If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I like movies. I like them a lot. Unfortunately, I look at them in the same way I do advertising: the products of an industry that has seen better days.

But I think I’ll leave that particular whinge alone for a while.

I just wanted to witter on about some of the ways in which movies have lost their magic that have nothing to do with their inherent quality.

In the 80s I was known at school for being the guy who saw all the movies. This was due in some part to the fact that I was the first person to get into a ’15’ on his own (and it was Rambo of all films – 1985, I was eleven) and the same with an ’18’ (Fatal Attraction – 1988, I was fourteen). Neither of these were down to me appearing to be incredibly mature or tall for my age; I was simply the cheekiest little bastard who thought it was worth a try, even against the most ridiculous of odds. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

So I saw pretty much everything that came out, sometimes seeing four different movies in the cinema on the same day. But the big issue in those days that no longer exists was the massive gap between a film’s American release and its appearance in this country. Four to six months was routine, and if you were waiting for a big American hit to arrive, that was sheer torture.

I would follow the box office grosses in Screen International and wonder about the nature and quality of such blockbusters as Three Men and a Baby and Beetlejuice. As there was no internet, and consequently no opportunity to watch the movie’s trailers at will, these films would be built up in my mind to legendary status, my imagination running wild, conjuring up the two hours of celluloid that lay behind these strange and mysterious titles.

If I was really lucky I might get a chance to have a holiday in America, whereupon I would inhale as many films as possible so that I would not have to experience so many excruciating waits when I got back home. On one New Year trip to Boston, I think I dragged my poor mum to a couple of films a day, including such ‘classics’ as Home Alone, The Russia House, Green Card and The Godfather Part Three.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, all the info you could possibly wish for is now within easy reach on the Worldwide Web, and that is also the reason why there is a much smaller gap between a UK and US release: downloading and the attendant piracy means that studios need to cash in ASAP before the hooky versions spread across the world.

On one side it makes everything that much more convenient and available, but on the other, the magic seems greatly diminished. If this was 1989 I think I’d have exploded during my six month wait to watch Inception, but in 2010 I saw it at the same time everyone in the US did. Cool, but somehow less cool.

There’s a scene in the Bernardo Bertolucci move The Dreamers, where Michael Pitt explains that he always watches movies in the front row so that he sees them before the rest of the people in the cinema.

Delightful bullshit that might explain why I was in the front row for Inception.

I have written the odd post decrying the current state of advertising. I have lamented what I considered to be slumps in its quality, financial offerings and ability to satisfy to the extent it used to.

But an article in this weekend’s Guardian Magazine has made me think that I could be aiming my blame in the wrong direction.

The above article explains that the demise of our industry is just one symptom of a bunch of wider problems that are fucking over the entire middle class:

The increasingly competitive nature of middle-class life and the decrease in job security; Margaret Thatcher’s opening up of the classic middle-class professions, such as university teaching, to market forces; the slow decline of the great state and corporate bureaucracies; the downgrading of middle managers by new business ideologies. These shifts, conclude Gunn and Bell, have left “few if any areas in which middle-class people work untouched”.

Stephen Overell, associate director of the Work Foundation, says that “In the middle-class workplace, employees’ autonomy and discretion have collapsed dramatically compared with 20 years ago. Software is standardising work. There are more procedures and guidelines, more surveillance. People at the top end are doing OK, but the rest feel that their working lives are getting worse.” Middle-class employment, you could say, is becoming more like that long endured by the working class.

Does that sound familiar? Added to that is an overall job insecurity, a requirement to work harder for less money and an inability to afford things that were readily available to people in similar jobs in the 90s.

I spoke to a freelancer recently whose day rate equated to the salary he received fifteen years ago. And of course, that salary would have bought far more in 1995.

So it’s not just advertising.

And although I was right, I was wrong to suggest it was our industry that was heading down the lav all on its own.

For those of you who agree that advertising is not what it once was, the alternatives are not much better.

Where is the real fun? Not in the same place as the real money.

