Director Paul Street-who made a major international splash with his 1997 Ford Puma spot, "McQueen," which incorporated footage of late actor Steve McQueen from the ’68 film Bullitt-has again teamed with Young & Rubicam, London, and post/effects facility Rushes, London, to blend cinema from the past into the fabric of a modern-day commercial. This time, however, the star is still alive and well: It’s Dennis Hopper, and he winds up sharing the spotlight with himself.
The new European :60 for Ford’s Cougar-entitled "?????" (yes, that’s actually the name)-opens on Hopper at a gas station; he walks from his car to a nearby motorcycle, looking at it admiringly. Cut to Hopper on the open road in his Cougar, cruising to the beat of Steppenwolf’s "Born to Be Wild," the driving track so closely associated with Easy Rider, the classic 1969 Columbia feature that Hopper starred in, co-wrote (with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern) and directed.
Suddenly, Hopper spies in the rearview mirror a motorcycle approaching fast from behind. Hopper seems captivated by the sight of the biker but isn’t sure why-until the cycle pulls alongside the Cougar and he gets a full view of the rider: It’s Hopper, some 30 years younger, straight out of Easy Rider.
The Cougar and chopper continue on the open road, retracing the Easy Rider trek from Los Angeles through the desert and over the Colorado River-all to the strains of Steppenwolf.
Cut to a roadside diner, where the modern-day Hopper flirtatiously eyes a waitress as she walks away from him. Seated at another table is his Easy Rider alter ego, who reacts to the lovely view with a heartfelt "Hot damn!"
Back on the road, the Easy Rider motorcyclist puts on a pair of sunglasses. Behind the wheel of his Cougar, the elder Hopper also dons a pair of cool shades, then accelerates away, leaving the youthful motorcyclist as a fading reflection in his rearview mirror. Supered over the Cougar zipping down the highway is the tagline: "Cougar. Easy Driver."
Street directed the job through his London shop, The Streetlight Partnership. (He is repped stateside by bicoastal A Band Apart Commercials.) Streetlight exec. producer Buster Evans produced the :60. DP was Adam Suschitzky.
Young & Rubicam’s contingent included creative director Mike Cozens, art director Lee Goulding, copywriter Leighton Ballett and producer Gail Hartford.
Rushes’ production director and special effects adviser on the spot, Mike Uden, said the Cougar ad was an even greater challenge than "McQueen." Uden explained, "Firstly, in pretty well all the body-replacement shots, Steve McQueen was in a car, and cars are very controlled environments and shot from very similar angles, so it was relatively easy to line up the old and new footage. Not that Puma was easy, but given the fact that for every one hour dedicated to Puma, five were dedicated to Cougar-nearly 400 hours in total-it rather puts the inevitable comparisons between the two into perspective."
Rushes’ Flame/Inferno artist Crawford Reilly noted the Cougar spot "uses shots from an entire feature film and builds up an entirely new storyline-we didn’t just make archive actors do what they’d done before, we gave them completely new performances." Inferno artist Ludo Fealy added, "The thing that made this such a challenge was the interactivity between the characters of Hopper, young and old. We developed certain aspects of the story as we went. It could have been a continuity nightmare (marrying the old and new sequences), but it wasn’t."
Rushes’ sister shop in Hollywood-525 Studios (both Rushes and 525 are part of the Virgin family of facilities)-contributed significantly to the project by helping install a portable Flame. A trailer equipped with an Avid, Flame/Octane, a Smoke and a complete set of Sapphire sparks served as a post house on wheels that the crew could take on location. In addition to Reilly, Fealy and Uden, other contributors from Rushes included colorist Ben Eagleton and producer Sonia Ralton. Film editor was Christophe Williams at Derek Williams, London.
Street said, "It was an incredible honor to work with one of my heroes, Dennis Hopper, who revolutionized ’70s filmmaking and provided the blueprint of the modern golden age of cinema. It was also the sheer trust of the Ford Motor Company in taking the new radical concept for new car promotions that enables Young & Rubicam’s Lee and Leighton to push their multinational ideas and gives a filmmaker like myself a major opportunity to explore film genres."
The :60 debuted Dec. 5 in the U.K.
