Art & Copy

TedFlicks Rating:

$6 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.

Given its subject matter, “Art & Copy,” a documentary from helmer Doug Pray which got some film festival buzz, ought to soar.  Instead, this look at several seminal talents in the ad biz, a generation who revolutionized mass market selling from the 1950s to the 1980s, falls flat.  That’s too bad, because pic’s focus is a merger of art and commerce that defined a generation.  It’s a compelling story that deserves better telling.

The opening reel is a clue.  Out-of-focus lines on a sandy beach are revealed as a sort of hieroglyph. Insects toting bits of vegetation could have been lifted from PBS’ “Nature” series.  The connection between bugs, sand, and forest with advertising is tenuous at best.  Less tenuous is the connection between advertising and satellite communications, but Pray uses so many satellite shots that it looks like filler.  Enough, already. Fake profundity is no substitute for good storytelling.

Despite the impressive array of Madison Avenue talent who participate, the real stars of “Art & Copy” are their output, the print ads and the TV spots, all of which will resonate with auds over age 50.  The title says it all.  This is a generation that broke down the Chinese wall between copywriters and art directors.  It identified the “Me Generation” and spoke directly to it. The result was compelling advertising, billboards that told a story with just one image, thirty and sixty second TV spots that evoked emotion that made people want to identify with the product being hawked.

Mary Wells (Wells Rich Greene), keenly observes that good advertising is theater.  The late Hal Riney (responsible for President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” spots) drives the point home with a campaign for a San Francisco bank for which he commissioned Paul Williams to compose the song, “We’ve Only Just Begun.”  Its recording by The Carpenters became a hit.  The bank franchised the campaign to other banks nationwide.

Other well known spots abound.  Most notable is the 1964 campaign commercial for Lyndon Johnson in which a little girl counting petals on a daisy gives way to a mushroom cloud.  That spot by George Lois was seen only once as paid media.  But it got and continues to get news attention way out of proportion to the media buy.

War stories also abound.  Wieden + Kennedy created the groundbreaking “1984” Super Bowl spot for Apple Computer.  Apple’s board of directors rejected the spot.  “Pull out of the Super Bowl,” they said.  At that point Steve Jobs looked at Steve Wozniak and said, “I’ll pay for half of it if you do.”  The rest is history.  And the hammer thrower is way hotter than your critic remembers.  The anecdote underscores the importance of risk in creativity.  These icons of Madison Avenue did not achieve by playing safe.  At the same time, however, they were disciplined in the key tenets of advertising: the importance of the mnemonic and of celebrity.  And none of them was afraid of cracking a sweat.

A few more quibbles:  Pic uses supers in abundance in place of narration. It’s not a bad technique, but much of the information is superfluous, and some of it is out of date.  For example, NBC sold 2009 Super Bowl spots for $3.2 million each, not the $2.7 million in pic’s super.  More filler.

“Art & Copy” is the story of the emergence of creative talent to primacy in advertising over account people.  It began at Doyle Dane Birnbach where the Chinese wall was first breached.  It was a wild ride.  It deserves a better film.  It might have been far more compelling if one of its subjects, say Mary Wells, Hal Riney, or George Lois, had directed it

At 89 minutes, “Art & Copy” is not rated.  Aside from a few profanities courtesy of George “I Want My MTV” Lois, there is nothing in pic from which children need shielding.

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