Two and a half years ago, Czech director Ivan Zacharias told SHOOT that his youthful appearance and modest demeanor sometimes put him in awkward situations. He might be mistaken for a "gofer" in an agency meeting or on the set. And he lacked the clout to insist that he be allowed to stay with a job through the editing and postproduction process. After directing an early dot-com job for an American agency, and having the spots taken out of his hands after the shoot, Zacharias was souring on doing U.S. work.
A lot has changed in just a couple years. Zacharias is now past 30 and no longer looks like a teenager. He has a U.S. production company, bicoastal Smuggler, representing him, while London-based Stink remains his European home. U.S. agency creatives know well who he is when he walks into a meeting. And when he was tapped to helm the first two Levi’s spots to come out of the brand’s new agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), New York, he was fully in control from start to finish.
"My view on America, in terms of the system of work, has changed," he says. "For the last two years, every job I did in America, I was involved until the end. And I’m very happy that I can work there. Basically, there is no difference between Europe and America now."
When BBH called on Zacharias to do the "Dangerously Low" campaign, which was co-produced by Stink, for Levi’s low-rise jeans, the agency brought him scripts for which he did his own storyboards. The spots, "Atlas Bakery" for women’s Levi’s and "French Dictionary" for men’s, were conceived more as short adventure films with a theme of danger, than as spots.
In "Atlas Bakery," a nervy, athletic and, of course, lovely young woman in low-cut jeans sneaks into an auto "chop shop," which is located inside an old bakery building, to retrieve her stolen Camaro. And in "French Dictionary," a sexy couple is fleeing a sinister SUV full of thugs in an old Pontiac sedan. When they’ve lost the SUV, they push the car off a pier. He remembers something in the car and dives in to retrieve it. He surfaces with a French-English dictionary—presumably to help him get to know his ladyfriend better—and tucks it into his low-rise jeans.
Zacharias, who had unsuccessfully pitched some Levi’s work previously, was hooked. "It was kind of a filmic story, like a piece of film, which I really enjoy doing," he says. "It wasn’t just a few vignettes stuck together, which I don’t like to do. Also, it was Levi’s—a high-profile, good product. … It’s good to be part of that. Also, it’s a challenge—you can fail or you can succeed. It’s fun to do that."
Crossing Over
Having fun with his work is important to Zacharias. He likes to alternate now between working in the U.S. and Europe and he looks for different kinds of spots. He is currently working on a spot being shot in India for Absolut vodka out of TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York.
"Shooting in India will probably be a great experience and a bit of a challenge and adventure," relates Zachairas. "But I really look forward to it. It’s a totally different thing than I have ever done before. It’s a bit of a dialogue spot. It’s quite unusual and funny. I think if we do it well, it will be very nice."
The cast and crew will be Indian, Zacharias says. "This is in the ‘Bollywood’ style and hopefully it will be fun," he explains. "I’m working on a script for a long version. And I always do my shooting boards. If I have to shoot it, I have to make it."
Zacharias comes by his passion for film naturally. His grandmother produced documentaries, his mother is a film editor and his father is a composer who has worked on Czech films and TV shows. He is a graduate of Prague’s noted FAMU film school. He planned to be a documentary filmmaker, but early success at directing commercials for Stillking Films, Prague, led him in that direction instead. His first spot, "Pilsner" for Pilsner Urquell and Young & Rubicam, Prague, won a 1994 Golden Drum at the Advertising Festival of New Europe.
Outside of the commercial realm, Zacharias would like to direct a feature, but he’s waiting for the right project to come along. "I read three scripts recently and none of them was really my cup of tea," he says. "I keep thinking about it and looking for something, but not really pushing too much. I feel I have a lot of time to do a feature film if I want it to be good. I don’t want to do a bad one."
An admirer of fellow Czech director Milos Forman (Man on the Moon; The People Vs. Larry Flynt), Zacharias isn’t thrilled with the kinds of movies being made today. "I like [Martin] Scorcese’s older films, but not the recent ones," he says. "I like many others, some older French films, but not many recent films. Not many of them I feel are very good."
If the Levi’s spots seem to suggest that Zacharias would want to make an action-adventure movie, he is quick to dismiss that idea. "I would want to make something that makes sense, with some sort of value and message that will make people think about life or some sort of problem," relates Zacharias. "I guess it should be quite normal, nothing mad, no killing or shooting, it won’t be science-fiction. It will be more like a normal film, hopefully a bit funny, but mainly with some deeper sense in it rather than just a light comedy."
Zacharias would consider a documentary. "I would be very happy to do a good documentary," he says. "I used to do documentaries, and it was really great. Documentaries, if they are good, are usually much stronger and more powerful [than fictional tales]."
But most of all, Zacharias is just taking things as they come. "I don’t really think about the future," he says. "I just hope I will be getting scripts that I will like. Because if you don’t like it, if you don’t really feel that it’s going to be good, you can’t do it well. My hope is that I’ll be getting good scripts that I can promise to everyone and to myself that I can do my best."n
