The Big Snit (1985)

When it comes to animation depicting the horrors of nuclear war from the perspective of a married couple who are seemingly unaware of the depth and the direness of their situation, Richard Condie's tragi-comic short The Big Snit is probably the second most famous of its kind, surpassed only by Jimmy T. Murakami's 1986 feature adaptation of Raymond Briggs' graphic novel When The Wind Blows.  Both films are intensely heart-breaking, although Condie's short approaches the subject with a decidedly playful, off-the-wall lunacy which contrasts with the sombre realism of Murakami's haunting masterpiece. 

Produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1985, The Big Snit is also a strong contender for the most celebrated animated short of all-time upon the subject of nuclear devastation, rivaled only the 1956 film A Short Vision by husband and wife team Peter and Joan Foldes.  Acclaimed upon release, it went on to win a multitude of awards, including the Hiroshima Prize at the Hiroshima International Film Festival in 1985, and was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 58th Academy Awards in 1986 but lost out to Børge Ring's Anna and Bella.  In addition, Matt Groening has cited the film as the inspiration for the opening scene to The Simpsons episode "Bart The Genius"; in both cases, various character quirks and relationship dynamics are established through a particularly agonising game of scrabble.

The Big Snit sees the impending threat of nuclear war played against the petty squabbles of an anonymous suburban couple who have had their momentary fill of one another's company (cleverly, the title does not make it clear to which "snit" it is referring, although as the short progresses there can be no question as to which of the two conflicts best commands our attention and emotional investment).  The wife's habit of detaching her eyeballs from her body and shaking them in order to align her pupils is irritating the snot out of her husband, who in turn has a tendency to saw compulsively at household furniture.  He's also not above a bit of foul play in his tactics on the scrabble board.  The initial tension between the couple is established entirely through understated means - awkward silences, rattling eyeballs, the futile rearranging of scrabble tiles - to the extent that we're over a minute and a half into the short before any actual dialogue is heard.  Having reached an impasse with their game of scrabble, the two decide to take a breather - the wife in order to hoover around the bathroom, and the husband to indulge in a guilty pleasure by watching his favourite show, Sawing For Teens.  By the time they return to their game, tensions have merely escalated (not helped by the husband's attempt to take a stealthy peak at his wife's scrabble tiles), with the husband finally reducing his wife to tears by making one angry accusation about her eyeball rattling habit too many.

Due to their absorption in their personal woes, and to their mishap-prone cat gnawing through the television power cord, they miss an emergency broadcast warning that a nuclear missile is headed in their direction and remain largely oblivious to the intense state of panic that has gripped the world outside (the husband becomes aware of it at one point, but can only conclude that a parade is taking place).  The manner in which the film balances the (mostly) quiet, understated world inside the house with momentary glimpses of the apocalyptic insanity unfolding beyond it is perfect, underscoring the self-contained nature of the couple's conflict and creating a sense in which the fears and concerns of the outside seem ridiculous and insignificant compared to this latest strain on their relationship.  Condie's eye for quirky details is also a delight (among the figures attempting to flee nuclear apocalypse are Santa Claus, a chicken driving a "Palace of Poultry" van and Noah with an ark full of animals).  The banality of the couple's spat is flavoured with a wonderful dash of absurdity which perfectly encapsulates the capriciousness from which everyday conflicts originate and escalate.  And yet this conflict is also treated with a degree of tension and humanity which is totally lacking in the mindless panic outside.  Our assumptions that the couple might be able to put their problems into perspective if they understood the bigger picture are completely subverted - in the build-up to the nuclear blast, the outside world is treated as little more than an intrusive distraction which the couple are fortunately able to keep at bay.  The panic from the impending catastrophe is played almost entirely for laughs - even the initial announcement has a distinctly humourous edge, what with the newscaster taking the form of a decaying skeleton, the ludicrous advice (eg: to take cover beneath a refrigerator) and the language of the warning finally merging with that of an airline announcement; gags which nevertheless underscore the overwhelming futility of the situation.

