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Ultimately, we brought back several solutions, none of which I could in good conscience recommend. The only choice would be to reshoot the entire spot. And again I said that would be a colossal waste because the commercial was devoid of anything close to an idea. We hoped our costly verdict would convince them to make the whole bizarre assignment go away.

But, of course, it didn’t. The spot had tested well somewhere on the planet, and the client, I’m assuming the senior client, was determined for some strange reason (demonstrate global synergy to the satellite offices? his father was half-Russian?) to make it work.

Several days later I got a call in my office from the managing partner on the account. The client was willing to commit to a total reshoot, he said, provided it was “in the spirit of the Russian spot.” And of course with a much lengthier and more intrusive demo of the deodorant’s sweat-destroying Nanoabsorbers(tm).

That afternoon my flabbergasted producer started making calls to see if we could find a director who would be willing to film this mess. We agreed that we certainly couldn’t convince a top-level, A-list shooter. Or a B-lister, for that matter. So we targeted promising up-and-coming directors who wanted to get a foot in the door at a big agency and build a reel. When that failed, we looked at kids fresh out of film school, and then we looked at the reels of old hacks eager to work on anything. We had taken dozens of calls with directors and production companies and had come up empty.

Typically, on these calls I would speak first, explaining the Russian genesis of the spot (“Yes, we’re copying a Russian idea”) and our goals for the look and feel of the film, and some hypothetical thoughts about what they might want to do to make it feel more “American.”

This was usually followed by a prolonged silence.

Sometimes after I described the mandatory eight-second Nanoabsorber(tm) demo, I could hear the creak and scuffing of chair legs on the other end as directors got up to leave the room.

We prayed that the project would die.

We hoped that something would come along to get us out of this hell. A more important, real assignment. A Ukrainian version of the same spot that tested even better. But nothing.

Meanwhile, my literary agent called. He told me that he was getting ready to send my manuscript out to publishing houses. I crossed my fingers and silently prayed that in the next few weeks he wouldn’t quit, die, run off to join the circus, or, worse, pursue a career in advertising.

The good news is the producer and I couldn’t find even a half-decent director, not even a hack, to take the job. The truly unsettling news is we found someone brilliant.

The producer knocked on my door and told me that Janusz Kaminski was available and eager to shoot the spot. I looked at her as if she were crazy. Janusz Kaminski is one of the finest cinematographers in the world. He won an Academy Award for Schindler’s List and was nominated for another for Saving Private Ryan. He was cinematographer on Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, AI, and, with Cameron Crowe, Jerry Maguire. What the hell did he want with an American remake of a Russian deodorant spot? Had Spielberg blackballed him? Had he recently had a disfiguring eye injury?

“His producer says he likes to shoot,” she told me. “And he’s got some time on his hands until he starts prepping Munich next month.”

“He likes to shoot,” I said. “Filming a Bar Mitzvah would be more rewarding than this. Is he, you know, crazy?”

She shook her head. That afternoon we took a call with the Oscar-winning cinematographer. When I finished my setup, I checked to see if Janusz was still there. Shockingly, he was. And after the Nanoabsorber(tm) chat, not only was he still there, but he offered several ideas about how to make the demo more dynamic.

Before we ended the call, I asked Janusz if I could ask one last question.

“Sure.”

“You’ve been behind the camera for some of the finest films of our time, why the … why would you want anything to do with