Breakout success.
By Christine Champagne
It didn’t take Brendan Gibbons long to conclude that what he really wanted to do was direct after he joined Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), New York, in the 1990s as a copywriter. In fact, he recalls walking onto the set of his first commercial shoot in ’97–it was a spot for IBM directed by the late Ted Demme–and having an epiphany.
“When I stepped onto that set, I realized how much I really wanted to direct. It was magical to me,” Gibbons reflects, “it would take years for anybody else to share this belief, but I had a belief that I could really do it. It made sense to me.”
So Gibbons, a native of Summit, N.J., who received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass., began educating himself about filmmaking. His schooling came from the set of the television commercials he worked on, and his professors–so to speak–were the likes of director Joe Pytka, who helms spots via PYTKA, Venice, Calif.
“Every shoot I went on, I attached myself to the director, and I tried to develop a bit of a relationship so I could learn as much as I could,” says Gibbons, who is now with bicoastal/international Hungry man. “I took it really seriously.”
As he learned more about the craft of filmmaking, Gibbons, who rose up the ranks at O&M to become a creative director, began tackling directing projects, and he quickly proved he had talent: In 2000 while shooting spots that he had created for a New York theater company, Gibbons had his actors run some lines he had written for a Miller Lite spec spot.
His superiors at O&M as well as the client liked what he did, and Miller Lite bought the spot and ran it on television. “It gave me a jolt of confidence that the first time I ever rolled the camera as a director I was able to sell [the spot I shot] to a national brand and have it run on national TV,” Gibbons shares. “It gave me a little bit of legitimacy in my head.”
Still, Gibbons felt that he needed to keep learning before he could launch a full-time directing career, so he stayed at O&M and simultaneously directed a variety of projects over the next few years, including a spec spot for Sprite titled “Ali/Thirst” that intercut shots of Muhammad Ali in his prime with interviews with aspiring young boxers. (While the client liked the ad, according to Gibbons, it didn’t run because of budget considerations.)
As for more recent projects, last year Gibbons shot a Sprite campaign that ran on the Internet and featured the character Thirst, a hip doll with a love of Sprite. (The job was run through Oil Factory Films, Beverly Hills, Calif.)
He also co-directed two gorgeously cinematic trailers, “Gangster” and “Love Story,” with John O’Hagen, who was then with Hungry Man–he recently signed with bicoastal RSA USA–for New York’s 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.
TAKING THE PLUNGE
It was after completing the Tribeca Film Festival project that Gibbons finally felt ready to embark on a full-time directing career. Subsequently, he left O&M and signed with Hungry Man in the summer of 2004.
As for why he joined Hungry Man, Gibbons says, “Hungry Man is the right place for me for a couple of reasons. One, the tenor of the spots that this place has done historically is kind of in line with my sensibility as a director and as a writer. It’s also a place that was founded by people who come from the same [agency] background as myself, and there is a whole tradition of guys who have done what I am doing here.”
Gibbons was also eager to be surrounded by true filmmakers. “I worked with Steve Hayden [O&M vice chairman/president] for years, and I remember one time he told me, ‘Make sure that you don’t just concentrate on making funny things. Be a filmmaker as well,’ ” Gibbons says, noting, “That’s another thing that the guys here at Hungry Man do. It’s not just about making something funny: It’s about being a filmmaker, so I put as much energy into the film as into trying to make something funny.”
Once on board at Hungry Man, Gibbons found success right out of the gate as a full-time director, helming a dryly humorous campaign for CNN.com–executive produced by Hungry Man managing director Stephen Orent–in which CNN anchors and correspondents including Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour deliver news and information to various individuals not through the television screen but in person.
For example, one spot titled “E-raq” finds Amanpour answering a woman’s questions about Iraq and becoming increasingly frustrated as the woman continually mispronounces the name of the country, calling it “Eye-raq” despite the fact that the newswoman has repeatedly informed her that it is “E-raq.” The kicker has the clueless lady mangling the pronunciation of Chechnya.
Publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to SHOOT (12/03/04, p. 7) highlighted the work, which came as a pleasant surprise to Gibbons. “I wasn’t expecting to be legitimized on this kind of scale so quickly,” he acknowledges.
FYI: We will soon see more CNN.com spots directed by Gibbons. He recently creative-directed and co-wrote six new spots with his collaborators on the previous CNN.com campaign, Guy Barnett and Callum MacGregor, partners/creatives directors at agency The Brooklyn Brothers, New York.
The new spots star anchors previously featured–Anderson Cooper, Soledad O’Brien and Lou Dobbs–and new faces Aaron Brown, Bill Hemmer and Miles O’Brien.
Like the previous spots in the CNN.com campaign, the ads are humorous, although Gibbons teases, “We stretched the boundaries of the campaign a little bit. I didn’t want to just continue doing the exact same thing.”
“CNN understood the need to push the campaign,” Gibbons adds, noting that CNN’s Andy Mitchell, Scot Safon, Drea Gillogly and Sean Houston were great clients. “They wanted to make it bigger. They were like, ‘This is great. What else can we do here?’ ”
Already snatching up plum directing assignments, it isn’t surprising to hear that Gibbons is quite satisfied with how his full-time career as a director has begun. “I absolutely love what I’m doing,” Gibbons says, acknowledging that he does think about what might be down the road. “Of course, every director is interested in directing different kinds of things. I would love to do a film, and as a writer I have never stopped writing different things. There are a couple of short films I want to shoot, and there is a longer piece I’m working on now that would be great.”
However, the director stresses that his feet are firmly planted in the present. “I don’t think of this as, ‘I’m doing my commercial time and waiting to go out and do films,’ ” Gibbons says. “Where I am right now is a really good place.”Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More