Rat-tastic!

I once read a review for the remake of Willard, the movie about a guy who had a legion of rats at his command. The review called the movie “rat-tastic!” I thought it was a pretty funny way of putting it.

Much funnier than the made up words used daily by ad agencies on commercials.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine an agency dungeon where copywriters are chained to their chairs, their overlords whipping them mercilessly until they find a way to merge two words that have absolutely no business being made into one. The lingual equivalent of a square peg in a round hole.

It’s bad enough no one in real life talks the way people do in commercials. But at least they’re speaking words from the dictionary (most of the time).

When was the last time you described a strong, soft toilet paper as stroft? When was the last time you described toilet paper at all?

Hampton Inn now offers us Hamptonality!, a cross between the name and hospitality - in case you didn’t know what business hotels were in.

Hyundai has told us in the past that their finely crafted Korean automobiles are made with pure Powercision.

There are also what I like to call the fallback suffixes: -licious, -tastic, -esque, -able, -apolooza, -centric. Just add a word in front of them, and presto! You have a vocabalicious new word.

The unfortunate part is this practice has spilled over into other areas as well. Dog breeders were among the first to pick up on the trend. If you can't decide between a labrador and a poodle, you can pick up a Labradoodle. If the kids want something more their size, get them a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle. You know, a Cockapoo.

No matter what industry it shows up in, it just means the people perpetrating this assault on the language couldn't come up with anything better.

Which if you ask me is all just a cross between a bulldog and a shihtzu.

Word

Like a lot of writers living in Southern California, I’ve worked on many car accounts. From top end $90,000 luxury vehicles to $14,000 coffee-grinders, I’ve written it all.

Commercials, collateral, radio spots, print ads, online banners, interactive content, Twitter posts, Facebook posts, outdoor, customer kits, dealer kits, CPO kits, sale kits, employee bonus kits, warranty kits.

Oddly enough, no matter the price or quality of the car, they all have something in common. The words used to describe them.

Pick a car, any car. I bet it’s exhilarating. It’s probably also a leader in innovation. No doubt it’s been engineered to maximize your driving experience, and designed to turn heads as well as corners.

Let’s not forget the fact it’s also loaded with state-of-the-art technology, as well as class-leading aerodynamics whose job it is to keep you connected to the road. How else could you get a car that makes setting the standard, standard.

But there's no point to any of it unless you're around to enjoy it. That's why the car you're thinking about is loaded with the latest active and passive safety features.

The cars come with airbags. The agencies come with windbags.

Differentiating parody products - different brands with the exact same features - has always been a problem in advertising. Often the only thing that does it is the quality of the creative idea, the consistency of the execution and the personality it establishes for the brand.

I bet you know what BMW builds. But I'm fairly sure you aren't nearly as familiar with the tagline Toyota - which builds awesome cars for all income levels - just spent millions to introduce.

Unless there's a real product difference, almost every category from athletic shoes to cars to fast food use the same words to describe their product. Which makes it even harder to tell them apart.

Sort of like ad agencies.

Because I don't want to

If you know anything about me, and really, if you’ve been following this blog you probably know more than you want to, it won’t come as any surprise I have no problem saying no to things I don’t want to do.

I've found it's the only way I can have some sense of control and balance in my life, and make time for the things that are most important to me.

I can't imagine having a job where I didn't have that option. It’s one of the reasons I like freelancing so much.

As a freelancer, there are a lot of ways to say no. If the situation allows, the best way is to just say it. For example, like the time I got a call from someone who’d gotten my name and number from a friend(?) and offered me a gig writing about the many involving and fascinating aspects of waste management. Naturally I got the call while I was in the middle of lunch.

Anyway, I told him that as attractive as waste management sounded, I wasn't the right guy for the job. Thanks but no thanks.

I’ve also turned down jobs I didn’t want in other ways. I've priced myself out of the gig (“Yes, you heard right: $5000 a day.”) Of course the risk with that is they have the money and might actually say ok. In which case I retreat to my fallback refusal tactic: availability.

If a client's willing to throw the vault at me on a job I don’t want to do, I follow it up with a question I know I can always answer to my advantage: “When do you need it?”

Hey, sometimes the timing just doesn’t work. Especially when I don’t want it to.

I don’t mean to sound like all I do is find ways to avoid work. I don’t. I like working and all the benefits it brings to my family, my life and my bank account. But I am past the point of taking any job just for the money, and writing for any client who happens to find my number.

By the way, if you didn't flinch at that $5000 day rate, I'm available whenever you want me.

Curing cancer

Every once in awhile, I'm reminded in no uncertain terms that we do very important work in advertising. Very important. It’s obvious isn’t it? If the work wasn’t life or death - which it apparently is – then why would some people in the business treat it that way? People in advertising wouldn’t lie.

