Most of the comedy I do is reality based, rather than shtick-y," says director Brian Aldrich, who helms commercials out of bicoastal Coppos Films.
A case in point is "Seat Mate" for Wrigley’s Extra gum, out of BBDO Chicago. The spot depicts a woman taking a long-distance bus trip that is made interminably longer by her fellow passengers: an amorous couple making out; a creepy guy who stares at her; a motormouth kid who asks a million questions; a man with an extremely large Afro, who is seated in front of her; and an old lady who angrily flips the overhead light back on after our intrepid traveler turns it off. The ad’s soundtrack is a re-recorded version of Harry Nilsson’s "Everybody’s Talking at Me," famously heard in the film Midnight Cowboy.
"That spot took all the clichés [of an unpleasant traveling experience] and pushed them," says Aldrich, who contributed the ideas of the make-out couple and the woman shutting the light off. "It was a reason to put a bunch of weird people together."
Aldrich also had great fun on his latest project: a Blue Cross/Blue Shield campaign for Tierney Communications, Philadelphia. The spots—"Kick Me," "Shoelaces" and "Watches"—are comedy-based, which is an unusual approach for an insurance provider. The ads feature employees conspiring against their boss because he doesn’t provide Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance. Hand-held footage highlights "Kick Me," in which a variety of people on the street come up and kick the boss, who turns out to have a "Kick Me" sign taped to his back. In "Watches," as the unnamed firm’s fearless leader gives a speech, he is distracted by bright lights hitting his face. These are created by employees moving their wristwatches in sunlight to make sunbeams. "The jokes they play on the boss are pretty outrageous," notes Aldrich. "The spots were pretty irreverent, which was what attracted me to them."
Team Roots
Aldrich, who has been directing commercials for the past four years, honed his sense of comedy and performance during his former career as an agency art director, which included stints at the now defunct Della Femina McNamee WCRS, and at Clarke Goward Fitts (now Clarke Goward Advertising), Boston. He also freelanced for such shops as Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco; DDB Los Angeles; Bates New York; McCann-Erickson, Tokyo; and the former Santa Monica office of the Leap Partnership (now Leapnet), Chicago.
While on staff at Clarke Goward Fitts, Aldrich met Martin Canellakis, a fellow creative, who would become his directing partner. The co-helming duo, known as Marty+ Brian, signed with Coppos in 1998, establishing themselves in the comedy area. The pair began to branch out individually in ’99, and Canellakis is now with bicoastal Gartner. "For me, it just worked better as a one-person thing," says Aldrich of the split, which was amicable. "This business is hard enough … to learn how to be a good director, you have to shoot a lot and have to make mistakes, and do it on your own."
One of the more controversial spots that Aldrich directed is "Office Party" for No nonsense pantyhose, out of McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, N.C. It depicts the uncomfortable interaction that ensues when an office worker’s wife first meets one of her husband’s comely young colleagues at a holiday office party. As the women size each other up, their coolly polite interactions ("Bob has told me how smart and helpful you are!" exclaims the wife) are punctuated with cuts to vintage black-and-white clips from a ’40s-era film. Those segments show two women cat-fighting for all they’re worth—hair-pulling, smacking and grappling on the ground. "That spot was initially supposed to have subtitles, which were pulled," notes Aldrich. "A lot of the stuff I get has a little bit of controversy. I try to push it as much as I can."
Some spots don’t need contro-versy to make an impact. One such ad is an Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) store spot titled "Cannonball" that Aldrich directed out of Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago. It opens as two young boys play Marco Polo in an above-ground swimming pool in a backyard. Their game is interrupted when a massive man, who must weigh close to 500 pounds, appears at the edge of the pool and jumps in, causing a tremendous water splash and splintering the pool itself. As the water drains away from the wreckage, we hear the car alarms that were set off by the blast and see the stunned man and boys.
"That explosion had to be perfect because we had only one shot to do it in," recalls Aldrich. "We first tested it by having a half-size pool built and creating an explosion in the parking lot of the effects house. We put a charge in the side of the pool and, when it detonated, all the car alarms in the lot went off, so we added that to the final spot."
The OSH ad came off without a hitch, but Aldrich is well aware that things can—and do—go wrong. One unanticipated situation confronted the director as he prepared to shoot the Time Warner Cable spot "Cabbies," out of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, New York, on location in the streets of New York. He had staged a traffic jam comprising 40 cabs on Broadway in the Wall Street district. The spot called for the taxis to come to a halt in order to allow a pedestrian to walk across the street, as the cabdrivers cheerily wave him on.
One problem: The actor didn’t show up. "I needed a Rastafarian in the Wall Street district on a Saturday afternoon," says Aldrich. "I called everyone and then, all of sudden, a guy walks by and he’s perfect. We cast him just like that, and we’d lost just a half an hour."
Aldrich describes himself as a very collaborative director, and particularly likes the part of the process in which he deals with the agency. "I’ve been there in their shoes and I can relate," he points out. "I try to get involved very early on. I really start right in on the job whether I have the job or not. It’s my job to take an idea and make it work filmically, and because of my background, people are generally receptive."
Aldrich loves what he does and claims to have no aspirations toward directing a feature. "I’m not looking at commercial directing as a steppingstone," he says. "I’m an ad guy that became a director and I’m very comfortable with that. I also like going home at night. Maybe there will be a time when [features] happen, but I’m having too much fun doing what I’m doing."