The Big Snit takes an immensely touching turn in its climax, with the husband looking to make amends with his tearful wife by playing to her on an accordion, a symbol from the early days of their relationship which serves as a wordless reaffirmation of their enduring bond.  During the accordion performance and the couple's subsequent reconciliation the commotion outside is completely tuned out, as if anything beyond it ceases to matter.  Only when the cat, apparently having had enough of being on the receiving end of so many accidents, motions to be let outside and the husband dutifully reaches for the door knob, does the chaos of the outside world finally permeate the internal world of the household, a few rumbles and an ominous white glow seen through the keyhole indicating that the nuclear missile has landed.

The ending of the short, in which the couple find a newfound enthusiasm for life (ironically after dying) and decide to return to their game of scrabble, apparently oblivious to the fact that the world has just ended, is a real tearjerker, on a par with Jim and Hilda's final fate in When The Wind Blows, although once again there couldn't be more of a contrast in terms of how the two films handle what are essentially very similar conclusions.  By the end of When The Wind Blows, Jim and Hilda are no longer blind to the reality of their situation, although neither wants to admit this to the other (particularly Jim, who struggles to maintain his façade of optimism to the finish), and as both of them retreat feebly into their paper sacks, they now seem quite resigned to the inevitable.  The nameless couple of The Big Snit, meanwhile, are ultimately impervious to any significant changes in the outside world, to the extent that they can step out into an ethereal Heaven and care only about getting back to their shared experience over a game of scrabble.  Much as the impending global catastrophe has provided little more than the backdrop to the much more pressing issue as to whether or not this couple are able to overcome a frivolous butting of heads, so too their renewed bond and devotion to one another proves so overpowering that it transcends the horror of the situation.  In that sense, it is a triumphant story about basic humanity rising above the forces of chaos and indifference that threaten to destroy it.

Like When The Wind Blows, The Big Snit focuses extensively upon a single couple in order to emphasise the individual lives affected by global affairs, and in the process reflects much upon what it is to be human, from the individual quirks and habits which can sporadically cause us to lose patience with those closest to us, to the various smaller, everyday pleasures which ultimately make life endurable when so much else lies beyond our control.  It is over an entirely frivolous game of scrabble that the occurrences causing the disagreement between the couple are set into motion, and in the same entirely frivolous game of scrabble that the couple find the promise of a new day (albeit no longer in this world), having decided that whatever minor disputes or grievances they might have are simply not worth it in the end.

Availability: Watch The Big Snit on the National Film Board of Canada's website: http://www.nfb.ca/film/big_snit/

Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Eye on the Sparrow"

 Original air date: 7th July 1993

If you've been keeping up with my Family Dog reviews to date, then you've no doubt figured out by now that my least favourite aspect of the series has to do with its representation of the two youngest Binfords, Billy and Buffy, both of whom are highly unpleasant characters and not at all fun to watch.  The last episode, "Enemy Dog", had them both at their utmost worst - Billy as a sadistic, hyperactive brat who gets his kicks from the suffering he routinely inflicts on the dog and Buffy as a babbling, inane little terror whose shrill preschool prattlings tend to be more teeth-gritting than endearing.  It's somewhat ironic, then, that "Eye on the Sparrow", by far the most Billy-centric episode of the series, should wind up being one of its better instalments - it has a dash more heart than your typical Family Dog outing, and it's also one of the very few to attempt to do anything with Billy other than portray him as a rambunctious, one-dimensional hellraiser.  The little rotter actually gets something resembling character development here, even if the odds of it sticking in subsequent episodes are frightfully glum.  The bad news is that "Eye on the Sparrow" does take a while to get going, and we have to sit through a number of early scenes of Billy being his typically unendearing self, all while showing an increasingly callous and disturbing attitude toward the dog, as Skip and Bev sit nonchalantly back and barely lift a finger to intervene.

(Oh, and on the flip side, this episode does such a wonderful job of sidelining the other Binford child that for the most part I'm able to forget that she even exists altogether.  Buffy only appears in a very tiny handful of scenes in this one, for which I am very appreciative.)

The opening sequence is fairly effective, in showing the dog prancing around the garden and taking curious sniffs at various smaller animals (including a red sparrow, whom the shot lingers upon for long enough for us to determine that it will be of great significance later on) while gradual changes in the natural scenery indicate a transition through the seasons, the dog becoming less active and more lethargic as we shift through late autumn into winter.  The one constant throughout this sequence is the overheard bickering in the backdrop, as Billy continually butts heads with his parents over his reluctance to get off the couch and engage in any kind of strenuous physical activity outside.