Is this a long-term trend that is shunting the vast majority towards harder work and less pleasure/job satisfaction? Have too many industries with excess money been found out and made to tighten their belts in order to satisfy the principles of sequential capitalism?

Then again, what right do any of us have to a fun job with tons of cash?

Buddha says that life is dukkha (suffering, change and being dependent on other things).

I guess we’ve got to suck that one up too.

A single, solitary, not-even-very-good thing for the weekend:

This one is all about what makes a good CD.

(By the way, Peter Souter once told me that a good CD is the opposite of a good creative. The latter has to be really selfish while the former has to be really selfless. Perhaps you have a selfish CD. Perhaps he is therefore shit.)

And here’s another article by the same dude, Felix Unger (although that may not be his real name, unless maybe his parents were big fans of The Odd Couple):

How to sell creative work.

Regular readers may have noticed that I quite like ads that are somewhat mad.

And that’s why I like this:

Here’s Juan Cabral’s new ad for Eurostar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMiRJq_v1WU

In case you’re wondering, it’s shit.

But this blog does not deal in such besmirchificationary assertions without a bit of justification to back them up.

My biggest problem with it is: what the fuck has an idiot girl running around looking for talking animals got to do with taking a train from London to some city in Europe? Seriously, I like a slightly indulgent/nebulous ad as much as the next wanker but this is just crazy. It’s like advertising a bar of chocolate with a drumming…oh, wait….

Anyway, this is not Gorilla because it’s not interesting or memorable. It’s like watching someone smearing vanilla blancmange and skimmed milk over the screen while beaming Amanda Seyfried romance movies into your eyeballs, then getting a labrador puppy, covering it in Cecilia Aherne novels and getting it to lick you softly and non-committally until you weep with boredom. THEN putting a Norah Jones album on a loop and painting the planet a particularly neutral shade of beige while dressing you in Next clothes and shoving a rolled-up copy of the Mail on Sunday up your starfish.

Really, is anyone going to watch this (billed, incidentally, as ‘Eurostar’s first TV ad in three years’, like anyone gives a fuck) and think of taking a train to Europe? ‘Exploring is beautiful’ ought to be a line for selling LSD, not a boring journey to a boring place on a boring vehicle (although at least the ad accurately reflects the experience).

I fully believe that no one has led the creativity of advertising further in the last ten years, but compared to the rampant spanking that was ‘Gorilla’ and the lush, heartfelt snog that was ‘Balls’, this is like getting to a party and discovering that someone you don’t really fancy had to go home early with a mild cold.

Or something.

So I’ve just seen Inception and it is really bastardly good. Beyond that there’s not a lot of point in going into it. The plot is actually quite difficult to spoil, but if you like movies, just go and enjoy the ride. There’s also little point in me trying to review it because others will do it much better.

I guess, as someone who blogs about advertising, it might be worth making a point that occurred to me that surprisingly linked one of the best films of this century with our much maligned (by me) industry:

As I was watching scenes that, quite frankly, blew my fucking tits off, I did think that it was a shame, with reduced budgets and fearful clients, we tend, as an industry, to have left the jaw-dropping and the dark behind. The kind of amazement that Surfer and Twister used to generate had been replaced by a more everyday excellence (Old Spice guy, Dove Evolution girl, Gorilla) that pleases in a less impactful way.

Then I remembered this and realised that was complete and utter bullshit:

Honestly, Carousel could have been a scene in Inception and would not have looked out of place. Those opportunities to be dark, adult, intelligent and ground-breaking may be few and far between, but at least they exist.

Perhaps that’s something worth clinging to.

Alternatively, you might think that the chances of you getting to make something like that are so small, you might as well not bother trying and will instead choose to resign and go and work in the movies. You might also acknowledge that for all its brilliance, Carousel will have roughly one trillionth the longevity and cultural impact of Inception.

Be a hero in a tiny industry or create deep, resonant art that will make people thank God that you’re alive?

Just measure your ambition and act accordingly.

From Chris and Fran at DHM: