("Live on tape" from beautiful midtown Manhattan)
I can’t believe the tickets to this thing cost $150. I’m in a converted UPS building with salmon wallpaper and floor to ceiling mirrors.
There are three buffet tables: Salmon with some kind of cream sauce (presumably inspired by the wallpaper), pasta, and prime rib. The dessert table contains cookies from the Italian bakery.
Thank God I didn’t have to pay for these tickets. The open bar is closing in 25 minutes and we haven’t even headed downstairs for the viewing. Better go make eyes at Jose, the bartender.
Here we are in the viewing room. It’s strangely reminiscent of that awards show scene in Boogie Nights. Who is that man on stage? He must be from Cannes. He sounds like Inspector Clouseau. He says Dan Wieden, chairman of the judges, is pleased to welcome us all to the show. Dan Wieden is here? I knew he was down. But wait, the Inspector says Dan is more comfortable paddling his canoe (which he pronounces Cannes-ou) in Portland than hobnobbing at ad parties in the big city. Wow, he’s downer than I thought.
Clouseau is handing the microphone to a woman who looks like she should be reporting the news in Indiana. This is one of those moments where the chasm between the people who write ads and the people who employ them is uncomfortably real. Thank God for Jose.
The anchor woman seems to be going with her look because she begins by reporting the current score of the Yankees-Red Sox game. As if anyone in here cared about baseball a week ago. I am surrounded by Europeans in black turtlenecks pretending to be jocks. They cheer or boo accordingly and I am forced to bury my face in my cocktail to hide my eyes which have rolled so far in the back of my head that I could be mistaken for an epileptic.
For the love of Amsterdam, bring on the naked people and animals. It’s Lion time.
Various angry chicken gags and superstar directors’ campaigns make the cut. Like the car ads directed by Mike Mills which can best be described as brown. There’s the brown VW spot with the guy whose life is more boring than yours and then, oh look! There’s a Volkswagen outside. It’s topless. But, ha! You can’t see it until Cannes 2004. Then, there’s the brown VW commercial where everything in the whole world is square. My computer, my light switch cover, my Cannes reel hostess, but wait. A Volkswagen Beetle is round. You have to hand it to that Mike Mills. He really brought something to the campaign. I daresay, he made it a winner.
At last something truly English. A cell phone spot set in a world where everyone has the same face. Eleven year old white girls, black policemen, everyone. They all have the face of a nerdy, white man who loves to dance in a world where dance is forbidden. The authorities pursue him, but he escapes to a desert island where the dance is done with the kind of abandon only savages can truly muster. I don’t know what this has to do with cell phones, but it’s wacky and European. It fits in at Cannes like banana hammocks and uncircumcised penises.
Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for. The Inspector walks back out and announces that Dan Wieden will address us, “live on videotape”. Man, he’s a production genius.
Dan says before we view the print winners, we should know that they really are evidence that advertising has fallen on hard times. Ouch, Dan. That’s just what you want to hear after winning your first Lion.
Wait, what’s this? Whoa, you weren’t kidding, Dan. Looks like times were so tough, racist and sexist humor has made a serious comeback.
A woman gives birth to a full grown man while simultaneously managing to hold both a Playboy pose and physique. Hey, it gets 14 year old boys to buy Sony Playstation and primes them for the equally enlightened Budweiser advertising that claims feminism was invented by the Budweiser Institute to keep women from bothering men when they want to go hang out together. Well, if that’s what you want fellas, why not just head down to the Eagle?
Hey, I didn’t know spec work was allowed in this competition. An agency from Germany (Sieg Heil!) wins a Lion for a print ad for penis enlargements—yes, who among us doesn’t have the old penis enlargement account hanging around the agency?—which features a car full of African American homeys cruising around with one, very happy looking, white guy. Presumably he now has a huge dong like all brothers do. I hide my face in my drink, waiting for the riot, which horrifyingly, never happens.
After 30 more minutes of some jerkoff voiceover guy providing moronic commentary on each and every print ad, (who were the ad geniuses who thought of that one?) the moment everyone has been waiting for arrives. The viewing of the Grand Prix. It’s the Spike Jonze directed Ikea saga about a sad little desk lamp that gets kicked to the curb by its owner for a snazzy, new one from Ikea. A cute ad, no doubt. But the Grand Prix, guys? I guess it won because, you are crazy. Once again, a big name director wins out over logic. Screw it. If I can’t beat ‘em, I’m going to New Jersey to buy some of their divine cinnamon rolls.
Until next year Cannes, Reowr!
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