(I hope this is safe for Cafe Society…)
Russell Crowe’s been in the headlines recently for blasting other celebs like Harrison Ford and Robert DeNiro for doing commercials, especially in other countries:
Agree? Disagree? What do you guys think?
It’s pretty cheesy, and has zero effect on my choice of products and services, but actors who do this are really just selling their only valuable commodity, their fame. So while I think it’s dumb, I don’t think it’s wrong or anything.
Celebrity pitches don’t affect my buying decisions.
But Russell Crowe is still kind of a pretentious idiot. “Contract with the audience”? Puhleeze. Wonder if he’ll still be so noble when the only gigs he’s getting are occasional guest star spots on whatever Murder She Wrote-style washed-up-star-dumping-ground show is popular in ten years.
Crowe’s a prick.
If a celebrity wants to make some quick and easy money, more power to them and screw the holier-than-thou types that insist consumerism is somehow detrimental to their “art”. It’s a business and they’re businessmen and you shouldn’t deny them their rent money, even if it *is *$50,000 a month or whatever.
It doesn’t bother me much. The only celebrity ad campaign that kinda got to me was when Sir Laurence Olivier sold out and did a batch of commercials for Polaroid. That seemed sad. This man was widely regarded as the greatest actor of his time, and he became a cheap pitchman for an instant camera.
On the other hand, the James Garner / Mariette Hartley ads for Kodak were delightful.
Clooney shot back with
Crowe’s a crazy git. If Clooney and Kidman and crew want to make $5 million hawking Ronco Bass-a-Matics on late-night, I’m not their manager and I’m no more or less likely to buy one than I was before and to quote Thomas Jefferson “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg”. I’m more bothered when acting politicians sign multimillion dollar publishing or speaking deals as THAT can be conflict of interest. Actors have no “interests” in the public sense.
I love any thread that gives me the excuse to dump on Russell Crowe. Loser. 
The only comment I have on celebrities doing advertisements is that it sometimes makes me…uncomfortable. I’m always like, “why is Patricia Heaton raving about her vegetables from Jewel?” Or, “why has David Spade resorted to working as a customer service rep?” I think, in Spade’s case, that it’s because I see the actor as “out of character” and can’t reconcile it. With the Jewel ads (or cellphones with Catherine Zeta-Jones or whatever), it makes me feel oogy because it’s really obvious that these people are just being paid to pimp a product. It’s apparent that this is simply another paycheck, and it’s really silly to listen to what they have to say.
I don’t feel that way about random commercial actors, though, because I can still rest safely in the illusion that they’re “real people.”
I couldn’t agreee more. I respect art, but to me it’s just another face of the work ethic in general.
An actor is supposed to do the best job possible in a film/play/commercial/whatever. That’s what they signed on for. It doesn’t matter if the venue is not a “high-toned” one. You show up on time, know your lines, give it your best shot, and nobody can look down on you for that.
Though, it must be said, in Olivier’s case, most of the career choices that Olivier made in the last 20 years or so of his acting career are sad, unless you actually like Inchon or Khartoum.
Although I’m no more like to use the product, I must admit, I pay more attention to those ads with Catherine Zeta-Jones in them. I mean, I always pay attention when she’s on screen.
But now that I think of it, I’m not really sure which wireless company she pitches for. I guess they didn’t exactly do what they wanted.
Remember Ricardo Mantalban’s Chrysler Cordova ads feauring the fine corinthian leather? I loved that commercial. Somehow it added to his performance as Khan in Star Trek II a few years later. “Oooh, not only is he an evil superhuman genius, but I’ll bet his taste in cars, clothes and yachts is superb.” I was 10 at the time, so no Cordova flames please.
It was a few years later that I learned what else Orson “We sell no wine before it’s time.” Welles had accomplished besides being the pitch man for Paul Masson. :smack:
I’m surprised musicians don’t get in on this more often. I saw Alice Cooper in a UK commercial last year, thought it was great. I wonder what GWAR or Marilyn Manson would hawk on TV if the opportunity arose. Orange has turn-off-your-mobile-phone spots in UK theatres featuring curent actors as themselves, they’re usually pretty well done. (Spike Lee, Sean Austin). My favorite celebrity commercials are the ones with Jennifer Anniston selling credit cards.
