So, I saw Doug Pray’s “Art & Copy” the other night. Because it’s essentially an ad for advertising, it offered a novel perspective (wait for it): a movie about advertising that features conversations with people that actually work in advertising. No Klein-ist sweater and keffayeh wearing leftist intellectuals/activists, mostly just ad-(wo)men.

Watching the film, you immediately fall in love with these supposed iconoclasts of the ad industry … and once you actually see the ads they made — well — you will be hella disappointed. This is not true of all the people we meet in the film; them OG’s were reppin’ it right (see: Crocker Bank “Wedding” & Classic VW Beetle Ads). But something in the 80’s marked a turning point where it seems that all advertising icons possessed ample charisma and a complete lack of taste. I can’t get over the fact that Pray builds these people up as paragons of innovative and ethical advertising, but is somehow totally oblivious to their ineptitude. Watching these ads will profoundly disappoint most viewers but Pray seems to think that these commercials are just as compelling as the stories of the people who created them.

This contradiction inadvertently lends the film an uncommon charm, providing the audience with a fascinating look at the potential cleavages between “talk-talking” and “walk-walking”. My poor heart can only handle so much disappointment though. The director threads a terrific yarn about Lee Clow’s humble beginnings, and then, in a terrible affront to my Windows-fanboy sensibilities, reveals Clow’s chef d’oeuvre to be a steaming-hot helping of Richard-Drefyuss-vehiculed-horse-byproduct. If this is what David and Goliath is about, I’m pulling for the big guy.

The picture concludes (do documentaries warrant spoiler alerts?) with the message that there are good and bad ads and that only the good ones are genuine ‘art’. This is a premise which I’m not sure that I accept. Either it’s all art or none of it is. On the other hand, I know that I avoid all products associated with this brand of high-minded hackery. Out of the ads featured in the film, I will take the potent simplicity and earnestness of Where’s the Beef? over the duplicitous benevolence of Let Me Play, any day of the proverbial week. That may be a largely aesthetic judgement on my part, since Burger King almost certainly has less to do with beef than Nike has to do with women’s sports, but fundamentally, I just loath being guilted into consumption. All together now: “Papa Burger, don’t preach!” (yes, I know that’s A&W.)

One thing still bugs me, though: arguably the most effective commercial in the film, is also one of the preachiest. My philosophical musings about advertising, be damned; any ad that can get me to empathize in any way with one of the coldest, ugliest, most egomaniacal souls in the history of professional sport, well … no one can rightly call that a ‘failure’ (see what I did right there?).

Oh, the other weird thing: I really enjoyed the film.

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