Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [23]
So we put together a spot, the basic premise of which was: a group of American D-day veterans call one another to arrange a reunion in Normandy. To our next meeting, for something entirely different—a print ad for some telecom legislation—we brought the D-day spot with us in our back pocket. At the end of the presentation we shared it. The client liked it. His boss liked it.
Within days we were told to go shoot it.
Back at the agency, other than the creative director we reported to, no one was paying much attention to the project (there was a new CEO, a rift in the creative department, a pitch, another account loss—in other words, the usual), which was fine by us.
Next we found a talented director, Marcus Stevens, whose reel demonstrated a capacity to capture truthful individual moments as well as scenes of great natural beauty. In April we began to cast veterans during a week in New York and then for a long weekend in Washington, D.C. I complemented a decent grasp of World War II history with additional cramming for the sessions, reading as many books as time allowed on the subject. But nothing prepared me for sitting across from these men and listening to them detail the most seminal event of their lives, if not of the twentieth century. I did the interviewing, but it didn’t require much skill beyond prompting them to describe from a personal perspective what happened that day. Many men walked into our studio stoic and taciturn but within minutes began to cry. Others told their stories with such rehearsed precision that I would become skeptical, only to be convinced of their authenticity later when I saw their names in the history books, among the first to parachute into Normandy early that morning, or to take out a Nazi gun emplacement on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc. Sometimes, especially near the end of our sessions, I would have to leave the room to compose myself. And often, for no reason other than that it made me feel good, I told them that my father had also served in World War II, and had been blown off a landing craft during a different, equally monumental naval invasion, at Leyte Gulf in the Pacific theater.
It quickly became apparent to Kenny and me that we were doing something that transcended advertising, and that the conceits of advertising could only ruin. This was before Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, before Saving Private Ryan.
With Stevens we made our final casting choices and had our final preproduction meeting. In the first week in May we were to spend a day shooting a scene in Rockland County, New York, and after that we were off to Normandy.
The shoot in Rockland County was hardly spectacular. It basically entailed filming a group of older men who had never been on camera talking on various telephones, saying things such as “So you’re going to the reunion, aren’t cha?” Fairly straightforward, but especially notable for me because it’s the only time my father would ever see me at work. When I told the director and his crew that my father was also a veteran, they treated him as if he were a king. They walked him through the storyboard. They gave him a special seat in video village to watch the proceedings on a monitor linked to the director’s camera. They brought him snacks and drinks and things to read all day long.
I’d like to think my father was impressed and, because of the subject matter, even a little proud, despite the fact that on the way home that night the first thing he told me was that never in his life had he seen so many people scrambling to accomplish so little.
Then a funny thing happened as we were preparing to leave for France. Back at the agency, people began to ask about the spot. People other than Kenny and me, our creative director, and the junior account executive/producer who had been attached to the spot from the start. The head of the account wanted to see the storyboard. The creative director of the agency