Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (21 page)

He’s not happy with the way the bear’s moving. You don’t know why he’s unhappy. Clients have different styles. They can’t articulate it. They begin to thrash around. You have to remain calm and figure out what’s bothering him. Then you light on it and say, “We can change that.” And he says, “Oh yeah? Then it’s okay.” Occasionally we present to people who are crazy.

Originally I was a copywriter. I sat in a room and it was very simple. I would go to the boss and he’d tell me what he wanted. I’d go back to my room and try to write it, and get mad and break pencils and pound on the wall. Then finish it and take it in to him, and change it and change it, and then I’d go back and write it over again and take it in to him and he’d change it again, and I’d take it back. This would happen thirty or forty times and then we’d move to another man. He’d put his feet on the desk and change it again.

Now that the burden of work is greater, I take home less. I’ve gotten more and more good at erasing things from my mind. That’s why I leave myself little notes on the typewriter. I just got back from a three-day weekend and I can hardly find the office. (Laughs.) I erased it completely from my mind. I think it’s a sign of health. When you’re doing creative work, you should think about it all the time. When you’re doing administrative work, you should think about it as little as possible.

There’s the contemplative mind and the business mind. The good businessman is always willing to make decisions on incomplete evidence. I came out of a whole contemplative mode. It was hard for me to learn that you have to make a decision. Advertising is terrific for spot decisions. I think I make more decisions in a week than my clients make in a year. I’ve changed a lot, I think.

Often the products are pretty much the same—which is why there’s advertising. If the products were very different, you wouldn’t need the skill you do. In some way, I think, advertising is very good for any writer, because of this whole image-making thing. Before, I had a tendency to get very word-involved. It’s very like when you program computers. It’s breaking everything down in this strange new way. Then you learn it and it becomes natural to you—seeing pictures instead of arguments.

I’m glad I didn’t go into philosophy. I don’t think I have the right personality for it. I think it involves talent. Also, it involves a language that fewer and fewer people can speak. Finally, you’re speaking to yourself. Advertising is a more social business, which is also frustrating. I’m not sure I’m happy in advertising, but I don’t think philosophy would have been heaven for me. I think I’d rather write—movies or books. For some reason I don’t do that.

Advertising’s a fashion business. There are five stages. “Who is this guy, John Fortune?” The second stage: “Gee, it would be great if we could get that guy, what’s his name? John Fortune.” The third stage: “If we could only get John Fortune.” The fourth stage: “I’d like to get a young John Fortune.” The fifth stage: “Who’s John Fortune?” There are no old writers.

There’s a tremendous threat from young writers. So much so that old writers just aren’t around. When an older writer gets fired, he just doesn’t get another job. I think there’s a farm out in the Middle West or something where they’re tethered. I don’t know what happens to them.

You should start moving when you’re about thirty-five. If you’re not in a supervisory position around then, you’re in trouble. By the time you’re forty, you should be a creative director. That’s the guy with a lot of people under him and nobody over him on the creative staff. But there’s only room for a certain number of people who tell other people what to do.

They’re all vice presidents. They’re given that title for business reasons. Clients like to deal with vice presidents. Also, it’s a cheap thing to give somebody. Vice presidents get fired with great energy and alacrity. (Laughs.) And they get jobs doing public relations for Trujillo or somebody. Or they go out and form their own company which you never hear of again.

There’s a kind of cool paradox in advertising. There’s a pressure toward the safe, tried and true that has worked in the past. But there’s a tremendous need in the agency business for the fresh and the new, to differentiate this one agency from another. Writers are constantly torn between these two goals: selling the product and selling themselves. If you do what they tell you, you’re screwed. If you don’t do what they tell you, you’re fired. You’re constantly trying to make it, fighting. The struggle that goes on . . .

It becomes silly to some people, but poignant too. You see people fighting to save a little nuance in a formula commercial. There’s a type called “slice of life.” Somebody I know called it “slice of death.” It is the standard commercial that starts out in the kitchen. Two people are arguing about a product. “How come you’re getting your wash so white?” “I use this.” “How can that be as good as this?” “Because it contains . . .” And she gives the reasons why it’s better. It follows the formula. People are forced to write it because it’s effective. But you see people fighting for some little touch they’ve managed to work in. So they can put it on their reel and get another job. Somebody will say, “Aha, look at the way it worked there.” You want the thing to be better.

People at parties will come up and denounce me. There’s a lot of paranoia about the power of advertising. They say we’re being controlled, manipulated. Sometimes I enjoy playing the devil’s advocate, so I’ll exaggerate it: “We take human needs and control them.” (Laughs.) I have an active fantasy life—not during the workday, because it’s coming at me so fast. Many of my fantasies have to do with the control of society. Very elaborate technological-type fantasies: a benign totalitarianism controlled by me.

Actually, my career choice in advertising, which I’ve drifted into, is connected with the fantasy of power. I have a sense of slowly increasing power, but the limits are very frustrating. I feel I want to do more, but I feel restraints within the system and myself. I think I hold myself back more than the system does. The system is easy to work within if you’re willing to, if you’re smart enough . . .

What would our country be like without advertising? I don’t know. (Laughs.) It would be a different country, I think.

 

POSTSCRIPT:
At a pub in mid-Manhattan frequented by advertising people, he said, “I have a recurring dream in which I’m a stand-up comedian. I’m standing on a stage with a blue spotlight on me, talking. I begin by telling jokes. Gradually, I begin to justify my life. I can’t quite see the audience. The light becomes more and more intense. I can’t remember what I say. I usually end up crying. This dream I’ve had maybe three, four times.”

