A Storyteller On The Cutting "Ledge"
By Robert Goldrich
The good-natured absurdity of the Jimmy Dean “Happy Breakfast” commercials and the jarringly relevant Volkswagen Jetta “Safe Happens” campaign are seemingly worlds apart creatively. Add into the mix the Apple Mac vs. PC series of spots that have quickly become part of buzz-generating pop culture and you have a far flung range of work reflecting some of the most recent efforts of director Phil Morrison whose longstanding home is bicoastal Epoch Films.
However Morrison doesn’t see his spots as so different from one another. Rather he regards them as cut from the same cloth, meshing elements of humor, humanity and emotion, including at times sadness. “Even the VW work for Crispin, which ends in a shocking high-impact crash, has comedy in it if you listen to what the people in the Jetta are saying prior to being hit out of nowhere by another vehicle,” observes Morrison.
Indeed in “Movie,” for example, two couples are in a Jetta, talking about the film they just saw that evening at a theater. In tongue-in-cheek fashion, the women are taking the men to task, claiming that the guys shed a tear or two during emotional scenes in the flick. The males feign ignorance at first; then the driver starts to defend himself. Much of the animated conversation is taking place with the car at a standstill. We then see the traffic light turn to green, and the Jetta starts to advance through the intersection.
At that moment, we see an SUV fast approaching the driver’s side of the car. The broadside impact causes the Jetta’s side air bags to deploy. Next, the two couples are standing on the street, looking at the smashed yet still amazingly intact Jetta. More importantly the driver and three passengers, while shaken, appear fine. A female passenger says, “Holy sh…” But before she can complete her expletive, an end tag appears that simply reads, “Safe happens,” with the advisory that the Jetta has a four-star side impact crash test rating.
“In some ways, the spot work is like the movie that we made [the Epoch-produced, Morrison-directed Junebug, which debuted at last year’s Sundance Festival] that was meant to be both funny and really sad,” relates Morrison. “I’ve always tried to put my work, including commercials, in a place where funny as well as not funny meet–that middle place where they overlap. If the commercial is supposed to be comedy, you push it over that ledge to the funny. With the VW commercials [“Movie” and “Like”], we did the same thing but just pushed it over the ledge in the opposite direction.”
Other than both coming out of TBWA/Chiat/Day, the common bond between the Apple and Jimmy Dean fare, says Morrison, is that “non-human characters”–a man dressed in a sun suit for Jimmy Dean, and actors portraying the Mac and PC in the Apple campaign–“think and act in such a way that helps you examine subtle things about human behavior.”
Actor John Hodgman plays the awkward, buttoned-up PC while Justin Long portrays the Mac with a laid-back attitude. In the spot “iLife,” PC listens to an iPod and then Mac tells him he can also access iMovies, iPhotos and iWeb on the Mac system. PC volleys back that he has some “cool apps” himself like a calculator and a clock. In “Virus,” PC sneezes and warns Mac to step back or he’ll catch the same virus, noting that there are more than 100,000 PC viruses. Mac is unperturbed, assuring him that he will stay healthy and offers a hankie to PC. Morrison relates that the offbeat slice-of-life exchanges in the Apple work get pushed off the aforementioned figurative ledge into comedy while communicating the product differences between Mac and PC.
Meanwhile a man dressed in a big yellow sun suit owes his sunny disposition to various Jimmy Dean breakfast products and continuously attempts to drag his fellow co-workers–the outlandishly costumed Moon and Cloud–out of their gloomy funk. “Again there’s an element of misery for the characters who we push over into comedic happiness,” says Morrison.
For example, in “Full Moon,” Sun runs into his office co-worker Moon in the hallway. Moon is in a bad mood, reflected in his only being a half moon. Sun convinces Moon to try a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich. Next we see the man in a full Moon costume, satisfied after eating a Jimmy Dean sandwich. Sun offers Moon another sandwich but Moon waves him off with a “Nope, I’m full.”
Perhaps most gratifying for Morrison about the Jimmy Dean, Apple and VW work is that it came after he returned to the ad arena upon completing Junebug. “I missed making commercials,” says Morrison of the nine months he spent on Junebug. “We edited the film in the Epoch offices so I was watching the other directors making spots and having fun. There are great directors constantly emerging so I was a little concerned about how quickly I could get back into the spot flow. Thankfully agencies and clients came to me with work, for which I’m grateful.”
At the same time, Morrison has diversified into other disciplines. Besides Junebug, he directed the film Perfect Partner, collaborating with Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon and video artist Tony Oursler. The film debuted last year on tour in Europe where it was shown on stage, interacting with a live rock concert.
Additionally, Morrison is again teaming with Junebug writer Angus MacLachlan, this time on the development of Crisis Control, an hour drama series for ABC.
Asked if his long-form and commercial-making experience will converge to create branded entertainment fare, Morrison says, “They might someday. But so far I’m comfortable with those two worlds being separate.”
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