I was the Senior Producer of On-Air Promos at MTV. Promos are basically commercials a network runs to promote its shows, its new fall season, its contests, etc, and so it was only natural that my next step after leaving MTV would not only be to make on-air promos for other networks, but to make commercials, too. Unlike most commercial directors, I usually conceived and wrote the spots as well as directed them, so it was an arguably more satisfying experience. In the case of Swatch, for example, there was no agency involved; I worked directly for the client, so one less mouth to feed. This reel dates back to 1986.

This reel is a collection of work I did while on staff at MTV, or on weekends to pick up some extra money. Again, in most cases I wrote, directed and produced the spots, although the Elton John Sasson Jeans commercial was really just an editing job, taking Russel Mulcahy’s “Sad Songs Say So Much” music video and cutting it to fit the new track I had recorded with Elton in Saint Tropez, while George Michael worked on Wham’s “Make it Big” album. But that’s a whole other story.

Probably because I had sprung from MTV, and was the first of the promo producers to leave the fold, a number of music-related commercials and promos came my way in those years between MTV and Playboy. Which was fine by me, since I love music. I did a good deal of work for Atlantic records, including a legendary NARM video starring Rick Moranis that I really wish I could find, as well as for A&M Records, including spots for their very first CD releases. The idea was that people had started getting CD players for Christmas, and had no idea what to do with them, so we took a humorous approach to advising them, in a series of spots starring the brilliant Jim Meskimen. I generally took a humorous approach in all my spots, hence the title of this collection.

Speaking of the 80’s… One of my best clients for a good long run was Swatch, who started out importing their cheap plastic watches from Switzerland and rapidly expanded to a whole fashion/lifestyle brand, with clothes, umbrellas and, for a brief moment… phones? But not just any phones. With these phones, not only did the handset operate like a typical Princess phone handset, but even the base could be picked up and used as a second handset! Genius! Fun fact: most of the actors in these spots were dancers on Club MTV. And all of these spots were shot in one day on a soundstage on Manhattan’s West Side.

My old college friend Dennis Scheyer operated a very cool indie ad agency in San Francisco for a many years, and for a good number of those years he was the (pro-bono) agency for the prestigious Mill Valley Film Festival. Under Dennis’ aegis, the MVFF launched a tradition of producing a memorable, often funny “trailer” to promote the fest and run before feature films. For this first time ‘round, he called me with the concept: “What if the great movies of film history had taken place in Mill Valley?” We brainstormed back and forth a bit, and then I wrote and directed this piece.

Cut for time from the main trailer, this piece ran as a stand-alone commercial on local TV.

All the MVFF folks were pretty happy with that first trailer, so they brought me back a year later for the second one. Dennis, the cast, the crew and I were still working for free, but hey, it meant a trip to the Bay Area in Spring! And it just goes to show you that even by 1997 everybody was tired of “…in a world…”