Perhaps it was fate that my
final paper my senior year of high school and my final paper my senior year of
college are both on Errol Morris. I was first introduced to Morris during my high
school senior year AP English Language class. Our teacher was a fanatic and our
final papers were dedicated to deciphering Morris’ intent behind Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control. While
I don’t entirely remember what my conclusion was on the film, I distinctly
remember being just as confused about Morris then as I am today. The reason why
I started a twitter four years ago was to follow Errol Morris as research for
my paper and since then, I’ve been baffled at his idiosyncrasies, intelligence,
and charm. His ability to direct commercials that are just as whimsical and
telling as his documentaries amazes me. Almost five years since my final senior
year high school paper and I still haven’t figured this guy out.
Google Errol Morris and
you’ll find Roger Ebert calling his first film, Gates of Heaven, one of “the ten greatest films ever made.” You’d
never expect to fall in love with a movie about pet cemeteries but somehow
Morris makes that possible. I’ve come to love his documentaries for his unique
style and his Interrotron, a machine with a name that hints his interviewing
knack, a little scary and a whole lot inventive. Through my scouring of the web
to read more on Morris, never did I expect to find that he would be a
commercial director for Taco Bell.
Disclaimer: there’s nothing
wrong with commercials, sometimes they prove to be funnier than you expected.
From the Geico’s lime green talking lizard to “Got Milk” to the “iconic” Taco
Bell Chihuahua commercials, these short clips selling us a product have become
as memorable and as engrained in pop culture as worthy Oscar winning films,
actors, and actresses. Often packed with bigger budgets than a movie and much
shorter than a television show, commercials are probably more fun to make today
than they ever were. I imagine big companies throwing money at ad agencies
months before the Super Bowl to make the best commercial the United States has
ever seen – a commercial that will be featured in every YouTube top ten Super
Bowl commercial list. Why does Morris continue making “Super Bowl worthy” commercials
instead of sticking to his documentaries? Since 1970s,
Morris has produced documentaries on subjects ranging from pet cemeteries (Gates of Heaven) to jailed innocents (The Thin Blue Line) to naked mole rat
specialists (Fast, Cheap, & Out of
Control) to sex scandals (Tabloid),
Robert McNamara (Fog of War), and
more. Why would he want to add Taco Bell to that grand list of accomplishments?
Money is
almost always the biggest issue for starving artists. His first documentary was
contingent on whether Morris would have enough money to finish production of The Gates of Heaven.
Side note: Werner
Herzog, the German film director, Morris’ mentor and at that time, current film
professor, promised to cook and eat his own shoe if the movie was ever
completed. Morris completed the film and Herzog followed through with his bet.
The event was captured in Les Blank’s 1980 documentary, Werner Herzog Eats His
Shoe. The two, Herzog and Morris, became life long friends and collaborators.
Side
note to the side note: The bet was a premonition to their artistic lives
together. Morris and Herzog recently collaborated on The Act of Killing, the
documentary reenacting the squad leaders of Indonesia’s mid-1960s mass
killings, forcing them to confront their crimes by making them reenact the
killings for the camera. They were credited as executive producers of the film
but are both responsible for getting The Act of Killing funded.
Yet, Morris’ luck with
funding has never been that simple and fun. After his second movie, Vernon, Florida, he could not get any
financer to back his films. In the eighties
he found work as a private detective, polishing his natural investigative
skills. His ability to have people confess to him is
quite uncanny. In an interview
with Smithsonian magazine, Morris revealed a little about his past as a
private eye detective. His method of getting people to confess was essentially
by ambushing them at their own home. He would go to the house of the person he
was investigating and knock on their door. Sounds a little suspicious but
mostly pretty innocent, the person did not even have to be part of the case
that he was investigating. As soon as they would open the door, he’d flip open
his wallet, show his badge, and say, “I guess we
don’t have to tell you why we’re here.” The person behind the door would almost
immediately start crying and ask, “How did you find out?” There’s just
something about Errol Morris that makes one want to confess everything to him.