The second sequence is pure filler, and follows the dog as he attempts to find a warm and comfortable resting place after being driven into the house by heavy snowfall.  Bev isn't willing to give up her armchair while her soaps are on, the heater makes incessant buzzing noises, and sleeping too close to the fireplace results in his fur getting singed; it's all quite dull.  Still, one gains an appreciation for the dreary calmness of this sequence when Billy appears and starts screaming, upset because his parents now won't allow him to play outside as a heavy blizzard has been forecast.  When he gets as far as threatening to feast on human flesh (albeit his own leg) a la the Donner Party, Bev relents and gives him a water gun in order to shut him up, although Skip foresees the inevitable disaster and questions her decision.  Meanwhile, Billy delves deep into some raucous fantasy where he's cast himself as "Mercenary Boy", hell-bent upon eliminating evil enemies "El Lardo" and "Thunder Thighs", whereupon we get this exchange between Skip and Bev:

Skip: Arghh! Alright, he shot me!
Bev: It's only water, honey.
Skip: The boy shot his father!  Do you know what that means?  Do you read the literature?

This?  This is actually a pretty well-written gag.  All credit for that.

Billy's behaviour quickly attracts ire from the rest of the family, including the dog, who does not appreciate the disturbance, so they corner him in his bedroom and gather around to watch his water gun melt on the fireplace.  This merely prompts the little brat to seek out even nastier weapons, however, and before the dog can get a decent moment's rest he finds himself being repeatedly fired upon with a pea shooter.  The harassed mutt attempts to flee but, finding himself pursued by the little wart all over the house, finally decides to resort to sneaky, underhanded tactics and tricks Billy into firing a pea at his mother (again, we see the dog exhibit some fairly advanced cognitive reasoning in this scene - not to mention some seriously exaggerated facial expressions - which really push at the boundaries of his generally non-anthropomorphic portrayal).  Predictably, Bev is none too appreciative about being hit square in the buttocks with a dried pea, so she confiscates the toy and banishes Billy to his bedroom to read a book (an activity which is incomprehensible to Billy).

Just when you thought that Billy's cruelty couldn't get any more casual, he reappears in the following scene, now armed with a slingshot and a bag of marbles, and proceeds to exact his disproportionate vengeance upon the dog.  We're getting to the point where Billy could easily do some genuinely quite appalling damage if he's not careful, so it's downright galling when Skip and Bev become aware of the situation and jadedly shrug it off as something they'd sooner not acknowledge.  I appreciate that the whole purpose here is to show Billy's recklessness getting increasingly exaggerated and out of control, so as to make the upcoming dramatic turning point all the more impacting when it arrives, but the Binfords' all-round utter indifference toward the suffering of their pet still isn't making for enjoyable viewing.

The dog flees outside into the shelter of his kennel, but is flushed out by Billy, who proceeds to stalk him wherever he tries to hide around the garden.  As the dog seeks refuge atop the porch, the red sparrow from earlier suddenly reappears and perches upon the garden fence.  Unfortunate, because Billy's blood is up and he's prepared to settle for whatever moving target he can get.  He fires one marble at the sparrow and misses, but as the sparrow tries to escape he takes a second shot and knocks it clean out of the sky (we don't actually see the moment of impact, just an image of the lifeless bird flopping ominously down behind the back of the fence as the dog looks on in horror).  Billy leaps around triumphantly, delighted to have finally taken something out with his marble-shooting blood lust.  But when he peers over the garden fence and sees the tiny sparrow lying stiffly in the snow with its legs in the air, he suddenly has a change of heart, apparently shocked by the realisation that his actions might actually have killed the bird.