“I didn’t do commercials until about ’62, ’63. Actors didn’t do commercials. Beautiful blondes, Aryan models, six feet three, did commercials. A friend of mine told me, ‘They’re starting to look for people who look like people.’ This one time I went down, they were looking at people all day. I happened to hit them right. One of the guys said, ‘He has a French quality about him.’ It was for Byrrh, a French
apéritif,
which is similar to Cinzano.
”

 

I did this commercial in ’64. A thing called Byrrh
¹⁶
on the Rocks. I have a citation. They have festivals for commercials. Isn’t that laughable? (Laughs.) It won five international awards—in Cannes, in Dublin, in Hollywood, in New York, in London. The goddamn thing was a local commercial. I walk in the bar and ask for Byrrh on the rocks. Everybody turns and laughs and looks at me. The bartender . . . It was played in every station, day and night.

This commercial became so successful that I couldn’t walk down the street. I now know what it’s like to be famous, and I don’t want it. I couldn’t walk down the street. I’d be mobbed. People would grab me, “Hey, Byrrh on the rocks! You’re the guy!” They’d pin me against the wall and the guy would say to his wife, “Hey, look who I got here!” I once got out of the subway at Times Square and a guy grabbed me and slammed me against the wall. (Laughs.) Crowds of people gathered around. My wife was terrified. They were all screaming, “Byrrh on the rocks!” Because of that little TV box.

They don’t know your name but once they see your face, you’re so familiar, you belong in their home. It really was terrifying, but I enjoyed it very much. It was great. It was like being a short Rock Hudson. (Laughs.) Sure, there’s a satisfaction. I like a certain amount of it. I enjoy having people say complimentary things. I’m a gregarious person. I stop and tell them anything they want to know about making commercials, about the business and so on. But at times it does interfere with your life.

I took a vacation. I went down to San Juan. There’s nobody in San Juan but New Yorkers. I wouldn’t go to the beach. The minute I stepped out, somebody would say, “Hey! Hey! Don’t I know you? Ain’t you the guy . . . ?” In the early days of live TV they couldn’t figure out where they knew you from. Some guy would say, “Hey, you from Buffalo?” I’d say, “No.” “Well, goddamn, there’s a guy in my home town looks just like you.” I’d say, “Did you ever watch ‘T Men in Action’ or ‘The Big Story’ on TV?” “Oh yeah! You’re the guy!”

I came out of a movie house one day. I hadn’t gone more than few feet when two guys moved in on me, pushed me against the wall. I thought I was being held up. They flashed badges. They were detectives. One said, “Would you mind coming back into the lobby?” I said, “What for?” “We’d like to talk to you.” So they moved me back and there was a woman, screaming, “That’s him, he’s the one!” Somebody had stolen her purse in the movie house and she fingered me. I played a gangster on TV in those days. The boss would say, “Hey, Shorty, do this.” And I’d say, “Yeah boss.” They were all alike. I asked the woman if she had seen ’T Men in Action’ on Thursday. This was Saturday. “Oh, my God,” she said, “That’s where I saw you.” (Laughs.) The dicks couldn’t do enough. They drove me home in their car.

People still come up to me, even to this day. They’re generally very polite. They say, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to impose, I just want to tell you that I enjoy your commercials very much.” Every once in a while I run into somebody who says, “I saw you in
The Great Sebastian
,”
¹⁷
or, “I saw you in
Cactus Flower.
” But everybody doesn’t go to the theater. Everybody has television.
¹⁸
People ask for my autograph on the street, anywhere. Quite often someone will say he saw me in such and such a play. But it’s really the commercials.

I’m a working actor. If you want to work, you have to do everything. To me, acting is a craft, a way of life. I have never been obsessed with the sickening drive inside to become a star. Possibly it’s because I came into it very late in life. I was thirty-seven years old when I became a professional actor. I was a little more realistic about life. I knew the percentage of somebody who is five feet six and a half inches tall, who is dark and ethnic looking. The chances of becoming a star were quite remote. I’ve conditioned myself not to want it, because the odds against it are too great.

Since I came to New York, I’ve never been out of work. I’ve had only one relatively poor period, because my face became too familiar in television commercials. Where it got kinda lean, you begin to wonder if maybe you’ve gotten too old or whether you’re worn-out. Through all these years, I went from one thing into another. I’d finish a play, there’d be a movie. In-between there’d be TV plays, there’d be commercials. I’ve signed with an office, all they do is TV commercials. Financially I’m not concerned. I have a little better than a hundred grand in the market. I want to go live in Mexico, but who wants to stop working?

 

“I’ve never submitted to any kind of cattle call. Some agents will call all the actors they know and send them down. So there’s hundreds of actors scuffling, trying to get in. I have an appointment at a given hour. I’m ushered in and treated with respect. What governs your getting that job—so many things over which you have no control. Often they say, ‘Gee, he’s fine for the part.’ They get a different star and you’re put into juxtaposition to him. Suddenly they say, ‘Instead of using Arny, we’re gonna get a big fat guy.’ These are the vagaries of the business. You learn to live with them. With a financial cushion it’s easier, I suppose.”
(
Laughs
.)

 

If you’re not a star, there is humiliation and degradation—if you allow it to happen to you. People who do the hiring can be very rude at times. You don’t find that too much in the theater, because the theater still has a certain nicety to it. You find it in TV commercial casting. They’re deluged. Many people, having seen the commercials, say, “Hell, I could do that.” You take a guy playing a truckdriver. So a truckdriver says, “Hell, I can do that.” It’s always been an overcrowded field simply because there was never enough work for actors. Residuals, that’s the thing that’s kept actors going through the years when there wasn’t any work.