Nah, I’m just funnin’ ya. It isn’t. And they would.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: people take themselves too damn seriously in a business that’s supposed to be fun. Not fun in the ha-ha sense, but fun in the working hard, producing something we can be proud of creatively and that moves sales for the client sense.

There’s also award show and media girl fun, but that’s for another post.

Just today, a friend of mine asked what happened to, “Here’s a great idea, we love it, here’s a shitload of money now go produce it.” Good question.

The answer of course is fear. Fear is what happened to it. Fear of making a decision, and fear of taking responsibility for that decision. Fear of losing your job over that decision. Fear of telling a creative team to just go produce an idea without a room of 12 strangers who know nothing about it to back them up.

I’ve never been one to be accused of overthinking the work, and that may explain two things: first is my unfrightened attitude. For some reason, when you don’t take things as seriously as other people do it really bothers them. They feel like you’re not a “team player” (by the way, whole other post about that phrase coming soon - oops, may have tipped my hand).

And second, it’s the reason I prefer freelance. Going on staff means one thing and one thing only (hint: contrary to popular belief it's not job security). It means you have to take it seriously.

Don't misunderstand, I know full well there are serious aspects to what we do. Millions of dollars are spent, and clients, understandably, expect to results from it. Careers and reputations are often made and broken on one decision. But those things are the price of entry of being in the business, and everyone at the door waiting to come in knows it.

The thing is, after everything you've given and sacrificed and struggled through to get in, there's still a constant demand for a blood oath to show how serious you are about it.

For example, I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way the powers that be decided if creative people were really going to be serious about it, they should be on call 24 hrs. a day, like doctors (who actually are curing cancer and making a real difference). And they should be on call with their personal cell phones without reimbursement.

That seems fair.

There are agency cultures that live and breathe by the if-you're-not-here-on-Saturday-don't-bother-coming-in-Sunday credo. I've worked for them, we all have. But like my pal Rich Siegel at Round Seventeen so aptly put it, I didn't drink the Kool-Aid. No need to linger after school if I have nothing to do just to make sure I'm seen after hours.

If I'm not there, start without me.

Here's what I know for sure. We're creating a disposable product no one outside of the client is asking for. Occasionally it does some good. Once in a while it's extremely creative. And when it moves product, whatever that product is, it's a great thing for all involved. Don't get me wrong: just because our product is disposable doesn't mean there aren't great commercials deservedly burned into the public conscious for the right reasons. For example, Apple's "1984" spot.

But for every "1984" there are a thousand "Mucinex in. Mucus out." spots.

Which is hard to believe, given all the seriousness that went into them.

Night calls

I’m in the minority, but I feel sorry for M. Night Shyamalan. I know, it’s hard to feel sorry for a Hollywood wunderkind who showed the kind of promise, made the kind of money and then crashed and burned the way he did. But I do.

I thoroughly enjoyed three of the ten films that Night’s directed. That’s at least one more than most people.

Like almost everyone, I loved The Sixth Sense. Even though I knew the secret from the very first time I saw the trailer (Haley Joel Osment looks at Bruce Willis and says, “I see dead people.” Hello? What do you need, a roadmap?), the mood, writing, look and secrets in the film were spellbinding.

His next, Unbreakable, was also a keeper. For any comic book or superhero fan such as myself (Comic Con again this year?! Why yes), the ending and reveal of who Samuel L. Jackson really was didn’t exactly come as a surprise. But it was still thrilling, as is the idea of the long-talked about sequel.

This third film is where I part ways with almost everyone I know. Signs. I liked this story of a man, Mel Gibson, who once was a man of the cloth but now finds himself questioning his faith. That’s what the movie was about, despite the fact it was sold as an alien invasion, sci-fi film. There is nuance, genuine heartbreak (SPOILER ALERT: I dare you to keep a dry eye as Gibson is talking to his wife before she dies) and redemption.

With these first three successes (yes, Signs made money), Night was allowed to write, produce, direct and often give himself larger acting roles in his films than he should have, seemingly without any supervision from the studio. From The Village (a rip-off of this Twilight Zone episode), to The Happening (which wasn’t), to The Lady In The Water, to The Last Airbender, each film stunk up the place more than the next.

Part of the problem was Night tried to duplicate the big twist/reveal ending of Sixth Sense in each of the subsequent films. He couldn’t.

He fancied himself a Spielberg. He wasn’t.

The studios thought they’d make buckets of money using his name as a brand. They didn’t.

What I don't understand is the extreme hate. When his name comes up on a film, people boo. Or laugh. Or groan. Why is he box office poison any more than Kate Hudson or Jennifer Aniston or Kathryn Heigl, all of whom seem to keep finding work. I think every Adam Sandler film deserves the same reaction (except for the laughing part). Maybe that's the reason the only place Night's name shows up for his latest film, After Earth starring Will Smith and his son, is on the poster. (By the way, it's been getting eviscerated in the reviews, and has a bottom-dwelling 13% on Rotten Tomatoes).

