Art & Copy

I managed to see Art & Copy this weekend at Tivoli Cinemas in Westport. It was absolutely fascinating and, for a documentary about advertising, it was surprisingly moving. I decided to write a review about it because a) I figured it would help me sort out my thoughts about the movie, and b) it would give me another journalistic writing sample. I managed to trim this piece down to 415 words without sacrificing any major facts, ideas, or opinions, so I was very pleased.

Anyway, I hope that my review persuades you to go out and see Art & Copy for yourself. If you're at all interested in advertising, art, writing, or the creative process, I think you'll enjoy it.

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The Faces of Advertising

Don't let the trailer fool you: Art & Copy isn't a documentary about creativity or the American advertising industry. It's an astute examination of psychology: the psychology of the American consumer and of advertising's greatest creative executives.

In Art & Copy, director Doug Pray interviews a handful of creative giants to find out what makes them tick. We meet Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein (“Got milk?”), George Lois (“I want my MTV!”), David Kennedy and Dan Wieden (“Just do it.”), Mary Wells (“I love New York”), and even Hal Riney (the mind and voice behind Ronald Reagan's “Morning in America” reelection campaign).

Pray presents a wide array of campaigns in the film, taking us from Volkswagen's revolutionary “Think small” 1959 Beetle campaign to iPod's 2001 iconic dancing silhouettes. Each campaign is introduced and explained by its creators.

While this formula sounds dull (talking head-style interviews, office tours, and a slew of commercials), the results are electric. The creative directors are fascinating characters: George Lois is outspoken and crass, Mary Wells crackles with drama, Lee Clow (of iPod fame) looks like a beach bum but talks like a revolutionary, and Hal Riney simultaneously soothes and charms from his unassuming cream-colored couch.

As we learn more about the artists and writers behind each campaign, the commercials take on a whole new life. We forget to suspect them as calculated sales tools and begin to see them as their creators do: as works of art, as haiku, as tools for social change, as legitimate cultural artifacts, even as expressions of human truths.

Pray is enchanted by the creatives he interviews, and his take on advertising is overwhelmingly positive. But he does gesture briefly to advertising's tremendous size and influence: he tells us that the average city dweller sees 5,000 ads a day, that 65% of us feel bombarded by too many ads, and that more than $500 billion is spent per year on advertising. But these stats don't stick. The creatives are too compelling, too charismatic to ignore.

In a way, Art & Copy is the best advertisement you'll ever find for the advertising industry. It shows us the faces behind the images and catchphrases that have become as quotable to us as Shakespeare (“Where's the beef?”).

Pray does for his subjects what they do for the huge, anonymous corporations they work for: he gives the advertising industry a face, a personality, a heart.