An Affinity For Outcasts
By Christine Champagne
One of Aaron Ruell’s earliest professional directing gigs had him helming the opening credits sequence for Napoleon Dynamite in which he also starred as Napoleon’s older brother Kip. As those of you who saw the film may recall, the colorful opening credits sequence was a veritable buffet, heavy on the use of plates of food–ranging from tater tots to a corn dog. So maybe it should come as no surprise that a McDonald’s campaign out of Leo Burnett, Chicago, featuring static yet speaking food is among Ruell’s standout work as a commercial director this past year.
Ruell, who recently signed with Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles, for spot representation, shot the McDonald’s campaign, including the SHOOT Top Spot of the Week (9/22/06) aptly titled “Filet ‘O Fish,” while he was with Uber Content, Hollywood. (Prior to his one-and-a-half year stint with Über Content, Ruell was repped by Santa Monica-based Area 51.) “Filet ‘O Fish” finds one Filet ‘O Fish trying to teach another how to properly pronounce Filet ‘O Fish. The back and forth between the sandwiches is amusing in its ridiculousness.
The other spots in the humorous campaign delight with the verbal antics of french fries and Chicken McNuggets.
While Ruell clearly has a way with edibles, other recent spot work features more animated characters. For instance, a Comcast commercial titled “Save Moolah” out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, opens on a flashy wrestler striding down a city street wearing a satin cape and greeting fans as they call out to him. When a piano falling from the sky threatens to crush Moolah, a dedicated fan saves his idol by pushing him out of harm’s way. The message here? We learn that we, too, can “save Moolah” by signing up for Comcast Digital Voice.
Ruell was crafting another round of Comcast spots at press time. “Comcast is a great client, and Goodby is a great agency,” Ruell says. “That’s a good combination and worth going back to.”
Asked how he selects spot projects, Ruell says, “I have to be able to see the commercial when I read it. If there’s nothing that sparks some type of interest for me, whether it’s in the visuals or the dialogue, it’s probably not going to make me happy, and that’s not good for the projects or anyone else,” Ruell remarks, adding, “Not because I’m a mean guy. Just because every project should have the director’s love and support. Otherwise, I’m cheating the project.”
As for other recent spots that earned Ruell’s love and support are “Terrence” and “Miranda” for Moviefone. Created by Attik, San Francisco, the ads stress the importance of knowing one’s movie mood in order to select the right film to see. While Terrence is a thin, frail man on a bus mourning the loss of his gerbil, Miranda is an intense Ping Pong player. Terrence, who needs cheering up, would be best served by seeing a comedy, according to a gauge of his movie mood, and Miranda needs to relax by watching a film populated by her magical friends–think elves, wizards and fairies.
Another highlight on Ruell’s reel: A spot for Go Tarts candy out of Leo Burnett, Chicago. It focuses on an eccentric Evil Knievel wannabe named Thunder Murphy who plans to jump the Grand Canyon on his motorcycle only to be beaten to the stunt by an RV driven by a bag of Go Tarts.
Looking at his work, it is plain to see that Ruell is drawn to offbeat humor. Wonderfully weird characters are a hallmark of his spot work, prompting one to ask if he likes to have a certain amount of freedom in terms of character creation. “The way I cast is always dependent on the script. If the script and the world therein calls for sexy, pretty people, that’s how I’ll cast. But if it calls for something more real and every day, that’s how I’ll cast. But I don’t have an agenda to cast only ‘wonderfully weird’ characters as you put it,” Ruell stresses. “It’s project dependent.”
That said, Ruell confesses he has a thing for outsiders and outcasts. “They’re just a lot cooler and interesting to me,” Ruell shares. “If I’m at a party, and I see a guy in a wizard t-shirt and a guy in a suit, I’m definitely going to go talk to the wizard guy any day.”
Certainly, everyone–especially agency types–are eager to chat up Ruell these days. In addition to being a celebrity of sorts thanks to his unforgettable role in Napoleon Dynamite, he has made a name for himself as a spot director in a fairly short amount of time. According to the Clovis, Calif. native who studied filmmaking at Brigham Young University (that’s where he met Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, who is repped for spots by bicoastal Moxie Pictures), commercial production companies first began showing an interest in him after two short films he wrote and directed, Mary and Everything’s Gone Green, screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.
Ruell continues to act, by the way. He plays a New York businessman who moonlights as a computer thief in On the Road with Judas, a film screened at Sundance this past January. Ruell also has a thriving career as a still photographer. He actually shot the still featured on the Napoleon Dynamite movie poster and recently shot Citibank’s “Very, Very, Very Rewarding” print campaign out of Fallon, Minneapolis, featuring Roman and his sidekick Victor.
Busy on all three fronts, Ruell doesn’t think he’ll get to the point where he has to give any of his many passions to focus on just one. “They all go hand in hand, and it always seems to work out just fine,” Ruell reasons. “I’m not a person who can sit still. I like to be working, so to have to juggle three careers is a dream.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More