Early on in the 1999 documentary The Cruise, New York City double-decker tour bus guide Timothy "Speed" Levitch talks about the time the city, the year before, had wanted to break up with him. It had felt, Levitch recalls in his bizarre, high-pitched voice, like an actual divorce. "I couldn’t believe how angry the city was with me," he says. "Because the concrete had settled … the inferiority that some of the shorter buildings feel … I wasn’t wanted on this island."
That riff is just a hint of what’s to come. Levitch, a hyper-intelligent oddball with a diva’s sense of drama, has a lot to say, and director Bennett Miller, now with bicoastal/international hungry man, had the foresight to capture it on film. "I like outsider stories," states Miller. "I encountered this person who has the courage to live his life and at the same time go unappreciated. He carries around something I consider vital, yet it’s causing him to suffocate"
Miller, whose film copped the Emmy for best documentary in ’99, could have turned Levitch’s outsider status and flamboyant nature into a one-note joke. Instead, he created a richly structured story about a man spinning close to the edge. Add to the mix elegant black-and-white footage, which Miller shot, and you also have a homage to the city that has Levitch tied in love knots.
No wonder the spot world paid attention. M&Ms, Dell Computer, Driveway.com, Sony PlayStation and Kellogg’s are just some of the clients for which Miller has directed since joining hungry man—a company he signed with while The Cruise was still in theaters.
"Everything that’s frustrating about making documentaries is rewarding in the commercial world," says Miller. "You have the proper amount of money to do things, you have a lot of support, and people feel intensely about the work as you’re making it. If you try to interest somebody in a documentary, well, bringing it up is the biggest buzz kill there is."
As for his spots themselves, they resonate with Miller’s sharp comedic sensibility and the psychological insights that turn storyboard characters into textured personalities. His goal, he notes, "is to have something going on behind the joke."
Take "Wolf Man" for Driveway. com, one of three spots Miller did for that information technology com-pany, via Elvis & Bonaparte, Portland, Ore. ("Lord Insidious" and "Svaakhammer" were the other two ads in the package.) The commercial features a werewolf in his daylight human guise who is a regular Joe Schmo mortified by his excessive, full moon behavior.
"The spot could have easily been too blunt, especially if you cast someone who looks kind of, like, ‘Hey, zany, I’m the wolfman,’ " Miller comments. "But I played it as far in the other direction as possible, casting a gentle, fastidious, almost effeminate soul who just suffers from this affliction."
The result: There’s a lot to take in. "It’s a commercial," says Miller, "that you can keep on watching." Casting, he adds, is an integral part of his work.
Miller also brought unexpected depth to an M&M spot. In "Lick" via BBDO New York, three animated M&Ms stand in a row, facing the viewer. The middle, crispy one, asks, in a scared voice, "Why does everyone want to eat the crispy M&Ms?" In response, the other M&Ms lick him from both sides. Mortified, his eyes pop out—and when the one on his right goes to lick him again, the crunchy M&M grabs the offender’s tongue. Another recent spot is the Dell ad, "Steve," via Lowe Lintas & Partners, New York. In the spot a college-age kid videotapes his Christmas request: a Dell computer.
The key to a successful commercial, Miller notes, is to make sure that everyone’s on the same page. "I’ve come to appreciate and respect the bizarre mix of talents that are required to be a consistently excellent director," states Miller. "A good creative idea is the most important element, but you also have to be very artful in respecting the different people with whom you’re collaborating, and to feel reassured that everybody understands what your intentions are. You never mask them."
Thus, the beauty of the conference call. "You have the opportunity to make who you are and where you’re coming from very clear," he explains. "And they’re not just interviewing you—you’re interviewing them, and seeing if this thing is going to work."
Miller likes to be involved, when possible, in postproduction. For instance, he played a role in editing "Hand Music," one of two spots he directed for Gardetto’s snack food via Campbell Mithun Esty, New York. The spot, which was edited by Chris Hellman of Homestead Editorial, New York, shows a young guy, bored to death in a doctor’s waiting room, accompanying the piped-in music with hand farts.
"The first cut was good, but I realized it needed to slow down and breathe a bit," recalls Miller. "I think it’s easy to try to cram a story into thirty seconds, but the strongest commercials, and the great concepts, work not because you’ve attached the dots A to Z—this happened, this happened, this happened—but because every moment is interesting unto itself."
It’s hard to believe that Miller almost left it all behind. Born and raised in New York’s Westchester County, he studied film as an undergraduate at New York University—dropping out in’90 because, "I was a bad student, and just never liked school," only to become disillusioned with film altogether. "I had different jobs, working as an assistant for a filmmaker, making fund-raising videos. But the reality was, a lot of it was unrewarding."
Then, he says, he encountered Levitch. "I could pretty much do [the film] by myself, and I felt liberated in the process. I kind of severed myself from all my ambitions, and just did this thing. Fortunately, it was a very rewarding experience—and people responded to it."
Upcoming work includes another spot for M&Ms, and a TV show called This American Life, currently in development with hungry man Television. "I want to take my work to the next level," states Miller. "I want it to be bigger, and better."
