When director Rick LeMoine decided to embark on a solo directing career earlier this year after seven years teamed with Steve Miller—as LeMoine/Miller—one of the winners was their production company, bicoastal/international @radical.media. Instead of repping an in-demand directing duo, the shop now has two directors who remain true to their team reel, and who are in demand individually to helm the kinds of funny, real-people spots they used to do together.
"The work I like to do is stuff that has some humor to it, some weirdness," LeMoine says. "Also, I love to find things that have some truth underneath it all."
It’s the kind of humor that was in last year’s primetime Emmy-nominated spot "Amnesia" for Computer Associates, which LeMoine directed with Miller for Young & Rubicam, New York. In the spot, a junior executive heading for a meeting with his boss assures him that he has all the necessary data in his head, just before he knocks himself out walking into an open file drawer. "As broad and slapstick as that gag is—the guy getting knocked out by the filing cabinet—to me what was interesting was the boss’ reaction to it, feeling his emotions of ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do now?’ going into this meeting," LeMoine says. "It’s having these absurd kinds of situations but … having real human emotion behind them. That to me is what makes the best comedy, having a little human reality in a kind of crazy place."
Since going solo a few months ago, LeMoine has been busy with jobs that included a six-spot campaign for Hasbro out of Arnold Worldwide, New York; four spots for MasterCard—"Carpet," "Elevator," "Chandelier" and "Towels"—out of McCann-Erickson, New York; and a spot called "Dream House" for German bank Traumhaus out of Deutscher Sparkassenverlag, Berlin.
"I enjoyed the Hasbro stuff because it was really nice work for a category that you don’t usually see anything decent in," LeMoine says. "You just think, ‘Monopoly—wow, I don’t recall them ever doing anything good.’ And these guys at Arnold did some really nice spots that were very interesting and subtle—great ideas."
The Monopoly spots, "House" and "Hotel," are due to air in the fall. " ‘Hotel’ is about a guy sitting in his office listening to his boss go on and on about something stupid," LeMoine relates. "He’s having an interior monologue—’This guy is an idiot, I need to get out of here and make my move, get into hotels.’ You realize that he’s the kind of guy who plays Monopoly."
The German spot was a challenge because LeMoine doesn’t speak the language. "I cast English-speaking actors so I could communicate with them, but they did the lines in German," he says. "What was interesting is that human behavior is human behavior. Even though I didn’t understand if they were getting the pronunciation correct—I’d have to look at my translator to see if it was a good take as far as the pronunciation—the performance was still very human. That part was easy."
on his own
The transition to solo directing wasn’t a traumatic one for LeMoine. "To me, it’s not nerve-wracking," he says. "We’re both capable of standing on our own. The one thing you miss is having a person whose opinion you trust standing next to you."
He and Miller had been standing together for some time. They were both at Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y., but didn’t get to know each other until they both joined Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, where they were part of the original staff in ’87, LeMoine as copywriter and Miller as art director. They later moved apart professionally, but remained in touch. "I reached a point in my ad agency career where I said, ‘Do I really want to move into the creative director level or do something else?’ " LeMoine remembers. "I decided to try directing." It was ’96, and he and Miller were freelancing as a creative team when they got the opportunity to create 10 promos for ESPN together. "We said we would write it if they would let us direct it," reports LeMoine. The pair signed with @radical.media in ’97.
As a directing team, LeMoine and Miller did everything together. But as their families grew, it became more difficult for the team to schedule work at the same time, leading to a completely amicable split. "We rarely disagreed on things," LeMoine says. "It was kind of creepy sometimes. We’d be in different locations looking at casting tapes, and we’d pick the same people. That’s why we were able to work together for six or seven years without driving each other crazy. As similar as we are, we had some different interests. I’m personally more interested in moving into longer format stuff, movies or TV or whatever."
LeMoine, who counts himself as a fan of director Howard Hawks, admits to "a curious affinity" for Westerns. "I’d love to do a Western one of these days, but it’s pretty far from what I’m doing now," he notes. "I’ve looked at a few scripts and I have some things I’ve written, and I’m just trying to move forward on that front now."
