paul on spout.com

Under discussion:

Art & Copy  (2009)

On the surface, Art & Copy is a tribute to legendary creative minds in advertising, and the process through which they made their most iconic ads. From taglines that became pop touchstones like “Just Do It” and “Got Milk?” to how Mac, Budweiser and Volkswagon went beyond their product and became “lifestyle brands,” the charismatic advertisers share how it happened from their point of view, which smacks of self-mythologizing. Not only does the director, Doug Pray, appear to completely buy the mythology presented, but when the film raises moral and ethical questions about advertising, I’m not sure he realizes the questions are even there.

The documentary follows a simple structure. An advertising legend (Hal Riney, George Lois, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Mary Wells, Rich Silverstein, Jeff Goodby, Lee Clow among others) tells a story or expounds on creativity. Between each story is a meditative sequence that harkens back to Koyaanisquatsi: billboard scaffolding, a city highway, a satellite being constructed –the real concrete and steel lattice work advertising travels to get to us. Usually, over these images a disturbing statistic pops up like, “We receive 5,000 advertising messages a day.” Often, the images include workaday drones putting up billboards or sitting at banks of computers monitoring satellites. Then there’s a statistic revealing how absurd post-modern life has gotten like,  “Children receive a zillion advertisements before they’re potty trained.” Paradoxically, these statistics are always followed by another ad executive sitting in an architectural masterpiece of a workspace talking about the power of creativity and how they harnessed it to the betterment of the world.

After a while, it becomes apparent that Pray’s desolate shots of satellites, billboards, highways and cables with the creepy statistics superimposed continually beg a question that won’t be answered: And do you, rebel/artist/advertising billionaire, feel complicit in creating this consumer madness? This massive spider web where we’re sold stuff from the time we open our eyes to the time we close them?

Although the question is not so subtly raised, it is obviously averted. In defense of the film, there is an insinuation that bad advertising has polluted the world and degraded consumers, but good advertising–the kind we’re talking about here–is basically art. Case in point: Nike’s Just Do It.

Nike wanted to sell sporting equipment that assists in a healthy lifestyle. Altruism, capitalism and creative genius align to make Just Do It. All of the sudden, people aren’t just buying Nike, they’re leaving abusive relationships, going back to school, changing jobs because they decided to “Just Do It.” Now, would these people have gone on to just do it–whatever it is–without Nike’s ad? Probably. Did Nike make billions by becoming an aspiration for a lifestyle rather than a pair of shoes that wasn’t significantly better than their competition? Definitely. Is the world a better place because Nike was able make shoes represent the life you want instead of the life you have? Well, that’s a question this documentary continually steps up to ask, then avoids.

Unlike Art & Copy, Beautiful Losers is a doc I reviewed last year wherein the artists actually ask themselves whether using their creativity to sell stuff is moral. In fact, wrestling with the question is part of their process of going from juvenile artist/rebels to grown ups. It’s troubling that in Art & Copy the altar of the artist/rebel has become so sacred that when questions about the ethics of one’s work become unavoidable, the worshippers simply won’t acknowledge them. These advertisers don’t ask hard questions about what they’ve created. It’s an elephant in the room which has been ignored for so long, that even though it seemed to be standing in the very editing room for this documentary, nobody acknowledged it.

Under discussion:

Thriller in Manila  (2008)

Take an epic sporting event, cut together the highlights and interviews with the athlete (or athletes) and coach (or coaches), and you have an instant crowd-pleaser, because the crowd already been pleased once and knows it will be again. I expected Thriller in Manila to be that documentary until the build up of “the greatest fight of all time” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier unexpectedly wheezes, as a 63 year old, nearly incoherent Frazier walks into his decrepit Badlands of Philadelphia gym. With one shot of the little, cluttered room he lives in upstairs, the tone shifts to the unapologetic telling of Joe Frazier’s side of the story. Director John Dower has an easy target (Ali can’t speak for himself anymore), but to his credit he lets the camera remain on the mixed emotions of people closest to the fight and thereby raises issues–and the film–above its genre.

Through talking heads with the gray hairs who were there, archival footage and the relentless narration of Paterson Joseph, we go back to the late sixties when Joe Lewis and Muhammad Ali are friendly competitors. Joe Lewis personally lobbies President Nixon to get Ali back in the ring after Ali’s famous refusal to go to Vietnam for his religious convictions (a member of the all-black Nation of Islam). Back in the ring, Ali and Frazier go on to have three fights in a vicious rivalry that’s the stuff of sports legend and Greek tragedy. It all culminates in 1975 when Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos hosts the “Thrilla in Manila,” the third and final bout between Frazier and Ali.

Much of the film dwells on Ali earning his Great American Hero status more for his publicity skills than his fighting skills. Joe Frazier was an uneducated sharecropper’s son who grew up in Beauford County, SC, where he still couldn’t cash a check even after he became the World Heavyweight Champion of Boxing. He’s presented as the real black working class champion, even though Ali’s radical political views and charismatic spirit made him an icon of 60’s political activism. Ironically, Frazier’s fans were usually white conservatives who admired his quiet, dogmatic work ethic.

With Joe Frazier’s vicious left hook, it appears Thriller is going to pound Ali’s mythic image into the floor. The tipping point of the title fight and the film, happens when Lewis introduces his newly developed right jab, causing Ali to have to rethink how he’d protect his left side in mid-match. This turns the bout from a shoo in for Ali into a bloodied, epic war between the two men. At this point, Dower upends his own Ali exposé when Frazier’s drive to “take apart” the man who’d derided him for years as an Uncle Tom, sends Thriller flailing at religious fundamentalism, the group think of The Media, black on black racism and even the corruption between professional boxing and dictator regimes (Imelda Marcos, although married to a ruthless dictator, could not take sitting ringside anymore during the fight because it was too violent). All factors are complicit in what made “the greatest fight” the one neither man really walked away from.

The exhaustion Thriller creates in the audience by its conclusion has less to do with the typical drama of boxing that movies like Rocky revel in. As they pound and pound each other, each man exhibits an almost supernatural willpower to go on, but unlike Rocky, that heroic willpower may be the very thing that has crippled their twilight years. “Each one is Ahab and the other is the Black Whale,” Ali’s biographer says. Although Thriller in Manilla is heavy-handed at times, taking a sports history documentary and infusing it with Moby Dick horror is definitely something to behold. Unless you’re queasy like Imelda Marcos.