Director Lisa Rubisch went to film school in New York’s Times Square—it wasn’t the Midtown branch of New York University, or some obscure art school, but the home offices of MTV.
At the University of Delaware, Newark, where she studied English, communications and theater, Rubisch also kept on top of the music scene, to a degree she calls an obsession. And during her senior year there, she became exposed for the first time to a certain cable music channel. After college, she knew just what she wanted to do.
Rubisch went straight to New York in 1992, looked up MTV in the phone book, called the human resources department every day for a month, and managed to land a place in the network’s on-air promotions department as an intern. Six years later, she was out on her own, having signed with bicoastal Reactor Films to direct commercials. Her current spot roost is bicoastal Bob Industries.
Since starting to direct ads, she has done several youth-oriented spots for Nike, Jamcam digital cameras, the now defunct MyWay.com Internet portal, the Travel Channel and others. Her most recent work is a six-spot IKEA package comprising the ads "Suntan," "Fortune Cookie," "Lowrider," "Swing," "House Arrest" and "Car Boot," out of Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis; and a Polaroid spot called "Chance Encounter," to introduce Fortune film—that ad was done via Leo Burnett USA, Chicago.
"I don’t really think of myself as an MTV person any more," explains Rubisch, "but if there is one legacy that MTV has given me, it’s that ‘normal’ is the enemy—I hate normal and I hate formula. I really try to push things until they’re uncomfortable. For each project I try real hard to do something new."
I Want My MTV
The promo department at MTV gave her a thorough grounding in the whole filmmaking process. "You start out editing music videos, taking other peoples’ stuff and making promos out of them," explains Rubisch. "Then, eventually you get to direct. The great thing about MTV is that you can do every single thing from start to finish. You write it, you direct it—you can do the graphics, everything."
That she even got a chance to show what she could do at MTV is one of those stories in which ambition, talent and luck intertwine. Shortly after starting as an intern, she was advised by someone to pitch an idea for a promo. The point was, "I should show them that I’m not just the mail girl, that I’m creative," Rubisch recalls.
She also recalls the reaction. "The boss at the time said, ‘This idea sucks.’" The idea was for a PSA pointing out the ways women can be stereotyped. An animated paper doll was superimposed with images of a baby chick, a fox, a dog and a pig. Breasts became milk jugs and melons, and so on.
After the executive who rejected the idea was replaced, the new department head approached Rubisch one day. "He said, ‘Did you write this idea?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and started to apologize. He said, ‘Somehow it got on [then-MTV president] Judy McGrath’s desk. She wants you to do it, so go ahead and do it.’ I ended up doing [‘Paper Doll’]."
Her next break came when she was assigned to cut a promo for the Madonna video "Rain." "I did it, and right afterwards my boss said, ‘I’m really sorry, Lisa, but I didn’t realize you have no film experience at all. You’re going to be a production assistant for about another year before you can direct or do anything again.’ But it turned out that Madonna had seen the little thing I did for the video, and I got a call from her manager who asked me to promote her world tour. This was all within a few weeks of coming from Delaware. It was a really lucky thing."
Luck or not, Rubisch took advantage of the opportunity, working as an MTV promotions producer—a title that encompasses directing—until ’98, when she signed with Reactor. While some of her work has continued to reflect the MTV ethos of offbeat youth culture—like Nike’s "Kukini Night" out of Wieden+ Kennedy, Portland, Ore.—both she and Bob Industries partner/executive producer TK Knowles say her style has developed. She used to be "that MTV director," Knowles relates, "but now a lot of people don’t even know she was at MTV. She’s been able to bring a lot of humanity into her work." (Chuck Ryant is also partner/ executive producer at Bob Industries.)
"I never worried about being typecast," says Rubisch, "because I think you can always change that. I started out as a dark and creepy girl. And then I became a comedy director. I like being known as a comedy director—especially as a female—but I really wanted to be something that was a little more emotional. Now I guess I aspire to a more human style of directing."
Rubisch’s work for the Travel Channel, out of Modernista!, Boston, demonstrates her ability to combine comedy, youth and humanity, while dealing with difficult shooting circumstances. For "Spain/ Buñol," she took multiple cameras to the annual tomato fest in Buñol, Spain, which erupts each year into maybe the world’s biggest food fight. "Those tomatoes hurt," she stresses. "I was covered. I was cleaning tomatoes out of my ears for three weeks. The scripts were fairly loose. We basically kind of went there and did our thing."
One of her most recent jobs, "Chance Encounter" for Polaroid’s new Fortune film, is a comedy spot with the human touch. "Fortune film is a film that when you take a picture, a fortune comes up and then fades into the picture," explains Rubisch. "It’s two girls and a boy at a hip magazine shop café. The girls, who are these kind of vixen chicks, are staring at the guy, who’s kind of shy. They keep flirting back and forth. They take a picture of him and he takes a picture of them—like it’s a game. His fortune says, ‘Be afraid, be very afraid.’ Theirs says, ‘The one that you will marry.’ So they’re excited and he’s freaked out, and later they slap his shocked face on a wedding magazine cover over a groom’s photo."
The IKEA campaign, too, is humor with emotion. "It’s an image campaign rather than a product campaign," Rubisch points out. "A lot of the stuff I’m doing now is comedy, but it’s human as well, which is my favorite thing to do."
Although directors whose work she admires include Errol Morris, who in addition to doing documentaries, helms ads out of bicoastal/ international @radical.media; Peggy Sirota of bicoastal HSI Productions; Jonathan Glazer of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films; feature director Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves), Rubisch says that her interests don’t stop with celluloid.
"I’m very inspired by music and literature," she notes. "A lot of people say to me, ‘Your stuff is really different from everybody’s. How do you do that?’ It might be that I don’t really watch TV or movies. I’m embarrassed that I haven’t seen a lot of the great film classics. I always had my face in a book growing up. I’m most influenced by music. I’m definitely inspired by Björk. Anytime I think something is getting too normal, I think, would Björk do this?"
Like many of her contemporaries, Rubisch has dreams of directing feature films. "I would like to do a psychological thriller," she says. "Go back to my dark and creepy roots."
In the short-term, Rubisch is taking some time off after a busy summer to prepare for another big production: her December wedding.
