Just in time for New Year’s resolutions, this :30 deploys the “monkey on your back” metaphor to hopefully inspire folks to quit smoking.
The spot opens on a man who wakes up in bed, turns on the lamp to reveal that there’s a monkey standing on his shoulder. The monkey points to a pack of cigarettes on the end table.
Next there’s a woman who has a different variety of monkey species on her back as she’s seated at her office workstation. This monkey opens the top drawer to her desk, revealing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
We then see yet another person–and another variety of monkey–in an automobile. The driver has his eyes on the road while the monkey puts a lit cigarette in the man’s mouth who takes a puff.
Finally we’re taken outside a restaurant where a man and woman are puffing away, each with a different monkey on their backs.
A voiceover relates, “When it comes to quitting smoking, everyone’s monkey is different…so you need an approach that’s different too.”
An end tag provides a toll free phone hotline to ClearWay Minnesota’s QUITPLAN Services. ClearWay is an independent nonprofit organization designed to improve the health of Minnesotans by reducing the harm caused by tobacco.
Steve “Spaz” Williams of Hoytyboy Pictures directed the spot for agency Clarity Coverdale Fury, Minneapolis.
Does “Hundreds of Beavers” Reflect A New Path Forward In Cinema?
Hard as it may be to believe, changing the future of cinema was not on Mike Cheslik's mind when he was making "Hundreds of Beavers." Cheslik was in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with a crew of four, sometimes six, standing in snow and making his friend, Ryland Tews, fall down funny.
"When we were shooting, I kept thinking: It would be so stupid if this got mythologized," says Cheslik.
And yet, "Hundreds of Beavers" has accrued the stuff of, if not quite myth, then certainly lo-fi legend. Cheslik's film, made for just $150,000 and self-distributed in theaters, has managed to gnaw its way into a movie culture largely dominated by big-budget sequels.
"Hundreds of Beavers" is a wordless black-and-white bonanza of slapstick antics about a stranded 19th century applejack salesman (Tews) at war with a bevy of beavers, all of whom are played by actors in mascot costumes.
No one would call "Hundreds of Beavers" expensive looking, but it's far more inventive than much of what Hollywood produces. With some 1,500 effects shots Cheslik slaved over on his home computer, he crafted something like the human version of Donald Duck's snowball fight, and a low-budget heir to the waning tradition of Buster Keaton and "Naked Gun."
At a time when independent filmmaking is more challenged than ever, "Hundreds of Beavers" has, maybe, suggested a new path forward, albeit a particularly beaver-festooned path.
After no major distributor stepped forward, the filmmakers opted to launch the movie themselves, beginning with carnivalesque roadshow screenings. Since opening in January, "Hundreds of Beavers" has played in at least one theater every week of the year, though never more than 33 at once. (Blockbusters typically play in around 4,000 locations.)... Read More