This sudden change in demeanor from Billy is abrupt, startling, and perhaps not entirely convincing.  After all, it's not as if Billy had shown any prior indication, in either this episode or anywhere else in the series, that he's capable of feeling compassion toward other forms of life.  Heck, in the previous episode he was positively thrilled by the implication that his own dog might have been devoured by the Mahoneys' dog.  It's also not as if Billy hit that sparrow by accident - he knew exactly what he was doing when he fired the marble, so what did he think would happen if he hit it?  I suppose the best interpretation is that Billy has finally woken up to the fact that life is not a game and that terrible actions will often reap terrible consequences - being confronted by such a consequence may finally have knocked some sense into him.  I could buy it, although I do wish that there had been a bit more foreshadowing, even if it had been something as slight as one of his parents warning him that if he didn't take care he might end up doing something which couldn't be reversed.

As Billy runs off crying for help from Skip and Bev, the dog burrows under the fence and goes to the body of the sparrow, which he discovers is still alive, merely stunned.  As he carries the injured sparrow back to his kennel, Billy reappears with Skip and begins to panic, believing that the bird has been buried beneath the snow.  Skip tries to get him to return to the house, telling him that, if nothing else,  he might take this as an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson, namely that, "once something's gone, it's gone."  Very perceptive, Skip, although perhaps you should have attempted to impart that same lesson earlier on instead of turning a blind eye and then lecturing him after the fact.  Billy sees the sparrow in the dog's kennel, whereupon Skip makes a grim remark which merely underscores the level of negligence quite typical to the dog's daily routine - "Don't look, I don't think we fed the dog today."

Billy brings the wounded sparrow a mug of hot cocoa - which, honestly, doesn't strike me as the most sensible substance to be feeding a bird under any circumstances, but I suppose I should at least appreciate the sudden display of tenderness on Billy's part.  Billy's jerkass streak hasn't totally subsided, however; certainly not toward the dog, who is sharply commanded to get back when he begins sniffing at the cocoa.  Regardless, the cocoa appears to do the trick, because the sparrow suddenly recovers the strength to stand upright.  Billy then attempts to release the sparrow in the garden, but it still has difficulty flying, and fails to reach its nest in a nearby tree before collapsing again.  Bev and Skip call to Billy to return to the house as the blizzard is on the way, but Billy refuses to give up on the bird and leaves the garden along with the dog in order to retrieve it.  Upon finding the sparrow, Billy resolves to take it back to the house, but the dog suddenly realises that the sparrow has babies in her nest whom she was trying to get back to, and barks to get Billy to stop.  Billy's contempt for the dog is still so strong that initially he brushes it off, but finally becomes aware of the baby birds and decides to climb up the tree and get them.  This alarms the dog, who immediately starts barking.  Meanwhile, the blizzard arrives in full force and, realising that Billy still hasn't made it back to the house, Skip and Bev go outside looking for him.  They fail to notice that Buffy has also escaped from the house and, in a particularly grim (albeit clearly deliberate) display of their parental negligence, Bev steps on her daughter's snow-covered body twice without realising that anything's up.

In the meantime, Billy's tree-climbing heroics don't go so well; he merely slips down the trunk and lies in a screaming, crumpled heap as the dog tries to climb the tree and retrieve the nest in his stead.  Bev and Skip successfully locate Billy (having been pulled in his direction by the dog's barking) and debate about whether or not his leg is really broken, whereupon Billy seizes the opportunity to ask if he can stay home from school tomorrow and is angrily ordered back to the house.  Amid all this, I couldn't help but feel that the drama with the sparrow family had been completely forgotten.  Certainly, I did not see Billy pick up the red sparrow again, nor does he refer to her or her babies as his parents lead him away.  As for the dog, Skip questions his whereabouts once, but as the family head back to the house, absolutely nothing else is said about him.  Once again, it seems that the Binfords are quite happy to abandon their dog to his unhappy fate.  At least they're confronted with a brutal reminder of their negligence when they return to the house and discover a Buffy-popsicle on their doorstep.  Oh, and it turns out that Billy does have the red sparrow on him after all - he places it beside the fire and speaks tenderly to it once again, although he says nothing of the babies she's been forced to leave behind.

Thankfully, the dog manages to successfully retrieve the nest and transport the baby birds back to the house, where they're reunited with their mother beside the fireplace.  At this point, the mother sparrow suddenly regains her ability to fly as the baby sparrows discover theirs, and the entire Binford family gathers around to watch this wonderful outcome.