What’s Crowe on about contracts and sacrilege? These people are paid to entertain us, same as singers, stand up comedians, fire-breathers and water skiing squirrels (I’m not sure the squirrels are paid, but I could be wrong). I like Crowe’s movies, even if he seems to be something of a git in person.
Anyone remember the TV Funhouse episode where an out-of-work Mr T crashes the set for a TV commercial?
“Cut the jibber jabber and pick up them Maxi Pads!” A classic.
Stay in Drugs!
You know I was watching some TV ads this evening and I noticed something - they’re full of actors! All these people are just repeating words someone else wrote for them! It totally shattered my illusions and destroyed all the respect I’ve felt over the years that acting was the noblest of all professions.
But I will say that Jewel probably crossed a line when she sold the rights to Intuition to sell ladies’ razors. Wasn’t the whole point of that song to satirize artists who sell their work for product endorsements?
Crowe would have a point if a celebrity swore to never do commercials and ended up on Japanese TV hawking jellied eel nuggets or some such thing.
It’s similar to the “musicians who sell out” argument.
I don’t respond well to advertising and having a celebrity try to sell me something isn’t gonna change that.
Little Nemo brings up an interesting point: the people who act in commercials (as regular actors, not celebrity spokesmen) are in the exact same profession Crowe’s in: acting. This quote of his really comes off sounding like a spit in the face of all those other actors whose work is beneath him.
Sacrelige? Dude reeelly needs to get over himself. I look forward to seeing him in about ten years or so on The $25,000 Pyramid.
Yes, that’s true. In the last part of his life he mentioned more than once during interviews that he was hoping to amass a nice nest egg for his family. It’s too bad he had to take crappy roles to do it, but he had so much class that even the crap looked good when he was on screen.
I came from a generation that believed that selling a product other than your art was a sellout.
Twenty years ago, The Stones or The Doors or The Who wouldn’t have dreamed of selling Doritos or Pepsi or Jim Beam to make some coin. Back then it was all about the art and the experience. About bucking authority. About making a statement. To be compensated for your art is one thing; to be paid to sell deoderant is another.
Today, though, famous actors and artists don’t think twice about compromising their artistic integrity to make a few bucks.
I find it offensive, and it does make me think less of the artist.
Hell, I love The Who, but just hearing “Who Are You” used as CSI’s theme song makes me cringe.
And, once a popular song has been used in a commercial, I can never listen to it again in the same way.
How can an actor be selling out his profession by taking an acting job? Sure, acting in a soup commercial may not be as prestigious as doing a Broadway play, but acting is acting. Where are you going to draw the line? Prime time is okay, but doing a soap opera is selling out? Movies are okay, but no straight-to-video releases? Voice over work for Pixar or the Simpsons is okay, but no Nick Toons?
How about drawing the line between roles that give you the opportunity to make some sort of meaningful artistic/creative statement and those that don’t? Or between those roles that give people entertainment and enjoyment and those that annoy them with sales pitches?
Now I’ll grant that there are, in fact, some rather clever, creative, and even artistic commercials these days, so the line is not a bright one. (It seems that ads that use celebrities are almost never clever or creative, however.)
I certainly don’t begrudge any actor taking whatever role they can get to pay the bills, but I have to say that if I were an actor, my goal would be to reach the point in my career where I no longer had to do such druge-work. Doing so after I’d made it would seem like an incredible step back to me, no matter what I received as compensation. If I, no artist by any means, feel that way, I have to wonder that actors (especially “serious” actors who appear to treat their craft as an art) don’t.
When I see an actor I respect doing commercials, I don’t feel angry or cheated, but I feel the way I do when I see them in a bad movie: I feel sad and slightly emarrassed for them. I wonder why they felt compelled to make such a choice.
I seem to have heard somewhere that British actors don’t mind doing commercials (i.e. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Laurence Olivier), while with American actors it’s sort of “taboo” and if really big names like Harrison Ford, etc. want to do commercials they have to go overseas.
I thought it was interesting how the media made a big deal over Bob Dylan being in a Victoria’s Secret commercial, with cries of him “selling out”, yet as far as I know nobody uttered a peep about U2 being in Apple commercials.