met hungry man partner/director Bryan Buckley through mutual friends at New York-based Good Machine, which co-produced Wonderland. "I was telling people at Good Machine that I needed a job, and they told me Bryan was starting hungry man at the exact same time," he recalls. "I ended up being one of the first people there."
At hungry man, O’Hagan went on to direct many successful ads, including a ’99 three-spot series for Outpost.com, comprised of the ads "Cannon," "Band" and "Forehead." The campaign scored a slew of awards, including Best of Show at the One Show, the Grand Clio at the Clio Awards, and yet another Gold Lion. The humorous ads, via Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, begin with a dignified, Alistair Cook-ish announcer, who presents three un-politically correct ways to get consumers to remember the online retailer. In "Forehead," the name Outpost.com is tattooed to preschoolers’ foreheads; in "Cannon," gerbils are shot out of a cannon through the ‘O’ in Outpost; and in "Band," a pack of hungry wolves is released on a high school marching band. For the last spot, O’Hagan reveals, he enlisted a group of half-wolf/half-German shepherds, which had been bred for the movie White Fang. He then tied meat to the padded legs of the stuntmen in the band and unleashed the beasts. "It’s amazing the things you learn when you’re working in production," he laughs. "You’re in these situations, and you’re like, ‘How the hell did I ever end up here?’ You’re working with wolves."
Eventually, O’Hagan would like to make feature films. ("Out of any award, the one I really want to get is an Oscar.") But he’s willing to wait for the right project. "I’ve been offered a lot of features, but really bad ones," he admits. "After Wonderland, I kept getting offers for pseudo-documentary comedies. And after the Dial-a-Mattress, I started getting these weird, talking-animal scripts."
For now, he’s content to helm spots—some of his latest include IBM.com’s "Phone Call" and "Mike The Lawyer," out of Ogilvy & Mather, New York. "We have a couple more EDS commercials coming up that are, again, subtle humor, but with these massive production values," O’Hagan says. "I’m always interested in being challenged, and these commercials are definitely doing that."µ