The red sparrow then proceeds to lead her babies in making a hasty exit from the house (yep, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck with the Binfords for a moment longer than I had to), but Bev notices that they are heading for the sliding screen door and begins to panic.  Skip is totally clueless on what to do, so it falls upon Billy's devious ingenuity to save the day (for once) - he pulls out his slingshot and fires another marble, thus smashing a hole through the glass and enabling the birds to safely fly through.  A happy ending for the sparrows, then, although Skip and Bev are none too appreciative about the damage caused to their door and force Billy to surrender his slingshot to the fireplace.  The final moments involve the dog curling up contently beside the fireplace, using the freshly-abandoned birds' nest as a pillow.

I actually really like the ending of this episode, as it shows Billy using his destructive tendencies for a benevolent purpose and ties in pretty neatly with the earlier narrative thread about his reckless impulse for firing upon everything in sight. All in all, "Eye on the Sparrow" builds into quite a solid outing after a fairly shaky first act, although that's not to say that those latter stages are without their share of problems.  There are some weak aspects to the script - I'm not a fan of how Billy seems to completely forget about the baby sparrows after falling from the tree, or of how the Binfords as a whole show little concern for their dog when he's apparently lost out in the storm.  Make no mistake, nestled beneath this ostensible display of warmth and concern over the fate of a family of wild animals is the usual underlying story thread about the Binfords basically not giving a toss about what becomes of their own family pet. While it's nice that Billy comes to regret his casual cruelty toward the sparrow, it's not clear whether or not he's made the connection between same reckless behaviour and what he might potentially have done to the dog if he'd actually hit him with one of those marbles.  The dog also receives no thanks or credit for any of his heroic actions, be it preventing the wounded sparrow from freezing to death, helping Skip and Bev to locate Billy (Skip does talk about wanting to personally pin a medal upon the dog if he leads him to Billy, only to later abandon him in the blizzard) and actually rescuing the baby sparrows in the end when the humans have all but given up.  Still, any effort to add more than one dimension to Billy is so rare and precious that it should be cherished, and the episode does do a good job of making me genuinely care about the bird (then again, it would take a very special effort to make one not care about a tiny, wounded and innocuous animal who's only trying to make it back to her babies).

Oh yes, and while it certainly isn't my intention to keep on comparing this series to The Simpsons in every review (some comparisons are inevitable, but I'm sure that you all get the picture by now), "Eye on the Sparrow" does have a very obvious Simpsons counterpart in the Season 10 episode "Bart the Mother" (which came along a number of years after Family Dog), in which Bart kills a mother bird and decides to atone for his unpleasant actions by caring for her nest.  As these comparisons go, I'd say that the two episodes are about neck and neck - Bart's remorse and desire to take responsibility are a lot more convincing than Billy's, but that episode ultimately doesn't hold together well and disappears down a weird and rather unsettling rabbit hole in its final act.  In fact, I might even be inclined to give Family Dog the edge on this particular occasion.  Its heart's in the right place, even if it's as frustratingly blind as ever to just how bitter and twisted its basic underlying scenario truly is.

Levi's Flat Eric (1999) - Wanted

The "I.D." ad of Levi's 1999 Sta-Prest campaign, in which Eric and Angel are able to convince a traffic cop that there's nothing unsavoury lurking beneath their wrinkle-resistant exterior, may be the best-remembered of Flat Eric's advertising career, and understandably so (in my recent coverage of the ad, I couldn't dredge up a single negative thing to say about it).  For me, however, this particular instalment, which came from the encore run of ads the characters received later that summer, will always be one which perfectly encapsulated the sleek, stylish and irresistibly bonkers spirit of the campaign.  There's not a single missed beat or wasted moment, and everything about it is so brilliantly done that I have no qualms in declaring it one of the finest ads of the 1990s.  It's blisteringly cool in ways that even one of Mr Oizo's "dirty house" tunes couldn't top.

