I didn’t go to Cannes last year. I didn’t ask to go. By June, I was in the middle of executing the second round of layoffs in my former agency’s production department. By the end of the year, I would lose 20 percent of my staff.
Producers, as a breed, like to produce things. We like to build. So taking apart a department that I loved was particularly painful. Layoffs are miserable for the victims. I know. It happened to me once, when the great agency that I loved for 12 years—Levine Huntley Schmidt and Beaver—closed its doors. But layoffs also take their toll on those of us who have to look our colleagues in the eye, and tell good people that a career is about to be placed on a long, long hiatus.
So I looked at the $7,000 trip to Cannes as a quarter of a receptionist, or a tenth of a young producer, or seven spot bonuses. And I decided that it wasn’t right for me to go. But while I toiled in New York, my soul was at the Gutter Bar.
The Gutter Bar sits across the street from the Hotel Martinez. (I don’t even know if it’s the place’s real name). While the Americans are dining at the Carlton, and the CEOs are hosting private parties at the Hôtel du Cap, hundreds of young European creatives are spilling into the streets around the Gutter Bar. In the summer of 2000, at this great melting pot of the Côte d’Azur, Germans, Swedes, Dutch and Brits all defined themselves with the same rallying cry—words that defined them as Ad Guys. I heard them in every dialect, screamed with every shade of protruding tongue: "Whaassuuuupppp?" The industry had its phenomenon, and my two short-listed Heineken spots didn’t stand a chance.
I did something at the Gutter Bar that I hadn’t done in 20 years, since my first date with the woman who would become my wife: I stayed up all night. A lot of stuff happened that night in the Gutter Bar. Gary Grossman and I buried the hatchet over Mercedes. Jon Kamen got the barmaid to get or make or find us grilled cheese sandwiches at five o’clock in the morning. (The Gutter Bar doesn’t serve food, but Kamen pulled some famous Kamen strings.) Maya Brewster and I watched the sunrise over the Mediterranean, chaperoned by John Garland and some guy who sold us poor-quality contraband.
There was something great and young and international and alive about that night. And I realize it was one of the last times I felt great about working in advertising. And you know what? I’m ready for it to happen again.
So maybe, just maybe, we’ve seen the worst. To all of us who have endured the recession, who have lived through the devastation of Sept. 11, who missed Cannes last year, and are still in the business to tell about it, I say, "Bring on the Gutter Bar!" It’s time to feel good about ourselves again, to enjoy what we do, to be proud of our work. And most of all, it’s time to watch the sunrise with Maya again.
