Art & Copy is a lovely, pleasant film about, well, advertising. Director Doug Pray does something interesting and subtle with what’s a temptingly fat target for derision—he teases out the artistic, inventive, and influential aspects of an industry steeped in mediocrity at best and toxicity at worst.
Pray interviewed 11 people who worked on some of the most iconic and effective print and television advertising between the mid-60s and fairly recently and allows them, without ironic overlay or judgment, to talk about what drives what they’ve done.
Though no one goes so far as to say that advertising as a whole is somehow a noble enterprise, together they make a compelling case for equating some advertising as truly artistic. Each of them talks us through how they envisioned and executed some of the most iconic advertising of the last 50 years, from the original Volkswagen Beetle ads through Braniff’s Pucci uniforms, Lyndon Johnson’s daisy ad, The Carpenters song for Crocker Bank, Reagan’s Morning in America ad, Where’s the Beef, I Want My MTV, Apple’s 1984 ad, Just Do It, and Got Milk, to name a few.
The advertisers themselves are, without exception, fascinating to listen to, and all the more so because though they’re all roughly of the same couple of generations (and white), and though they share a common passion for the power of advertising, each has a different approach to reaching people with their ideas, and the breadth of their insight is educational without being preachy. Pray is no apologist for the industry—nor, really, are his interview subjects, who without exception agree that the vast majority of advertising is utter crap—but he finds a lot of beauty in the work of these driven and passionate folks that’s delightful to witness. He has a knack (which he demonstrated powerfully in his last film Surfwise, which dogged my consciousness for weeks after I saw it) for illuminating the positive without subjugating the negative.
1 imaginary embracey said on June 5, 2009
I'm excited about this one. Doug Pray does indeed have a knack - I liked Scratch, Dig, and Big Rig too.
If folks miss Art & Copy at SIFF, it'll have a week-long run at- reply
2 Imaginary Amie said on June 5, 2009
Hooray! I'm going to have to catch it at NWFF, but I am really interested.
3 ChrisB said on June 5, 2009
I did like this film but I felt sort of guilty about enjoying it because it is a 90 minute ad for advertising in general and Apple advertising in particular.
They did, kind of, explore a darker side of advertising (like the origins of Nike's "Just Do It" slogan) but it was a lot of people patting themselves on the back saying "look at how clever we are". I did learn a lot about advertising and it has a strong, consistent narrative.
In the end, though, we are still being sold something, but I think we enjoy it because we're being sold an iPod, not a Big Mac.
4 Imaginary Amie said on June 5, 2009
Chris - good to know! I'm mostly interested because it closely relates to my day job. :)
5 Roxie Rider said on June 6, 2009
Doug Pray answered questions after the film and made the point several times (largely because the lady interviewing him and people in the audience kept coming back to it) that the movie's not meant to be an endorsement of advertising per se, but more a celebration of creative people who are really passionate about what they do, and who do it extremely well. He talked a lot about Hal Riney, who produced the Morning in America spot, which is sometimes credited with winning the election for Reagan. (Evidently Riney, who died last year, was a notorious recluse, so Pray's interview was quite the coup.) At any rate, Pray's point was that even though he disagrees with almost everything Riney stood for, he was deeply impressed with his ability to be so moving, and to tap so effectively into something a lot of people wanted.
I guess I was kind of surprised that I wasn't more irritated with the sort of self-congratulatory tone, and I think that was partly because the advertisers interviewed were so eccentric and basically good-natured and fun to spend 90 minutes with. And the other thing that occurs to me now is that I think Pray trusts our intelligence enough to be able to separate appreciation of the form from the pretty healthy disgust we might feel for its impact.
But I totally see what you mean, Chris--he definitely does *not* make that point explicitly.
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