No electro house beats feature here, just the peaceful ambience of a largely deserted-looking stop in California, as Eric and Angel survey their own wanted posters at the back of a mini mart, whereupon they whip out a couple of black markers, chew off the tops and proceed to deface one another's images.  Naturally, the folds in Angel's perfectly-pressed Sta-Prest attire have to go too - they're much too integral a component of his suave, imperturbable identity - so Eric carefully blots them out with correction fluid.  At this point, the unlikely partners in crime make a speedy getaway in their dented blue vehicle, escaping the notice of a cop who's sipping nonchalantly at the same variety of fizzy drink enjoyed by Eric in the earlier "Fly" instalment of the campaign, the sleeves of his uniform bearing the ungainly creases which mark him out as an unworthy adversary to the renegade man and puppet.

In the absence of music or dialogue, it falls upon the various little audio effects to convey a huge portion of the charm and character here, and the subtle succession of sounds made by the markers scribbling against the paper, the fluid being shaken and, of course, the spitting noises as Eric and Angel casually discard their marker tops, is entirely delightful, while the background ambience carries a muted "middle of nowhere" feeling that contrasts with the ostentatiousness of the earlier, beat-driven ads in the Flat Eric campaign.  The unspoken alliance between Eric and Angel, coupled with the slickness of their physical mannerisms, creates the perfect blend of deft style and bizarre kitsch that befits any campaign where one of the key characters is a fluffy yellow monkey-weasel on the run from the law.  In the end, it's simply a charming, laid-back story about resourcefulness, friendship and survival in the secluded cracks of society, executed with maximum flair and, of course, plenty of trust in the seductive appeal of that weird little puppet.

Levi's Flat Eric I.D. (1999) - Escape the Crease Police

LEVI'S / FLAT ERIC I.D. from Mr OIZO / Q.DUPIEUX on Vimeo.

Following 1998's "expect the unexpected" campaign, an intensely motley collection of ads that threw up a a handful of interesting ideas but was sorely lacking in focus and ultimately dominated by the bum notes struck by the Kevin the Hamster instalment, Levi's finally figured out how to tap into the hip and youthful mindset they were desperately seeking in early 1999, with help from an unlikely plush creation with a stylish penchant for head-banging and soda-slurping.  A fuzzy yellow puppet with a physique comparable to that of Kermit The Frog, but species-wise resembling a puzzling cross between a weasel and a spider monkey, Flat Eric (so-called because an early, unused pitch for the campaign had called for his head to be flattened by a car) became one of the 20th century's last great advertising super-stars, appearing in several ads for Levi's Sta-Prest range throughout the year, as well as a hit music video.  Predictably, there was also an official Flat Eric plush, which remains a highly sought-after collector's item to this day.

Flat Eric had a precursor, a quirky-looking glove puppet named Stéphane who had been rescued from a flea market by Parisian house artist Quentin Dupieux (also known as Mr Oizo).  The two formed an alliance, with Stéphane starring in a music video directed by Dupieux to his own track, "M Seq", in 1998.  The video, along with Stéphane's characteristic charms, caught the eye of advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, who hired Dupieux to direct an initial triplet of ads for Levi's Sta-Prest campaign.  To avoid potential copyright infringements, Janet Knechtel of the Jim Henson's Creature Shop was called upon to create a new puppet for the campaign, very much in Stéphane's likeness but with minor tweaks made in order to differentiate them.  Thus, Flat Eric was born, with Bartle Borgle Hegarty favouring the name "Eric" for its international appeal.

Another essential element of the campaign, if greatly more unsung, was Eric's human co-star Angel, played by Dupieux's chum Phillipe Petit, who sported the wrinkle-resistant attire and had the task of playing the ultra-suave foil to Eric's silent eccentricities.  Indisputably though, the puppet was where all the real hipness was.  The first ad of the campaign featured Eric and Angel driving along the streets of Los Angeles, the former finger-tapping and head-banging to Mr Oizo's electro house track "Flat Beat".  Not a lot to it, but viewers went absolutely wild for the quirky puppet and dirty house beats.  Things took an even more offbeat turn in the second instalment (above), in which the two are pulled over by a police officer, forcing them to conceal their outlaw spirit behind ostensible symbols of decency and blandness (Mr Oizo is swapped for a Don Gibson tune, a picture of a female cop displaying her thighs flipped to reveal a reverse image of an innocuous pony).  The cop inspects the trunk of their car and finds a stash of immaculately pressed jeans and shirts, whereupon he allows them to go their merrily head-banging way.  The ad ends with the cop suddenly becoming incredibly self-conscious about the creases in his own clothing, which he attempts to straighten out.  Dupieux's simple but engaging approach hit all the notes that "expect the unexpected" had been previously courting - it was original, eye-catching, unsettling in the best possible ways and, of course, cool as hell.  That puppet was an outlaw in a way that made that rebellious kid from Levi's 1998 "Square Peg" ad look like a total square.

