Seated in a McDonald’s restaurant are a balding man in one booth, and a bearded guy and his young son in another. The father congratulates the man at the next table for getting a rare NHL trading card with his meal.
“Rookie card, nice. My son really needs that one for his set.”
With the prized card in hand, the other guy almost apologetically replies, “Really hard to come by. Sorry.”
Let the negotiating begin.
“Trade you for it,” proposes the bearded father.
“What have you got?”
“What do you want”
“What do you have?”
“What do you need?”
The spot cuts away to a shot of the various hockey player cards available via the McDonald’s promotion. We then return to the two “adults” who have completed their horse trading.
The bearded man is now clean shaven, his son and the coveted rookie card united.
The balding man now has a luxuriant head of hair–the other guy’s beard nestled on his dome.
A McDonald’s logo concludes the ad.
“Beard” was directed by Brian Lee Hughes of OPC, Toronto, for agency Cossette, Toronto.
Harland Weisz and Jeff Low exec produced for OPC with Susan Monic serving as producer. The DP was Andre Pienaar.
The Cossette team included creative director Bill Durnan, group creative directors Dave Douglas and Pete Breton, copywriter Sean Atkinson, art director Shawn James and producer Leanne McLellan.
Editor was Jason Stinson of Soda Post, Toronto.
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