I’ve been a lurker here for years upon years, and haven’t ever made a single post until this problem finally stumped my Google-fu.
For months I’ve been trying to find a commercial that I saw a few years back, but without anything approaching luck. I remember it being for a news agency or paper, and I remember a lot of specific details about the commercial itself (the actions, the look of the man who is the ‘main character’ so to say and other minutiae) but never enough details to actually track down a link.
Anyhow… after so long without any luck, I figured I’d turn to the SDMB! Where better to find masters of the Internets whose skills with search engines far exceed my own!?
Right, flattery out of the way, the commercial was fairly simple. It started with a guy, sort of scruffy around the edges, walking down a street and essentially saving people from accidents. For example, he randomly pushes a guy down, only to have a television fall where the man was standing. Likewise, he trips a small boy running past him and saves the kid from a car speeding by. This goes on for a few more iterations before he puts down a newspaper and walks into a building; with the voice-over or text implying something about the paper knowing the future.
Please, Dopers, help me prove that I’m not insane and dreaming up this intricate of a fantasy commercial.
This board is extremely good at stuff like this - note how Nicest of the Damned answered within hours. (The advert’s background music by Dusty Springfield is a nice touch.)
A UK newspaper (the Guardian) ran a print advert where a scruffy youth pushes a man - in order to save him from falling debris. Perhaps they were inspired by your advert.
It was for Nick at Nite and featured a clip from the Andy Griffith Show. It was Opie talking to Andy and telling him that Aunt Bea was giving *****s to people around town. They purposely bleeped out what he was saying to make you think it was something vulgar.
I think they even did a series of commercials like this.
Hampshire, you seem to have broken my Google-fu with this one. There are some collections of old promos on youtube but they are mostly arranged by date. If you have some idea when it was being aired you might have some luck there. I looked at a few and found one for the Smothers Brothers that had a horn beeping over the what is obviously the word “hell”, that’s the closest I could find. Looks like it’s from about 1987-1988. It’s here at about 2:15.
Much as it shames me to send you to another board after the glowing praise we received above, I feel I should mention there is a forum for the Andy Griffith show on the TV Land website. You might find someone there who knows what you are looking for. http://forums.tvland.com/tvln/board?board.id=64
Opie and Anthony do the “clever insertion of bleeps to make it sound dirty” gimmick, and they freely admit that they ripped it off of (I think) Craig Ferguson (or some other late night show host.) It appears that it’s being used all over.
Speaking of commercials and Nick-at-Night promos (I think), Cheers had been off the air for years, then reruns had faded into relative obscurity and distant memory. Then one day Kelsey Grammer shows up on the screen pretty much as Kelsey Grammer (i.e., not Frasier, no set, etc.). He looks into the camera and starts "A man walks into a bar … " and gave a brief monologue announcing that Cheers was coming back to television.
I probably misremember lots of details (maybe he was in a pyrotechnic clown suit), and maybe it was a rather mundane commercial. But two seconds into it all the greatness that was Cheers, all the warmth and camaraderie that was its essence came back in a swoop. Anyone else catch it? Can anyone find it?
There was a commercial on tv sometime ago to promote not smoking where a girl brings a guy home to meet the family, who are gathered around the dining table. He starts coughing like crazy and one of his lungs splats onto the white tablecloth all bloody. The family dog jumps up and grabs it and runs off. The family looks stunned and uncomfortable as though they are ashamed at their dog’s bad manners. Anyone know where to find that?
And we appreciate it. If it weren’t about an ad, where I feel comfortable, I might’ve associated it with a movie or TV show or…okay it didn’t have to be an ad for me to feel superior, but I hadn’t seen that one.
It’s very possible. I don’t watch late nite talk shows much anymore. But I’m thinking now that they borrowed the “slow down the audio so that the guy sounds drunk” gimmick from Ferguson. So maybe the “bleep game” came from Kimmel.
Probably a “Truth” commercial. I used to go smoke whenever one came on just out of spite.
I know Adult Swim had a series of promos in a similar vein. I think the tagline was “edited for television.”
Might the TV Land spot have been part of their “Times Change, Great TV Doesn’t” campaign? TV Land had a whole series of ads that jokingly showed what some of their shows might have been like if they were made today- the girls from Petticoat Junction singing the Spice Girls, Ed Norton doing the Hucklebuck to rap music, etc. Andy Griffith swearing sounds like it would be part of the same thing.
(The advert’s background music by Dusty Springfield is a nice touch.)
