If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

(Really, really, really, NSFW. Thanks, J. Via Twitter.)

Massive Attack Paradise Circus from sabakan on Vimeo.

I don’t think James Cameron is the best director in the world.

I don’t think he’s even in the top 100 (UPDATE: OK, he’s about number 54).

I have no urge to watch a single one of his movies right now (I did see Avatar the other day).

His plots are derivative.

Much of Titanic was dreadful.

But…

I just can’t wrap my head around what he is able to do.

In Hollywood a hell of a lot of very desperate, very clever people are trying to make big films that please a lot of people and make a lot of money. That’s all they are trying to do, all day every day. Amongst them, James Cameron has written, produced and directed the two biggest films in history (Avatar’s final gross is still shooting up, but it took in more money in 17 days than The Dark Knight did in its entire run. And The Dark Knight is the fourth biggest-grossing film of all time).

He took incredible chances with the technology that created both Titanic and Avatar (and let’s not forget how amazing parts of The Abyss and all of Terminator Two were), chances that could have bummed him out of the business. But they all came off better than anyone could have expected. He seems to have the ability to create stories in an incredibly complex medium that are more popular than anyone else’s. And whether you like them or not, they touch and impress more people than anything you have ever done, or ever will do. But how does he do it? What is it about him that makes him so much better at a game that some really smart people are trying constantly to win?

The bad news for those of you that want to emulate him is that he was bullied at school and he seems to hold a grudge about this that drives him like a bastard:

“If you ever go to a 25th high school reunion, make sure that in the previous two months you’ve made the world’s highest-grossing movie, won 11 Academy Awards and become physically bigger than most of those guys who used to beat you up. I walked up to them one by one and said, ‘You know, I could take your ass right now, and I’m tempted, but I won’t.’

So, do you need a bit of adversity to butt up against in order to get the motivation to spend your life trying to cancel it out?

Are successful people driven by a need for mass love and approval to replace that which they did not get when young?

Can you have a happy, easy youth and still find it in yourself to be one of the best, or will the good times eventually dissipate the fire?

I suppose the annoying thing is that you can’t choose any of this. Either you’ve got it or you don’t. But then perhaps an un-bullied, joyous childhood is a good trade off for a slightly less driven life. And of course, bullying etc. can send you off in the other direction to spend your life metaphorically cowering in a corner.

So, no real answers.

I guess that makes this my first really pointless post of 2010.

But don’t worry; there are many more on the way.

UPDATE: A post on the reasons behind Avatar’s success.

UPDATE 2: Arthur Kade’s take on the same question.

I was talking to another copywriter at the end of last year and he was telling me about his friend’s website, which has now become so successful that the guy has left advertising and runs the site full-time (it’s really fun. I’d link to it but I think the friend and the copywriter want to remain anonymous).

The copywriter then leaned back with a rueful smile on his face and said, ‘The lucky bastard. He got out.’
I paused for a moment than said, ‘You know he wasn’t working in a call centre or down a mine. He ‘got out’ of one of the most appealing office jobs in the world.’

Then we had a bit of a laugh at how ridiculous it was, but we both recognised that, even when you’re talking about ‘escaping’ being an ad creative, there is still an element of attractiveness to it. This is because of our natural human need to constantly seek improvements – the dissatisfaction that drives most of us forwards.

Another element of this is down to the (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again) reduced appeal of working in advertising. The above example shows very clearly that new opportunities exist for creative people to express themselves in ways that are equally or more appealing than the creation of adverts. What once felt like the enormous fun of possibly spunking £1,000,000 getting Ridley Scott to bring your words to life in Barbados now seems more like a chore where the fragmentation of channels and budgets either reshapes the ‘fun’ so that it’s unrecognisable or removes it all together. I’m sure a lot of people will wax lyrical about how the current flux of technology and opportunities in advertising is really exciting, but if they were really honest, they’ve either had the Ridley Scott thrill already, or it’s now so remote that it can be easily dismissed as a vulgar indulgence.

So where does that leave us? Do you want to get out, or is advertising still hitching its skirt up and showing you a glimpse of thigh?

I wonder if the answer lies in being in and out. Why can’t you work in advertising (particularly if you’re freelance) and create a short film/website/book/album? Then you might find that one of your outs takes up too much time and you have to leave, and then maybe you can come back. Or not. Or maybe advertising tempts you full time and you put your hardcore trance (is that a genre?) software project on hold. Or not.

2010: embrace a messy life.

UPDATE: here’s a related article (thanks, D).

Whose office am I in?

