The City of Absurdity   The City of Absurdity
David Lynch's Commercials

 
Aunt Droid   Clear Blue Easy shoot   Gio   JC Decaux

Why is David Lynch directing commercials?
"The money's good, and the added bonus is that I get to use and learn about the latest technology, tools that normally wouldn't be available to me, and then I can use those tools in my feature work. I like doing them in Europe." David Lynch

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JC Decaux
Playstation2
Parisienne
Clear Blue Easy
SciFi Channel
National Sports
adidas "The Wall"
Miscellaneous

  page 2

Sun Moon Stars
The Instinct of Life
American Cancer Society
Barilla
Alka Seltzer
Georgia Coffee
Gio
New York
Obsession
Opium

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  JC Decaux 2000

"Un matin partout dans le monde" – advertisement campaign of the Jean-Claude Decaux group, producers of street furniture. Twelve directors including Wim Wenders, Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Lee, Mike Figgis and David Lynch filmed a 7 second fragment: it's 5:30 A.M. in 12 cities around the world (Lynch's piece was filmed in Los Angeles), and a piece of JC Decaux street furniture is being displayed."

Pictures
More information (in french) along with the commercial in Quicktime format at: http://www.premiere.fr/ns_projection/ba/jc_decaux.html

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  Playstation2 2000

The Third Place "The Third Place" – campaign for PlayStation 2 (PS2) directed by David Lynch.

see for yourself thirdplace.mpg (2.65MB)

About The Third Place – A concentration of lynchian themes
   Essay by Ludovic Ligot, Paris 2001

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  Parisienne 1999

Commercial for cigarette brand "Parisienne" that ran movie theaters throughout Switzerland in 1999.

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  Clear Blue Easy One Minute 1997

A series of black and white ads for a home pregnancy test.

Public Lynching Article by Martha Nochimson, Details October 1997
Pictures 20 pictures on 2 pages

"The moody black-and-white spots, which started airing last month as part of a $7 million campaign, climb inside the mind of a woman nervously awaiting the result of her Clear Blue Easy One Minute pregnancy test. Everything she sees - from the clock to shampoo bottles to the faucet handles - reads yes or no.

"The client was a little nervous that the spot would be eerie and scary," says David Cohen, executive producer at Ogilvy & Mather. "But on the set, Lynch was constantly making sure the client was happy."

Lynch [...] heard about the idea for the commercial from his agent. He contacted Ogilvy & Mather saying he liked the bold, simple concept. But copywriter Lisa Mayer knew better: "I said to him, 'Mr. Lynch, you were attracted to this because it involves the psychological torture of a beautiful young women.' And he said, 'Yes.'

In fact, Lynch engaged in a little good-humored on-the-set torture himself. The veteran director made the spot's actress (newcomer Marisa Parker) actually take a pregnancy test so he could tape her real-life reaction. The twist: Lynch switched her results with those of a pregnant crew member. Says Mayer, '[Marisa] held her own, then as soon as the camera stopped rolling, she screamed, 'You bastard! Very funny''.
taken from Entertainment Weekly

"...the Commercials, by ad agency Ogilvy and Mather in New York, have some classic Lynch devices, including hallucinatory sequences. In the spots, a woman stands in her bathroom watching as the minute ticks by. As she waits to find out whether or not she's expecting, the numbers on the clock face turn to "yes" and "no." Soon the "hot" and "cold" labels on her faucet and the drops of water falling from the spigot change to the same queries. "When you're waiting to find out if you're pregnant or not, nothing else in the world matters until you know," an announcer says as the woman waits. As the ad ends, the woman smirks at the camera when she finds out the result, but leaves the audience guessing. Lynch was apparently drawn to the spot after seeing the storyboards from the ad agency."
taken from Mr. Showbiz site

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  Sci-Fi channel ads 1997

David Lynch directed and produced four ads for the Sci-Fi Channel: "Nuclear Winter", "Dead Leaves" (Pictures), "Rocket" (Pictures) and "Aunt Droid" (Pictures).

In the "Dead Leaves" ad a big man is dragging a big trash bag down his driveway and whatever is in the bag is very heavy. He drops the plastic bag at the curb and the word "Dead" appears on the screen, then the word "leaves" followed by a question mark, so that it eventually looked like this: "Dead Leaves?"

David lynch on the Aunt droid Ad: "It's like a symphony. Only the music is in the vacuum cleaner."

Andrew Besch (Senior Vice President, Marketing, of Network USA, owner of SciFi Channel): "[David Lynch] is certainly the best director to communicate how science fiction stimulates viewers' curiosity about the thought-provoking possibilities in the universe around them."

Pictures

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  National Sports Utility Vehicle Commercial 1997

This businessman takes one look at a Sports Utility Vehicle and he morphs into a Mountain Man and chucks his cellphone into the trash.

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  adidas "The Wall" 1995

Tim Delaney (advertising creative): "Working with David Lynch on the adidas Wall commercial was exiting simply because it's working with a master film director who's also a very nice guy. We let him, and just stood back and watched him do things we've never seen before. He did it with glees, muse and professionalism. Some people...quite a lot people don't like the film. I really like it."

They didn't have a story board for the surreal sequences. The shots of the ear, in the eye, the distortions, lightning, the FWWM like macro-shot inside the mouth, the fire fountains.

Tim Delaney: "The way that we approached it was we wanted to go from Hell into Heaven. And that's what we said David Lynch. We wanted to make a film where a runner goes through the wall, the pain barrier. And is in hell. As he goes through the wall, he comes up, at the outside, into heaven. That's essentially what we told him."

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  Miscellaneous magazine ads


American Express
(2000)
 
Technics
(1999)


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© Mike Hartmann
thecityofabsurdity@yahoo.com