble, I suppose, is that commercials are . . . well, commercials. Indeed, there's a school of thought that recognizes the artistry that goes into the best ads only to fret that capitalism is co-opting social forces, such as surrealism, that once were nobly subversive. But co-optation works both ways. The past is littered with products, brands and categories of consumer goods that almost everyone's forgotten. Watch the spots that advertised them now, and chances are low that you'll be moved to buy anything. Time erodes the sales pitch. Any art lurking behind it will survive.