(Clue: it’s not mine (smiley face made out of punctuation))

By the way, 100-200 people visited this blog on Christmas Day.

If you got it right, congratu-fucking-lations.

I think that the most enduring truth about human nature is ‘give ’em an inch and they’ll take a yard’.

With that in mind, I thought it might be time to bring up the Cheryl Cole L’Oreal ads (incidentally, Cheryl Tweets in a strong Novocastrian accent):

It’s an ad for some kind of hair tonic that contains the legal line ‘styled with some natural hair extensions.’

So it’s official: legals are a way of lying your arse so far off that it will immediately end up at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Let’s look at that line again:

‘Styled with’ is very probably a bullshit way of saying ‘jam-packed with to the extent that Chezza is pretty much wearing a wig, giving you not the first fucking clue as to the efficacy of the product we are advertising’

‘Some natural hair extensions’ means that 99% of the hair you see may be extensions, or that ‘some may be natural, but the others are synthetic’.

Basically, nothing you are watching necessarily pertains to the properties of the product we are selling and just to rub your nose in it, we are admitting this on the ad. Or, to put it another way, if you believe anything about this ad you are a fucking moron because it might as well be an ad for the latest Robin Reliant that shows a Lamborghini Gallardo burning round corners behind a legal line that says ‘product shown may differ somewhat to product being advertised you thickheaded, moronic, brainless piece of excrement. We have so little respect for you that we believe we will get away with this ginormous fucking lie. How does that make you feel, you stupid, patronised shitwipe?’

But is this such a bad thing? On the surface, yes, but let’s just think about it for a moment.

If you are dumb enough to buy this product after reading this admission of bullshittery (and, by the way, the same line appears on the posters) then you get what you deserve, you mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, lobotomised arse-brained fuckwit.

But the real idiots here are the ASA, BACC or whoever else has allowed such obvious mendacity to pass through their sievelike approval procedure. I have said this before, but either legal lines are there to be read so that they can protect the public from evil, shifty purveyors of snakeoil, or they don’t matter at all.

Obviously, it’s the second. I mean, who the fuck reads all the terms and conditions that blight the lower half of the screen for even the most innocuous ad? Hardly anybody. They are deliberately placed and written to be as unobtrusive and illegible as possible. The rules for their application insist that they appear at the kind of height and weight that can only be read by a genius with eyesight of a magpie looking through an electron microscope.

So why bother?

If I might make a suggestion, why not simply have ‘terms and conditions apply’ on every ad that isn’t for something obvious like Coke or Marmite, then let the public have a look for themselves?

The current system is licensed lying that gives no useful or truthful information other than the fact that the approval bodies are toothless and brainless and that advertisers and their agencies will, given the opportunity, pull as much wool over the eyes of their potential customers as they can get away with.

We should be so proud.

You know it makes sense.
I frequently make at least one of these errors myself, so reduced cuntitude is also a target of mine.
(Thanks, V (via Twitter).)

Your reward is the Morgan Freeman chain of command.

And ‘Nation’s Pride’, the movie within a movie from Inglourious Basterds:

(Thanks, Cinematical (via Twitter).)

(Thanks, G. (Via Twitter).)

1. I always think it’s funny when people explain why, for example, they decided to go with a small ad agency rather than a big one: ‘I’d rather be a big fish in a small pond,’ they say, ‘than a small fish in a big pond’. Well, unfortunately, the size of the fish doesn’t change, just the size of the pond. You, person who needs to feel more significant, are actually a small fish in a small pond. A big fish in a small pond would be, say, Nike choosing to give their account to Joe Bloggs Advertising. Moving the Tunnocks Teacakes account to such a place is merely double small.

2. Why do people add ‘aholic’ to words when they want to convey an addiction to something? Alcoholic is just ‘alcohol’ with ‘ic’. Instead of workaholic, hard workers should just be workic.

3. ‘Have you got anything smaller?’ shopkeepers say as you hand over a twenty or fifty pound note. They have a weary air of accusatory disappointment as if you’re draining their till of valuable change for the day. But what they fuck else are they going to use their tens and twenties for? A twenty pound note can only be of any possible use when making change for a fifty, and a ten for a twenty. You’d think they’d be more annoyed if you bought something for £1.12 with a fiver. That takes loads of valuable change out of the till, but they never seem to mind that. I think it’s just something they’re trained to do in shopkeep college, like writing that sign that shows they can’t deal with more than two schoolchildren at once. If I were that inept I’d keep it to myself.

No need to thank me for the hours you will lose.
(Thanks, B.)

See? They can do good things when they try (smiley face made from punctuation).