At least he's consistent.

Not that he asked me, but if I were him I'd walk away from the genre for a while. I'd direct something totally out of character and unexpected. Perhaps a comedy, which he's shown some real flair for in portions of some of his films. And I'd give myself a cameo, because as director it's fun to do that. But I'd make it a real cameo - the kind Hitchcock gave himself, usually about two seconds of screen time.

There are already a million Sixth Sense jokes, and even a YouTube video, about the secret of Night's career being that it was already dead. There's also a book about how he crashed and burned.

I can't say I've enjoyed a film of his in a long time.

But I'm still hoping the story of his career has a surprise ending.

Checking into St. Elsewhere

You might want to read this - stat! Before medical dramas on television were taken to new heights by ER, Grey's Anatomy, Doogie Howser and Chicago Hope, they had St. Elsewhere to show them how to do it.

Thanks to my wife, who introduced me to the show (and who in fact introduces me to most of the shows I become a fan of) I was a huge fan of St. Elsewhere. With it's stellar cast including a then unknown Denzel Washington, Mark Harmon, Ed Flanders, Norman Lloyd, David Morse, Ed Begley Jr., William Daniels and, as Dr. Fiscus, Howie Mandel to name a few, St. Elsewhere was to medical dramas what Hill Street Blues was to the cop show: groundbreaking.

For the first time, characters died. So did patients. Dream sequences were surreal, scary and violent. Topics that hadn't been taken on before like autism (one of the main characters had an autistic son), rape, AIDS and mental illness were intelligently written about and sensitively portrayed.

The show had a brisk and dark humor which made it all the more appealing. It was produced by John Masius and Bruce Paltrow, Gwyneth's dad.

I liked the show so much I did something I'd never done before: I wrote a letter to Brandon Tartikoff, then head of programming at NBC to tell him how much I enjoyed the show. In the letter, I asked him if it would be possible to visit the set, and to my ever-lasting surprise and gratitude, he said yes. He had his second in command, and eventual successor, Warren Littlefield call me and schedule the visit.

When I got to the set, Masius and Paltrow were my guides. They personally toured me around, showed me the script they were shooting that day and introduced me to a few of the actors.

While we were talking over coffee at the craft services table, Bruce Paltrow casually asked me how I knew Brandon Tartikoff. I said that I didn't - I'd just written a letter he liked. Paltrow laughed, and said it must've been some letter because Tartikoff had given them direct orders to treat me like I was his mother.

Next comes one of the biggest regrets of my life. I've never spoken about it before because it's just too embarrassing, but here it is.

In that same conversation, both Masius and Paltrow asked what I did, and I told them I was a copywriter. Then Paltrow asked if I'd ever written any television, and I told him I hadn't. He then asked me if I'd like to. Let's just say at the time I was much more enamored of advertising than I am now, and gave him an answer which I regret to this day. I'll regret it for all my days.

But enough about my bad choices.

The series ended on a controversial note. It turned out that the entire six seasons had been the imagination of the autistic character I talked about earlier. A lot of people thought it was a cop out, including me at the time. But as I watch the scene now, and the alternate reality it presents for the characters, and what it says about what's going on in the head of an autistic child, I like it.

For some reason only the first season is available on DVD. When they're all finally released, I'll curl up with the wife and we'll spend a weekend or two watching them all again to see the characters we love, and the moments we remember most.

Holland & Tony

As some of you may know by now, I decided to take a trip to New York a few weekends ago. I hadn't been there in a number of years, and for a variety of reasons it felt great to be back.

Not the least of which was the main reason I went in the first place: to see my friend Holland Taylor in ANN, the play she wrote and stars in about former Texas governor Ann Richards.

You know that feeling when you have an expectation about a show and hope the reality lives up to it? And you know that other feeling, the one where it wildly exceeds your expectations?

The second one.

The play was beyond whatever it was I'd imagined it would be. With the turn of a phrase, or a subtle change of tone or expression, Holland would have me laughing hysterically one minute, then crying the next. It's a performance filled with subtle nuance only a talent of Holland's caliber and experience could pull off, in the writing and the performance. A tour de force - one you come out of with the immovable conviction that the actor you've just seen is the only one you could ever imagine in the role.

The other thought I had was what a remarkable woman Ann Richards was. Outspoken, straight-shooting, wicked sense of humor and a low threshold for fools made her entry into politics an even more intriguing choice. It's not hard to see why Holland was drawn to her given their many common traits.

Anyway, to the surprise of absolutely no one who's seen her in the show, Holland is now nominated for Best Leading Actress in this year's Tony Awards. I keep telling her she needs to start working on her acceptance speech, and she keeps shushing me.

But she really needs to start working on her acceptance speech.

I know what you're thinking: I'm going on and on because she's my friend. How can I possibly be objective? It's a valid question.

Well, here's the thing about a once-in-a-lifetime role and an unforgettable performance: everyone can agree on it.