I’m not surprised the person would start crying to him. After reading multiple
interviews with Morris, this willingness to confess seems like a trend in his
documentaries as well. Having people accidently or willingly confess to him is
not a novelty for Morris. Spoiler alert: watch The Thin
Blue Line and see how David Harris confesses to the murder, freeing wrongly
accused Randall Dale Adams.
Side
note: it
took Morris over a year to track Harris down. He didn’t have much money and
Harris was doing construction work in Houston and would not show up for his
interviews. The weekend that Harris killed Mark Walter Mays, a case he was later
executed for, he was scheduled for an interview with Morris. Morris’ favorite
excuse for missing an appointment: “I’m sorry, I was off killing someone.” The
quote alone is a great look into how obsessed Morris is with death and the
little understanding people have of other people and ourselves. Previous
explanations on murders had left Morris feeling inadequate and uneasy, one
motivation for his probing documentaries.
His subjects
are unusual people with unusual jobs and stories. His work probes through
perceptions and media representations to bring reality to the public watching
his documentaries. The Thin Blue Line hinges
on fabricated eyewitness testimony. He’s practically continued
his career as a private investigator through these documentaries that question
human nature. His interviews become less of an adversarial interview where you
watch the subject squirming to avoid the question. His style is much more
stream-of-consciousness where he spends hours taping his “victims” and letting them
ramble. Allowing his interviewers to simply just talk is one way Morris makes
his subjects feel comfortable. Morris wants to
uncover the truth behind every lie or person and besides his own charm and
patience; his Interrotron helps with uncovering truths.
In any Errol Morris movie,
you’ll notice the unique documentary style of his interviewees talking right
into the camera lens. Like many before me, multiple articles have discussed how
Morris shoots the video. By using a two-way mirror with a video monitor mounted
under the camera lens, Morris films his subject and makes eye contact with them
from the same angle. The Interrotron works both ways: the same mechanism that
allows Morris to make eye contact with the interviewer allows the interviewer
to make eye contact with Morris. The outcome is real human intimacy. The
subject becomes comfortable in their conversation with him because they’re not
staring directly at the impersonal camera. They’re having a direct conversation
with a man they have gotten to know and probably like. The audience watching
the documentary also experiences some of this comfort. While watching his
documentary, the interviewers break the fourth barrier by looking directly into
the camera and into the audience.
Side
note: Morris
did not invent the camera angle. Steve Hardie, production designer and
Morris collaborator, invented a nearly identical system before Morris used his.
Thanks to his numerous Oscar winning awards, Morris is now attributed to the
being the inventor of the Interrotron. It’s unique nickname comes from Morris’
wife, Julia Sheehan. The name combined two necessary concepts in his
documentaries – terror and interview.
The most important
attribute of the Morris documentary is how revealing the interviewee becomes
under Morris’ gaze. Let’s take a second to recognize the dramatic moment we all
have when someone makes eye contact with us. Either you look away or you brave
the glare, staring right back. Morris describes the dramatics of eye contact as
“a serial killer telling us that he’s about to kill us; or a loved one
acknowledging a moment of affection. Regardless, it’s a moment with dramatic
value…It’s an essential part of communication. And yet, it is lost in standard
interviews on film.” For him, the Interrotron is Morris’ way of becoming one
with the camera and forcing human interaction. He holds the dramatic eye
contact, creating this beautiful moment between the two of mutual respect,
admiration, and curiosity. Unlike the name, the Interrotron does not seem to
actually terrorize people. In an interview
with FLM Magazine, Morris explains that oddly enough, people feel more
relaxed when they talk to his live video image. His production designer, Ted
Bafaloukos, said, “The beauty of this thing is that it allows people to do what
they do best. Watch television.” The Interrotron creates a comfortable distance
and intimacy that people are familiar with in their living rooms.
