More Film Directors Finding a Spot in TV Ads

Television director Matthew Penn shouts, “Action!” Actor Patrick Warburton, playing a security guard, stops a Cadillac driven by entertainer Gregory Hines.

Warburton walks around the car, admiring it. “It’s not a Beemer or a Benz,” he muses.

And Penn isn’t directing a TV show. This is a commercial for General Motors.

Penn is among a growing number of Hollywood directors making commercials in their spare time. The work, once snubbed by Hollywood as inartistic, is now attracting big-name directors lured by fees that can run into six figures for less than a week of work.

Agencies dedicated to finding commercial work for TV and film directors are cropping up in New York and Hollywood.

Although many clients and agencies seem to be eager to work with the directors, others gripe that they are using their marquee status to swipe business from directors who do only ads. And some advertising executives grouse that Hollywood directors are in commercials for the paycheck and only go through the motions when it comes to directing ads.

Advertising agencies and their clients are drawn by the cachet of Hollywood, the directors’ contacts, and a desire to re-create the look of hit shows such as “Law and Order,” episodes of which Penn has directed.

Advertisers are also looking to Hollywood for new ways to grab the attention of jaded baby boomers and Generation Xers--whom many clients still find inscrutable.

Penn was hired to do the Cadillac spot because he’s comfortable working with celebrities and because the ad mirrors his work on police shows, said Leslie Rose, a senior producer with Cadillac ad agency DMB&B; in Los Angeles.

“The characters were just a natural for [Penn]. A guard, a motorcycle cop,” said Rose, referring to another spot in the campaign that Penn recently shot in Los Angeles.

Penn, who started his career as an actor, is unusual because he hasn’t pursued commercial work. He said that when he was approached about the Cadillac spot, he agreed to do it to stay busy between TV and film projects.

“I didn’t need to pursue it, since I was busy with television. . . . I wasn’t sure anyone would want to hire me, since it wasn’t my specialty,” he said during a break in filming the commercial at Paramount Studios recently.

Penn is represented by Creative Film Management of New York, one of the agencies popping up to find commercial work for directors. It was founded five years ago by Lou Adesso, a veteran of the commercial post-production business.

CFM now has plenty of company. In the last year, Moxie Pictures (whose directors include actor-director Albert Brooks and “Scream’s” Wes Craven), A Band Apart--both of Los Angeles--and New York-based OneSuch Films (which has signed director Nancy Savoca, among others), are a few that have added specialty divisions for film and TV directors.

A Band Apart, founded by Michael Bodnarchek and Lawrence Bender, who produced all of Quentin Tarantino’s films, last month signed film directors John Woo (whose films include the recent “Face/Off”) and Kevin Reynolds (who directed Kevin Costner in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” before the two had a falling out over “Waterworld”) to its new commercial division. Tarantino has yet to commit to any commercials himself.

This all reflects the flip side of an earlier trend: Aspiring film directors once viewed commercials as a way to break into the business. Well-known film directors such as Alan Parker and Tony Scott got their start that way. Propaganda Films, the commercial, music video and film-production unit of PolyGram, uses ads to groom future film directors. David Fincher and Simon West started out making commercials and music videos at Propaganda.

And some of the directors who have made the leap to film continue to make commercials. Ridley Scott is an example. What’s different now is that established film and TV directors are signing on in droves to direct commercials for clients such as Nike, Coca-Cola and ESPN. Their stated goals include staying busy between films, trying out new crews and equipment and trying their hands at what they refer to as short-form filmmaking.

“I enjoy working in the 30-second format,” says actor-director Steve Buscemi in a typically high-minded response to the question of why those--in particular those from the scrappy world of independent film--would want to work on commercials. Buscemi, best known for playing bug-eyed crazies in films such as “Fargo,” has signed with Los Angeles-based A Band Apart to direct commercials.

Buscemi’s series of commercials for Nike promoting the Women’s Basketball Assn. aired last summer. He’s also directed a commercial for Fleet Bank in New York.

Buscemi says he’s not in commercials for the money, although the budgets of commercials are substantial compared with those of many of the independent films he’s toiled on. Buscemi’s first feature, “Trees Lounge,” was made for an estimated $1.5 million, an amount not unheard of for a 30-second commercial spot.

Though Buscemi and other creative types talk of commercials as short-form movies--and some deep-pocket advertisers like Nike favor offbeat campaigns--most big clients probably wouldn’t be amenable to the type of commercials Buscemi made for Nike. They’re full of jerky, hand-held shots that could be seen as distracting. Although advertisers are looking for something catchy, most will want their commercials to promote sales of their product in a more direct way.

Not everyone thinks film directors’ crossing over is a good idea. “I’ve yet to see a movie director direct a commercial that is critically acclaimed from an advertising standpoint,” said Tom Cordner, creative director at Los Angeles-based Team One Advertising (whose clients include Lexus). Cordner acknowledges Spike Lee as a good commercial director (for his Nike spots of a few years back), but thinks that for the most part, the trend is not a good one.

“There are certain clients that are infatuated with Hollywood; often, they want to [use such connections to] get product placement. Most of the time, Hollywood treats you like trash,” said Cordner, asserting that most film directors have a “disdain” for commercials and do them primarily for the money.

Commercial production is a huge business, especially in Southern California. According to Los Angeles’ Entertainment Industry Development Corp., commercial production accounts for nearly one- third of all location filming in the Los Angeles County area--a $22.7-billion business overall in terms of direct revenue to Los Angeles in 1997. During the last two years, commercial production in L.A. has grown faster than anywhere else in the country.

Top advertisers regularly spend tens of millions of dollars on a single ad campaign. Daily paychecks for name directors can range from $10,000 to $20,000. Six figures for a week or two of work is hard for anyone to turn down.

Some executives at firms representing film directors readily admit that some directors have given crossover a bad name.

“There have been big-time film directors that just come in and walk through it [directing a commercial]; they just want to know when they get their check,” said Dan Levinson, president of Moxie Pictures. Moxie opened its own specialty division, Industry, for feature and TV directors last fall.

Levinson and those at other companies say they sign only those directors who appreciate the demands of commercials and the give-and-take that must occur among clients, agencies and directors. “If directors are just doing this for the money, [the concept] will die,” Levinson said.

What’s interesting or whimsical in a 90-minute movie may be leaden in a 30-second commercial. Ultimately, the cash register will determine whether auteur-style commercials make sense or not.

Meanwhile, many commercial directors don’t mind sharing representation with the film boys. Why? What they really want to do is direct movies.

“Everyone here should wear a T-shirt that says, ‘I really want to direct movies,’ ” said Band Apart’s Bodnarchek with a laugh.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Commercial Enterprise

Top advertisers such as General Motors and McDonald’s spend tens of millions of dollars each year to produce television commercials. Below is a rough comparison of commercial budgets versus budgets for feature films. Although not a perfect comparison (for example, on a longer feature film, the cost of equipment rentals is less), these figures give some idea of the relatively large budgets for television commercials.

* Average production cost of 30-second commercial (73% of all commercials are 30 seconds) in 1996: $278,000

* Average production cost of a studio feature in 1996: $39.8 million

* Average cost per 30 seconds of on-screen film, based on an average movie length of 100 minutes: $199,000*

*Approximately 30% lower than for an average commercial

Sources: American Assn. of Advertising Agencies, Motion Picture Assn. of America