Indeed, part of Flat Eric's charm as a character was in how he combined adorable Muppet antics with a demeanor which seemed just the tinniest bit unnerving.  He was cute, sure, but there was also a distinctive oddness to him, which took a slightly sinister tone when coupled with his evident need to evade police detection.  Still, without knowing what he did, we all went nuts for the little puppet criminal.  Unlike Kevin the Deceased Hamster, he actually succeeded in making the declining denim market seem "cool" all over again, with Sta-Prest sales in the UK increasing 21 times over a four month tracking period in the wake of the campaign.  "Flat Beat" was released as a single in March 1999 and became a massive hit, with Eric fronting the music video (its success being somewhat vexing to Dupieux, who admitted that, while it worked in the context of the advert, he'd never considered it his best work).  The third and final ad in the initial series was more laid-back, lacking a music track and instead focusing upon Eric's love of soft drinks and his skills as a fly-swatter, while Angel continued to exemplify the chill, uncreasable qualities of the Sta-Prest brand.

The campaign so exceeded Levi's expectations that they brought Eric and Angel back for a further series of ads that summer, charting their continued attempts to evade the police with a brief trip to the barber shop in between.  Still, despite his immense popularity, Flat Eric's advertising career was surprisingly short-lived, with Levi's retiring him after that second burst of adverts, perhaps reluctant to run the character into the ground.  Dupieux, however, has retained the rights to the character and, having gone through a period of resenting his eternal association with the yellow weasel-monkey, has learned to embrace him all over again.  Over the past few years, we've seen Flat Eric pop up in a number of projects, most recently the video for Mr. Oizo's "Hand In The Fire".  This odd little puppet enabled the 20th century to ride out in style, and now he truly looks to have become a cult figure for the ages.

Levi's Square Peg (1998) - I Fought The Law

The problem with covering the "Square Peg" instalment of Levi's messy and confusing "expect the unexpected" campaign from 1998 is that it does rather obligate me to also look at the fourth and final advert in the series, "Mall", if only in the interests of having a complete set. At a later date, maybe.

"Square Peg", directed by Gore Verbinski, is probably the best executed of the quartet, in that it conveys the pro-originality message central to the campaign in a manner that manages to be fresh, witty and all kinds of cool.  Indeed, had it not been totally overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the Kevin the Hamster ad, then Levi's might have had a one-off classic with this particular instalment, in which a small child successfully defies the limitations imposed by a wooden shape sorter to the strains of Dead Kennedys' version of "I Fought The Law".  The ad takes place in an odd green room that appears to be located some kind of psychological research facility, where our plucky young hero is being closely observed by a woman struggling to maintain the illusion that she's deeply engrossed in a book instead.  From the looks of things, the kid is much too smart to fall for her act and determined not to be outwitted, either by the dumb wooden toy in front of him or the powers that be pulling the strings around him.  It's a highly novel scenario by which to illustrate the virtues of ingenuity and defiance, just alien enough to be unsettling, and likeably offbeat enough to be hip and vibrant.  There's the usual issue in that, like the majority of the ads from this campaign, it avoids directly linking its content to the product in question, but in this particular case I think that the symbolism is communicated so efficiently that it ceases to be a problem.  The ad gets by simply on being a self-contained joy.

The only thing I can't claim to be particularly fond of is that self-satisfied bit of fourth wall-breaking from the child at the end, as he celebrates his victory by leering directly at the camera.  Like the polygamist ad, the overall effect is somewhat marred by the decision to strike one particularly self-conscious note too many, and make it absolutely clear to the viewer, if they hadn't picked it up already, that this kid's rebellious spirit has served him well.  Still, it manages to bow out with a genuine sense of exhilarating triumph, and not the state of stunned disquietude which inevitably follows that hopelessly misjudged Kevin ad.