The immediately recognizable Morris direct-to-lens feature, the
playful almost circus like music tittering in the background can also be seen
in almost all of his filmmaking. Morris does not only use the machine for his
documentaries, he uses them for his commercials too. One reason behind his
involvement with commercials is definitely monetary. As I discussed earlier,
Morris had early financial difficulties with his second documentary and had to
become a private eye detective to finance his later ventures. As a result, Morris
has filmed over a thousand commercials throughout his career which have helped
to fund his later workds. His first campaign was “Mobile Judge” featuring a
judge who travelled around the U.S. declaring 7-11 to be the best convenient
store. He got his big break
directing commercials after he created a short film that ran at the beginning
of the 2002 Oscar ceremony. Steve
Jobs was in the audience and asked Morris to direct his campaign entitled
“Switch.” Yet why does Morris continue to create commercials? After his
success with Fog Of War, Morris has
been able to receive generous funding and backing for his films.
In an interview
with Cineaste, Morris briefly touched on his love for commercials.
“Cineaste:
You’ve told us that you’ve been very busy in recent years shooting commercials.
Can you name some of the products?
Morris:
I’ve done a whole line of commercials for Miller High Life, I’ve done
commercials for Levis and Volkswagen-for both of which I used the
Interrotron—and I’ve also done commercials for Adidas, Honda, Dell, and Datek.
Cineaste:
You are rarely asked about your commercials, which is obviously a major source
of income for you. Do you like commercials?
Morris:
I love commercials, unreservedly. The haiku of the West. And I like to think of
consumerism as the most effective preventative to genocide yet devised. When
someone shows up at your door and asks you to hack your neighbor to death with
a machete, you’re less likely to do it, if you have prior plans, say, to go and
buy a DVD player.”
In the answer to the
interview question, he realizes the purpose of the commercial: they are meant
to sell you something. Consumerism is the best way to prevent genocide, being
able to purchase a DVD player instead of kill your neighbor is what makes the
United States of America THE United States of America. The ability to transfer
this idea to a commercial and create an intimacy between the viewer and the
product inherently makes the United States a better place. The intimacy that
Morris creates in his documentaries translates well in his commercials. In a
twisted way, the barrier that is broken between the advertisement and the
consumer makes the consumer more comfortable with buying the product or as
Morris said, prevent genocide.
His comparison of
commercials to poetry might be offensive to some but Morris has been so
innovative with his work in the past that a commercial often turns into a much
larger work. For example, one of his latest commercials is for Taco
Bell’s new breakfast menu. Taco Bell gathered real people named Ronald
McDonald and hired Errol Morris to interview them. The commercials feature the
classic Morris whimsical piano background music set up with the interviews
looking directly at the camera. Much like his documentaries, you can hear
Morris in the background asking the poignant questions. In the Taco Bell ads,
he is asking the Ronald McDonalds if they “like the waffle taco.”
The commercials all start
with whimsical music and shots of men eating the Taco Bell breakfast menu items.
They all introduce themselves and in one commercial, you can hear Morris
yelling “you’re who?!” After a couple more shots of the Ronald McDonalds eating
Taco Bell, Morris asks, “what do you think?” Creatively speaking, the
commercial is not complicated. In the classic Morris style, the commercial is
just a bunch of dudes answering his questions. The advertising agency wanted to
break away from the traditional food commercial featuring beauty shots of fresh
food. For a more intimate commercial, they turned to Morris.
In an interview
with the New Yorker, Morris reveals that he found out a lot more about the
Ronald McDonalds than what appears in the commercials. Some of the material can
be found in the behind the scenes outtakes which are enough to make a mini
documentary ala Morris. One McDonald that didn’t make it into the behind the
scenes cut said, Taco Bell breakfast is insanely
good. And I should know—I work at a maximum-security hospital for the
criminally insane.” Another McDonald confessed that he had been married seven
times. The name apparently is a “real babe magnet”
Through this superficially humorous commercial, Morris finds
a way to seek meaning from his subjects. He used the Interrotron to make direct
eye contact with all of the Ronald McDonalds. Morris told the New Yorker
“people who have worked with me for a long time have said this was my very best
material.” The advertising agency, Deutsch L.A. also had some ingenuity in
hiring Morris to create this idiosyncratic commercial. Deutsch did not tell
Morris Although the commercial is just intended to sell the new breakfast as
well as throw a nice jab at McDonald’s, Morris manages to find a deeper meaning
in Taco Bell A.M. Breakfast Crunch Wrap.
