Athletes usually have their eye on the finish line, but John Davis, the wheelchair racer who starred in Coca-Cola’s "Downhill Racer" had his eye on the sky. "He told me, ‘I’d rather fly than walk,’" says Leslie Dektor of Hollywood-based Dektor Film, who directed the ad via Edge Creative, Santa Monica.
That soaring attitude is shared by Dektor, who recently earned his 11th Directors Guild of America (DGA) nomination for best commercial director of the year. The South African-born director was nominated for ten years straight until ’95, and won the top prize in ’92. This year, he submitted three contrasting spots: "Downhill Racer"; eSCORE.com’s "The Debate" for Saatchi & Saatchi, San Francisco; and Allstate’s "Anthem," via Leo Burnett Co., Chicago.
"Downhill Racer" depicts a wild and dangerous ride down a dusty mountainside—a sporting contest made even more hair-raising because Davis uses only his arms to control his speedy descent. After being paralyzed in an automobile accident at the age of 19, Davis used specially designed off-road wheelchairs to become a competitive skier and mountain bike racer. To capture Davis’ point of view, Dektor used a camera rig mounted on a bicycle which careened down a dirt track. "[Davis] is an interesting character," says Dektor. "He talked a lot about flying, and that’s why there’s the image of the birds in the spot. It was a fascinating, optimistic portrait to create because of everything he stood for: how you can overcome so much in your life and be just a normal person."
Dektor’s work often involves taking an extraordinary look at real lives. "Anthem," with its lyrical black-and-white images of people coping with the aftermath of natural disasters, recalls the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, two socially conscious artists whom Dektor admires. "The Debate" features six-and seven-year-old boys excitedly discussing the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe while a little girl tries furiously to get a word in edgewise. The tagline for the education-oriented Web site asks, "What if they brought the same intensity to math or English?"
The girl’s gap-toothed smile—which gets twisted into a mask of pure disgust—is priceless. "You can’t write that, and you can’t plan it," Dektor says. "Every now and then you hit upon a little gem. All she could do was kind of swing around and dismiss [the boys]."
Working with children isn’t his specialty, but Dektor found that the best approach was to treat his subjects with the same respect he shows adults. "I’m very proud of that piece. I didn’t patronize them. I kind of set them up on the topic and really encouraged them to own it and test the waters. If you are genuinely interested in something, and you bring them to it and get them there, they contribute so much."
Say Cheese
Dektor himself started young—though not as young as eSCORE’s debate team. Raised in Cape Town, he parlayed an interest in art into a precocious career as a fashion photographer. "I was working professionally at fifteen or sixteen," he recalls. "South Africa was very strong in print advertising, and I was working both there and in London."
Though he wasn’t happy with his country’s politics, especially its repressive, white-majority government, Dektor was able to travel freely between South Africa and London, where he was beginning to do commercial work. At 18, the age when white South African men were drafted into military service, Dektor received an exemption because he was running his own business. "I was fortunate," he says. "I did not want to go fight [for a cause] that I didn’t condone."
The country’s commercial industry, however, had yet to take off. Until ’90, South Africa’s television stations were government-controlled. "One wasn’t brought up on television the way you are in this country or in England. I was much more influenced by still photography."
South Africa’s repressive racial laws led Dektor to emigrate to the U.S. in ’80. "My country was just wrong for myself and my family," he says. They settled in Los Angeles, where the geographical climate was similar to the one they’d left behind, but the business and social environments were more relaxed. He broke into the U.S. spot arena via now defunct production house Associates & Toback. Dektor then went off to launch his own firm, first in partnership with director Fred Petermann (now with MPH, Santa Monica) and later with helmer Thom Higgins (now with bicoastal RSA USA). Petermann/Dektor became Dektor Higgins & Associates and is now simply Dektor Film.
Dektor made his major U.S. breakthrough with the now classic Levi’s 501 campaign via Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco, which came to encompass 17 spots. Using neither scripts nor storyboards, Dektor filmed stylish street scenes featuring then unknown stars such as Bruce Willis and Jason Alexander. The spots’ shaky camera movements spawned numerous imitators; Dektor tried, in subsequent commercials, to avoid that look.
The imitations, he says with a good-natured laugh, "were more flattering than annoying. Other people can steal the physicality of work, the outside of it, but they can’t take the authorship of it. They can imitate the frame, but not the heart."
The Dektor influence has shown up more recently, and more subtly, in the work of his two sons: Paul, 32, is a former cinematographer turned spot director, and Mark, 31, is also a commercial director. Both work out of Dektor Film, which Leslie Dektor runs with his wife, Faith, the company’s executive producer. "Both my sons started young, assisting me, and I think of us as sort of a circus family. It has been really exciting to watch my sons find their own voices and language in their work."
Despite 20 years of working in Los Angeles, Dektor does not feel pressed to move into feature films. "I am still interested in documentaries, which is something I did in South Africa," he says. "But I am spoiled by what I do. I enjoy it so much that it’s hard to tear myself away from commercials. I really believe that advertising is a mirror to our society. I feel I am documenting the times we live in, and that’s what keeps me going."c