By Art Smith

It’s been a year filled with accolades and awards for veteran director Errol Morris. His documentary film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, won an Academy Award and an Independent Spirit honor, and was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) also nominated Morris as best documentary director on the basis of the film.

The Sony Pictures Classics film features McNamara—a chief architect of the Vietnam War and former Secretary of Defense under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—sharing his insights on everything from the Great Depression and the industrialization of the war years to the methods the U.S. employs to resolve international conflicts both in the past and today.

Morris began work on The Fog of War in May of 2001, months before the Sept. 11 attacks, which set in motion a series of events, including a war, that have drawn parallels to the Vietnam conflict. "I could never have timed or anticipated … that the issues in this movie would become so incredibly relevant to what’s going on today with the war in Iraq, and the Vietnam records of John Kerry and George Bush being called into question," Morris says about the timeliness of his film. "Suddenly, the subject of Vietnam was back on everyone’s lips, just as the movie was hitting theaters."

Meanwhile, Morris, who directs spots via bicoastal/international @radical.media, also accrued kudos for his work as a commercial director—he was nominated for the DGA Award for best commercial director on the strength of Nike’s "Bernard" and "Kathryn," and Miller High Life’s "Pager" and "Alternative Fuel," all via Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore. (W+K); and Cisco’s "Meanwhile," out of Ogilvy & Mather, Los Angeles. (Director David Fincher of bicoastal Anonymous Content won the honor.) "To have my work in both realms received so well was a really, really happy surprise," the helmer notes.

Morris says that his fascination with films began during his days as a graduate student in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. "I started going to movies—many, many, many movies—and then I got the idea that I wanted to make one of my own," he recalls. That first movie, Gates of Heaven, focused on people affected by the bankruptcy of a pet cemetery in California, which lead to the relocation of the deceased animals. It hit theaters in ’78 and landed on movie critic Roger Ebert’s list of the 10 greatest films ever made. It was followed by Vernon, Florida (’81), The Thin Blue Line (’88), A Brief History of Time (’91), The Dark Wind (’91), Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (’97), Stairway to Heaven (’98) and Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (’99).

Ad Gigs

In between film gigs, Morris found time to carve out a niche for himself as a commercial director, helming campaigns for Apple Computers, Levi’s, Citibank, United Airlines and Cisco, and the currently airing "Dummy," an Ad Council PSA promoting booster seats for kids in cars. Even after all these years of bouncing back and forth between film and commercials, however, Morris believes that most people are still only familiar with half of his résumé. "My work in films and my work in commercials have remained, for the most part, very separate," he relates. "People who know my films know very little about my work in advertising and vice versa."

Some may expect Morris’ newly acquired Oscar to give his film work precedence over his future commercial efforts, but that will not be case. "I would never give up my advertising work. As much as I love making movies, I also love the challenges involved in making good commercials," he says, adding with a laugh, "To me, commercial work is like trying to win a race with two cinderblocks strapped to your legs. How could you give that up?"

Morris admits to having several favorites among the campaigns he worked on over the past two decades, and his Miller High Life spots are at the top of that list. Miller marked Morris’ first association with bicoastal/international @radical. media, which currently represents him. He has churned out more than 100 Miller commercials since then, all with help of the same creatives, including W+K copywriter Jeff Kling, art director Jeff Williams and producer Jeff Selis. "It’s been the same team here from the very, very beginning," Morris says. "The whole campaign really represents something I’m very proud of. We’ve been doing it for so long, I always think that the next time around I can’t possibly do this anymore and that it can’t possibly be any good. Then it turns out to be even better than what we’ve done before, or at least as good as what we’ve done before. It is consistently a lot of fun."

The Miller spots feature ironic voiceover musings about the sort of simple idiosyncratic pleasures that every man, and quite a few women, can relate to. The ads have been so popular that, according to Morris, they’ve even inspired talk of a TV show that would expand upon the popular campaign’s theme.

Morris is also no stranger to TV series work, having aired two seasons of the interview-themed First Person on Bravo and the Independent Film Channel in ’00 and ’01. In fact, when asked what’s next for him, Morris admits that in addition to making more movies and commercials, he hopes to develop a new TV show—possibly something of a political nature.

Or perhaps he might try on a new hat altogether. "People [always] ask me when [it was that] I realized I wanted to direct—I’m still not sure that I know I want to direct," he says with a hearty laugh. "Sometimes I think about being an editor or a director of photography. Who knows? I just want to keep doing work that I’m proud of, that’s fun to do, regardless of where that work might take me."

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