It only takes one phone call to ruin a movie. That’s the premise of “Pants Or No Pants,” a :35 cinema ad that cleverly takes aim at Hollywood’s meddling studio execs and their silly demands. The spot was created by San Francisco’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners and directed by Peter Farrelly, who is represented for commercials by Caviar Content, which has offices in L.A., Brussels and Amsterdam.
As “Pants Or No Pants” opens, we see a poster for the animated feature film Happy the Hedgehog. Happy isn’t wearing pants, and a studio executive is not pleased. She calls the agent representing the film’s directors–Peter and Bobby Farrelly–and insists they put pants on Happy. In turn, the agent calls the Farrelly brothers and tells them the studio’s demand..
The Farrellys are incredulous. Peter notes that Yogi Bear didn’t wear pants. Refusing to back down, Peter says Bobby will walk off the project if they are forced to slap pants on Happy.
“Fine, that cuts the director fee in half,” the studio executive retorts.
Suddenly, the Farrelly brothers have a change of heart and instruct the animation team to put pants on Happy.
Phone calls continue to fly, and by the end of “Pants Or No Pants,” we see that the film has been tweaked, and Happy is wearing pants–that said, the fly is open.
A cheerful Happy the Hedgehog movie theme song composed by John Nau, Andrew Feltenstein and Brian Chapman of Venice, Calif.-based Beacon Street Studios plays us out of the Sprint-sponsored cinema spot as text on the screen informs us: “It takes many calls to make a movie, and only one call to ruin it. Please, no calls during the movie.”
Empathy Not surprisingly, Peter Farrelly, who, along with his brother has made films including There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber and Shallow Hal, could relate to the concept for the spot. “We’ve been there a lot,” he acknowledged. “Some of the things you fight for in a movie are so ridiculous–like the amount of hair gel in someone’s hair in There’s Something About Mary. It’s insane. So the inanity of arguing for pants or no pants made perfect sense to us.”
The script that Goodby sent Farrelly featured a generic director. He suggested that the agency cast him and his brother in the spot. “My brother and I have never even been in our movies,” Farrelly said. “But when I read this script, it reminded me of a few things that we have been through, and I thought this could be really fun.”
Goodby and Sprint were thrilled to have the Farrellys star in the spot. “It was totally a bonus. We thought it would make it a much better spot,” said Goodby copywriter Rus Chao, who conceptualized the ad with art director Kevin Koller. “A lot of people may not recognize them, but for the people that do, the commercial will be that much better for them.”
By the way, for those of you wondering if there is a cross-promotional deal here involving a real Happy the Hedgehog movie, there isn’t. Chao and Koller made up the Happy character, which was brought to life by creative director/lead Inferno artist Johnnie Semerad and the artisans at New York’s Semerad.
Why did Chao and Koller choose to feature an animated hedgehog in the spot as opposed to say, a dog or a cat?
“It felt like the next animal in line for a starring role in an animated film,” Koller mused.
“A hedgehog is the funniest animal without pants,” Chao maintained.
Funny collaboration
Farrelly directed “Pants Or No Pants”–as well as another Sprint commercial that will break later this year–on location shooting in Los Angeles over the course of two days. Farrelly shot the script as it was written, and additional lines were lensed that he and the agency creatives came up with after a brainstorming session. “That was one of the cool things about working with Peter. He was very collaborative and threw ideas our way, and we threw ideas his way,” Koller remarked. “Every step along the way, the spot got better and funnier.”
Jim Hutchins of HutchCo Technologies, Los Angeles, cut “Pants Or No Pants.” “He is a killer editor, and he really helped a lot,” Chao praised.
Where Hutchins really excelled was in pacing the spot. “The fast pace is what really made that spot funny,” Chao said. “It starts off kind of slow with the head honcho saying the thing needs pants, and then everyone goes into a panic, and there are calls flying around. We wanted to express that kind of panicked feeling through the edit.”
Speaking of calls, Farrelly cannot be reached via cell–that’s because he doesn’t have one. “I literally had a cell phone for one hour one day. I was on a movie set, my first movie, and they said, ‘Here, you need a cell phone.’ That phone rang so many times I said, ‘I can’t do this. This is distracting, and it’s taking me away from what I’m doing here.’ So I tossed it,” Farrelly said, “and I never had a cell phone again.”
Not everyone is thrilled about Farrelly going sans a cell phone. “My wife occasionally complains, ‘How am I going to reach you?’ ” Farrelly laughed. “But the truth is, she’s never had trouble reaching me because I’m always with someone who has a cell phone.”