Showing off his
degree in Philosophy, Morris tweets
his fascination over names and their significance in reverence of Saul Kripke’s
theory of connection between names and things in the world: “Rigid
designators v. descriptions. Ronald McDonald (the clown), the Ronald McDonalds
(the persons), & "Ronald McDonald" (the name).” The name is
attached to the cultural association and to the actual person. The line between
the cultural association and implication of the McDonalds name and the person
becomes thin during first interviews. We see them as representatives of the
actual McDonalds and not as real people. The loaded emotions behind the name
were difficult for some. For other McDonalds, there was McDonald pride. In one
of the commercials we’re introduced to Ronald McDonald II and Ronald McDonald
III. Morris asked Ronald McDonald III if he would name his son Ronald McDonald
IV and if he hoped his son would name his son Ronald McDonald V? He answered
yes. However, not all McDonalds feel this way – Morris found in interviews that
some McDonalds changed their name but still saw themselves as “McDonalds,” the
name is “inescapable.” The fine print at the end of the commercial speaks to
the same thin line Morris studied between the clown, the person, and the name. “These Ronald McDonalds are not affiliated with McDonald’s
Corporation and were individually selected as paid endorsers of Taco Bell
breakfast, but man, they sure did love it.”
After watching
the back-story on the Ronald McDonalds, I felt sympathetic towards the men who
have to live with the name Ronald McDonald. The men all thought the commercial
was a scam, a prank phone call that they have all received throughout their
lives, a small glimpse into the life of a “Ronald McDonald” As the Ronalds’
were brought together, they shared stories about growing up and having to
develop a “thick skin” due to all the rampant bullying they encountered. They
shared stories about their first day of school experience and how a teacher
always paused after reading their name off the list. One Ronald showed off his
“stare,” he would give off as a defense measure. Each Ronald shares similar
stories but they’re all from different backgrounds. Ignoring the obvious
product placement of Taco Bell breakfast, the back-story becomes an interesting
look inside the life of men who have to deal with the consequence of being
associated with a big scary red fast food clown. Who would have ever thought
twice about the implications of being named Ronald McDonald and whether there
would be pride or shame entangled with the name? Morris asks the questions we
might briefly consider but never act upon regardless of the artistic medium.
Whether it’s a documentary, a tweet, or a commercial, Errol Morris makes us
question the reality of our perception and gives us insight into a world that
we may have otherwise ignored.
Television
commercials and smaller projects of his seem to often give him guidance as to
what his next project could be. Just as he uses his twitter as a drawing board
for his blog, the Morris commercial becomes an inspiration board for a greater
documentary. Much like his work with the behind the scenes of Taco Bell, Morris
used outtakes of a Donald Trump interview for a commercial to create a mini
documentary about the man. If he can get permission from Taco Bell, he wants to
make a similar mini documentary about the Ronald McDonalds of the world. This
is what I love most about Morris, his ability to create a story about the most
unusual things. While he was not the mastermind behind the Taco Bell Ronald
McDonald commercial, he took something as contrived as a breakfast
advertisement to create something thoughtful and enlightening.
Nathalie,
ReplyDeleteI learned so much from this. I had no idea Errol Morris made ads. You bring a whole cluster of artists and filmmakers together--everyone should check out the Les Blank film about Herzog, then watch Les Blank's other documentary about the making of Fitzcaraldo, "Burden of Dreams," and then, for added bonus points, watch Blank's "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers"--thanks, Nathalie, for all of these referrals. The big question this piece raises is how to assess and judge an art form--the ad--whose aesthetic remains so elusive, because its designs upon consumers seems to totalizing and final.
Great work--a really surprising final piece. DC