By Bill Dunlap

In the roundup of post-Super Bowl ad critiques this year, the general consensus was that the sleeper hits of the annual extravaganza were a pair of spots for Ameriquest Mortgage Co. created by DDB Direct, Los Angeles and directed by Craig Gillespie of bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ).

There was little buzz going in. Ameriquest was a first-time Super Bowl advertiser in 2005, and mortgage lenders in general aren’t known for high profile, comedy-based advertising. The spots, “Mini Mart” and “Surprise Dinner,” set up situations in which the actions of a key character are misconstrued badly in situations that turn comedic in the end. The advertiser’s tagline: “Don’t judge too quickly. We won’t.” In “Mini Mart,” a guy on a cell phone walks into a convenience store while discussing the price of a new deck: he feels that the person on the other end is being “robbed.” As he is chatting, the store’s owners overhear him, and believing they are being held up, begin to attack the would-be thief–with pepper spray, a baseball bat, and a cattle prod. In “Surprise Dinner” a guy goes over his girlfriend’s apartment to cook her dinner. As he’s preparing pasta sauce, her large white cat knocks the pan over, splashing tomato sauce all over. The guy, who’s been chopping onions with a large knife, picks up the sauce-splattered cat–at the same time, his girlfriend walks in the door, to see her sweetie holding the now red-and-white cat, and wielding the knife.

Gillespie recalls that he and the agency creatives weren’t overwhelmed by the prospect of doing spots for the big game. “I try to not worry about the context of where a spot is going to be playing,” he explains, noting that while a venue such as the Super Bowl is high pressure, staying true to the idea of the spots was of paramount importance. “At some point you might think it should look a little more high production, but I just felt I had to stay true to what I think serves the idea best. We went hand-held and its a little grittier looking so that we feel like we’re really there and we don’t telegraph that the comedy is coming.”

As a former agency art director and a recognized hand with comedy, Gillespie is often drawn into highly collaborative situations, but in this case the agency had very definite ideas of how to execute the spots, Gillespie says. “They were very open, but at the same time the ideas were really fleshed out. In ‘Minimart,’ where the guy says, ‘I hate to tell you this, but you’re getting robbed,’ that was all there. The question that came up was what happens once that line is said, what does the store clerk do?”

Gillespie gave them several choices. “I did that ending where he gets maced and then one where he gets maced and then clubbed, and then electrocuted. We even had a stunt guy get rigged and thrown into a rack of stuff with a harness and then the cops turn up. I wanted to make sure they had a lot of choices on how far to take it and where the punch lines were.”

In “Surprise Dinner “[the agency team] had a really tight storyboard,” relates Gillespie. “I just upped it a little bit by having the pot spill all over the floor so there was lot more red sauce on the floor. They really embraced it and went with it.”

There were two other spots in the campaign, “Parking Meter” and “Mother-in-Law,” with the idea being that the two favorites would get the Super Bowl nod. “I believe they tested them,” Gillespie says, “and they ended up picking my two favorites anyway.”

While the humor in the Ameriquest spots is mostly performance-based, Gillespie also embraces physical humor. In the Altoids spot “Mother Tongue,” out of Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, an explorer in a primitive culture has nice things to say about an Altoid given him by a native, but the words translate badly and the native looses a snare that hurls the explorer upside down to tree-level heights.

“There are certain things that make me laugh,” Gillespie says. “I’m very tough on physical comedy. It has to be done without cuts, sort of trying to make the toughest critic laugh rather than going to the lowest common denominator. ‘Mother Tongue’ is a morph between an actor and a dummy on wires, and back to the actor again. There’s no cut.”

His prowess for directing physical comedy is also on display in a spot called “Fast Acting,” out of Arnold Worldwide, Boston, for Gillette’s new body spray for men, called Tag. In the ad, a guy in a store sprays himself with Tag, and attracted by scent, a woman in the next aisle attempts to pull him through the shelves, while another attempts to tackle him. More women join the pile-up; the spot’s tagline: “Introducing Tag body spray for guys. Consider yourself warned.”

A big part of Gillespie’s deft touch with comedy is his attention to casting. “I’m always trying to find actors who just let the situation be funny rather than the actor trying to steal the moment because they’re too comedic in their reactions or the delivery of their lines,” he explains. “It takes a little bit of a leap of faith. You’ve got to be committed to the idea, that the idea in itself is really funny and let that be what stands out as opposed to having the actor steal the moment.”

A native of Australia, Gillespie came to the States on a full scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he studied advertising and graphic design. After eight years on the agency side, the bulk of it at BBDO New York as an art director, Gillespie made the jump to directing 10 years ago, first with now disbanded Fahrenheit, later with the now defunct Coppos Films and, for the last four years, with MJZ.

From the beginning, he was drawn to directing, but attempts to do it from the agency side were always rebuffed. “I kept trying to do some 16mm stuff on the side, hoping to get a break, maybe to shoot one of my own commercials, but it wasn’t happening,” he recalls. “I wound up using my own money and shooting two spec spots on 35mm. I built some sets and got them done. I got signed from that.”

The Ameriquest, Altoids and Tag work will likely be Gillespie’s last commercial work for a while, as he is scheduled to begin shooting his first feature in April. The film, Mr. Woodcock, to be distributed by New Line Cinema, stars Billy Bob Thornton in the title role as an overbearing high school gym teacher engaged to marry a woman played by Susan Sarandon, whose grown son, played by Seann William Scott, is appalled by the idea, as the gym teacher made life hell for a generation of students, and returns home to stop the marriage from happening. Gillespie hopes for a career mixing movies and commercials. “I love doing commercials,” he says. “Every one is a different chance to experiment and try pushing the envelope and doing new things. As for features, I’ll see what happens there.”

MySHOOT Profiles