Pam Thomas loves MTV. "It’s the graduate school of guerilla filmmaking," she says, and she learned her trade there.
The director helms spots out of bicoastal Moxie Pictures, and the skills she picked up during her seven years at MTV are evident. Take Nike’s "Brew," out of Wieden+ Kennedy, Portland, Ore., in which Alex Rodriguez, shortstop for the Seattle Mariners, carefully loads his athletic gear—including a baseball bat and a piece of turf—into a blender, and drinks. Thomas helmed the spot while at her former roost, bicoastal Satellite.
At Moxie, she’s helmed "Acting" for the Oakland Athletics, via FCB San Francisco. In it, team members including Ben Grieve, Kevin Appier and Gil Heredia strike out in their attempt to be thespians as they participate in an actors’ workshop. The ad then cuts to footage of the guys playing baseball, proving that while they can’t act, they certainly can play.
Although she excels at comedy and dialogue, Thomas’ visuals are arresting too. Dockers’ "Buckle Up" via FCB, which has never aired, is a perfect antithesis to the comedic spots mentioned above. In the ad, a man gets ready to go out for the night. Suddenly, images of what is about to happen flash through his head in rapid, color-saturated sequences, which are juxtaposed with the black-and-white languor of his apartment.
Thomas recently returned to comedy, though, with three spots: Sega Dreamcast’s "Play Online," "Packers Pack" and "Crush Crew," via FCB. The first spot is a hymn to the all-American pastime of computer gaming, which features children wreaking havoc in their exuberance to trample Sega opponents online. The other two spots combine a home video-like look at rabid football fans, which is mixed with animated players such as Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss.
Thomas was studying still photography at the University of Delaware in Newark when she got an internship at MTV in 1984, and another in the winter of ’85. "I just fell into directing," she recalls. "I thought I would be a still photographer. But when I interned at MTV, I thought, ‘Oh this is interesting. It’s like still photography, except it’s moving.’ "
After graduating from college in ’85 she joined the cable network as a production assistant. There Thomas assisted director Mark Pellington, then at MTV, who is currently represented for spotwork by bicoastal/ international Propaganda Films. "He let me go out and shoot," she relates, "and he said that if it went wrong he’d take the blame!" So she learned to direct, and had an unsuccessful brush with animation. "I’d never done it before and I wanted to see how it was done," explains Thomas. "When you actually do animation, you don’t draw every frame; you draw key frames and you make the eyes or mouth move. I didn’t know that, so I drew 350 frames of the same thing over and over with their eyes blinking," she says. "I decided that I never wanted to do animation."
Thomas instead worked in the MTV On-Air Promotions department, eventually becoming a supervising producer there. "It was a really good place to learn because the budgets were small," Thomas recounts. "You were forced to be really creative." Within a few years she had started directing MTV promos and show opens for programs such as Remote Control, and soon she starting helming clips for everyone from Vanessa Williams to Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Because she didn’t have representation, artists often called her directly. "Prince called me at home. I didn’t believe it was him and I hung up," she laughs. "He called me back though."
Spot EntrÉ
Directing clips introduced her to people in spot production, and towards the end of her stay at MTV, Thomas signed with the now defunct O. Pictures for commercial representation. Her new schedule proved exhausting. "I wanted to stay at MTV, so for a while I was full-time at MTV, directing commercials and videos on the weekends … MTV is kind of like Logan’s Run: You get to a certain age and you have to leave or you get killed," laughs Thomas. She left the network in ’92, although their relationship continues; about nine months ago, she directed a pilot for an MTV-produced series tentatively titled 11:59, which she is now shopping around.
In ’93, Thomas’ rep, Sarah Holbrook, left O. Pictures for Satellite, and Thomas joined her there. In December ’97, Holbrook left Satellite, and started repping Moxie through her New York-based firm, Holbrook, in April ’99. Thomas wanted to work with Holbrook again and liked Moxie "because [they] represent a lot of feature directors, and I wanted to do some longer-form stuff." Thomas shifted over to Moxie last year, and she is pleased with the move: "It’s been a really good year, so I think I made the right decision."
Thomas was asked to direct the show open for the HBO series Sex and the City, which led to her starting to work in long form. About three years ago, "out of the blue I got a phone call, and HBO wanted me to do the packaging of this new show Sex and the City." Thomas wanted to direct an episode, but since she’d never directed long form programs, the show’s producers were wary. "My agent struck a deal with the people at HBO," explains Thomas. (She is represented for TV work by Ari Greenburg of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor; Jason Spitz, also at Endeavor, handles Thomas for feature films.) "[The producers] said, ‘Do the packaging; if the show gets picked up, you can direct an episode next year.’ "
The show was picked up and, so far, Thomas has directed several episodes, including last year’s "Evolution," in which Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) dates a man with a noticeable hair transplant; and this year’s "Boy Girl Boy Girl," where Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) kisses Alanis Morissette. Thomas points out that "the people at Sex and the City were nervous" about having her direct. Thomas was less worried. "When you’re trained to get the essential element in thirty or sixty seconds," she says, "I think you’re uniquely prepared. I knew exactly what I needed to do, and I was organized because I’m used to not having so much time to tell a story—it was really luxurious."
Despite her forays into television and film, Thomas remains committed to spots. "I love commercials and don’t consider what I’m doing as a stepping-stone [to features]," she relates. "I love doing advertising, I’m proud of it; I consider it an art form. … I want to do a movie, but I also want to keep doing what I’m doing."
Thomas also makes an effort to cover a range of styles: "I think I have tried hard to have a really eclectic reel. I won’t only do funny commercials or only do image campaigns; I just want to work with great creatives and good ideas. I love working with actors and telling stories, but I love working with athletes, and I’ve done spots with real people on the street. To me, it’s most important that there’s a story."
Thomas is currently bidding on several projects, and she has a feature in the works. Despite her varied activities, she says all she is looking for is "storytelling on a grander scale. I’d love to do more anything. It’s just so much fun. Even when I’m working with the same people, every project is different, so my job is exciting every day."µ
