To gain a window into Kuntz & Maguire’s twisted world, one should watch a recent Valentine’s Day campaign called "Waterfall" that the team wrote and directed for MTV. It’s a modern-day tale of Cupid gone awry. Picture the mythological cherub as an overweight, middle-aged, bald man wearing red Speedos and homemade wings. Even worse is the object of his affection: a scornful, female Cupid with a penchant for spitting on her lover—literally hawking up a loogie—every time the sad sack presents her with an engagement ring, as he does in every spot. The setting of their bliss is Niagara Falls in winter; perhaps the most dismal place on earth in February. (Picture Buffalo 66.)
The directing duo’s reasoning for filming this piece of social commentary? For kicks. "A friend of ours had created this really lonely cupid character … so we all drove to Niagara Falls and shot four spots in one day for fun," recalls Kuntz.
Keep in mind that the pair also used to shoot rifles from rooftops in Somalia for kicks while in the Peace Corps. Luckily, rifles aren’t sold here in open-air markets as they are in Somalia, so these days Kuntz and Maguire are channeling their energies into their commercial work and short films.
For those who aren’t in the know, we’re talking about the directing team of Tom Kuntz and Mike Ma-guire of bicoastal Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ). Late last year, the team was one of the hotly sought after directors to come out of the closing of Propaganda Films. And since joining MJZ in November—along with fellow Propaganda alumnus Dante Ariola, and Spike Jonze of Propaganda’s now-shuttered sister company, Satellite—the two couldn’t be happier.
"When you go to MJZ, you see what it’s like to be at a production company where the focus is commercials and commercials only," explains Maguire. "When we signed on with [David Zander, president/ executive producer of MJZ], we were going on what other people told us and what he had promised, and based on our experience there in the past two months, [that promise has] been exemplified every day of every week."
At press time, they were in London shooting a three-spot campaign for Sprite—out of Lowe Howard-Spink, London, for the U.K. market—that they say represents a big departure from their normally dialogue-driven work. "It’s very different in tonality from some of the other things we’ve done," says Maguire. "It’s got a goblin in it, so it’s [as if we have] all these nice little films featuring this Sprite creature."
Wordsmiths
Aside from the FOX Sports campaign comprising "Utah," "San Antonio" and "Los Angeles"—out of Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, and produced through Propaganda—wherein two trash-talking wannabes are seen burning up the pro basketball courts, Kuntz & Maguire’s reel is not about special effects. It’s about dialogue.
Consider a recent Budweiser campaign that the pair helmed out of DDB Chicago, which continues Budweiser’s "True" theme. The spots—"Big Spender," "Diner," "Friday" and "Letting Go"—are vignettes about men and women (but mostly men). In "Diner" four guys sit in a fast-food place talking about the night’s activities at a local bar. One guy asks another where he was all night and he replies that he was talking to Tina. He proudly reads aloud her phone number from a crumpled gum wrapper while his friend pulls out an identical wrapper and finishes his sentence with the last four digits of Tina’s number. They each throw down the paper and one says, "I wasn’t gonna call her anyway."
In "Letting Go" a guy sits on the kitchen floor talking sweet nothings to his girl over the phone. "I don’t want to hang up," he coos. "No, you hang up first," he urges. Next he tells her, "On the count of three we’ll both hang up together … one… two …" suddenly the phone line is ripped from the wall by one of the un-amused buddies who is waiting for him to join the poker game.
Kuntz and Maguire say that agencies often come to them to expand the creatives’ ideas, which is something the team is grateful for. "A lot of times what agencies put on paper and what they have to sell to their clients isn’t funny when you film it," explains Maguire, "so a big part of our job throughout the process is figuring out the right way to handle any particular idea. We prefer having that flexibility."
They do hope to start branching out from what they are known for, which is one of the reasons that the Sprite work excites them. "Generally, people don’t approach us unless [the work] is up our alley," says Kuntz. "At this juncture, we get the great ideas in terms of our genre, but ideally we’d like for all our work to just be smart, and not one theme or another."
Matched Set
The knack for commercial storytelling is not something that Kuntz and Maguire just fell into. After coming home from the Peace Corps, where the two first met, Kuntz went to live with his parents to recover from a Corps-related illness, and Maguire became what he refers to as a "junior, junior, junior copywriter" at Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, New York. As soon as Kuntz was up to it, he joined Maguire at the agency as a junior (junior, junior) art director. And, despite their very junior status, the two worked on such accounts as Moët & Chandon, Target, and Citibank.
Kuntz and Maguire’s big break came when they were hired to work in MTV’s New York-based On-Air Promotions department as a creative team, thanks to the success of some scripts they had written for the 1998 MTV Movie Awards. During their one-year stint at MTV—from May ’98 to May ’99—the two, who were writers/directors, picked up a Gold Pencil at The One Show. They were honored for a three-spot campaign (involving Ben Stiller and Madonna’s breast milk) that they wrote for the MTV Music Video Awards. Their writing and directing at MTV soon garnered enough national recognition to catch the eye of Michael Dweck, creative director of the now defunct agency Dweck!, who called on the pair to direct a series of promos for the UPN television network. That led them to sign with Propaganda in September ’99.
At Propaganda, Kuntz and Maguire hit their stride. There, they directed commercials for Volkswagen, Bud Light, Discover Card and the aforementioned FOX Sports Campaign, among others. The latter garnered the top prize at The One Show in ’01, and also picked up a Bronze Clio.
When they’re not making commercials, Kuntz and Maguire work on short films and feature ideas. They’ve already helmed a few shorts, including Frontier Psychiatrist and Tokyo Breakfast. The latest is a six-part period piece set in 1778, called Madness and Badness. The story would require several charts, a timeline and a genealogist to explain, but already shows promise of becoming a Kuntz & Maguire classic.