Levi's Wives (1998) - Prosaic Polygamist

Levis "Wives" from joe zizzo on Vimeo.

Here's another example from Levi's baffling "expect the unexpected" phase, before their Sta-Prest campaign with punk puppet Flat Eric put them back in favour with the young and hip crowd they were targeting a lot more tentatively here.

When they weren't traumatising children with morbid tales of terminally bored pets, Levi's were celebrating originality in more benign forms, in this case by examining the ostensibly dull life of a nondescript 1950s office worker as he gives us a tour of his ostensibly dull house and all its contents.  The obvious "What The Fuck?" moment comes when he casually reveals, in the midst of all this mid-century modern blandness, that he's married to a total of six different women, but even prior to this there's a definite sense of things being off-kilter in his bromidic, flatly materialistic world.  For a start, none of the the doors we see are actually connected to walls, the trees look distinctively out of space, and his food supply consists of an uninspiring collection of identical bottles and cans.  It's a lifestyle which radiates a curious mixture of artificiality, monotony and unreality.  Except for his six wives, of course.  They're clearly all real, and each of them very distinctive.

As Levi's "originality" campaign went, "Wives" is considerably less mean-spirited than "Kevin", although its particular method of oddness, while quizzical enough, does seem a lot more nondescript.  The potentially unsettling qualities of black and white aesthetics had already been well-mined by numerous Guinness ads at this stage in the decade, and Irn-Bru had a somewhat similar campaign a little later on down the road which likewise centred upon the casual subversion of more conservative family values (and not without attracting its share of controversy, as at least one of those ads was perceived as being at the expense of transsexuals - we'll touch more upon that one, along with Irn-Bru's infamous cow billboard ad, at a later date).  As noted in my reflections on "Kevin", for a number of years I'd falsely remembered this ad as being part of said Irn-Bru campaign, which does highlight one of the key issues with Levi's entire "originality" campaign - it was so all over the place, and only connected to the product itself in the vaguest, most abstract of senses, that there's a definite air of interchangeability throughout.

The closing images of "Wives" also betray a lack confidence in its own weirdness, by showing a question mark followed by a close-up of an eye blinking in apparent astonishment, as if the ad is at pains to point out to the viewer that this has all been a deliberate exercise in confoundment.  Still, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that, as a young teenager, I took that question mark to indicate that there was a riddle here to be solved, meaning that I probably thought longer and harder about this ad than most other people at the time (the fact that I forgot the specific product being advertised notwithstanding).  In trying to think of someone famed for having six wives and a ship, Henry VIII was honestly all that came to mind - however, unless something particularly cryptic was happening with the more modern amenities like the car and the refrigerator, it was blatantly never going to be a reference to him.  If nothing else, then Bartle Bogle Hegarty at least succeeded in trolling my impressionable, logic-seeking teenage brain for a day or two.

"Wives" was directed by Doug Nichol, who also helmed the Kevin ad.

Levi's Hamster (1998) - Alas, Poor Kevin

Hey, remember that weird period Levi's went through in the summer of 98 where they thought they could sell jeans using a dead hamster?  What a time it was to be alive.

Back in the late 1990s, jeans were undergoing something of an image problem, with young people widely dismissing them as clothing for their parents' generation.  Denim sales were in decline, and the rising popularity of own-brand clothing lines over designer labels wasn't helping any.  Levi's urgently needed to win back the youth market by demonstrating that they were radical, hip and cutting edge.  And what could be more radical, hip and cutting edge than an advert featuring a dead hamster?

As it turned out, the general public didn't exactly share Levi's somewhat idiosyncratic manner of thinking, and their "Kevin the Hamster" ad went on to become one of the most controversial in UK advertising history when it was played extensively over a select weekend in August 1998.  The Independent Television Commission received 544 complaints, then a record, regarding the ad, which depicts a hamster losing his zest for life after his beloved exercise wheel malfunctions and succumbing to a fatal boredom.  Many of these complaints were made on behalf of children who were upset by Kevin's odd and disturbing demise, while others simply couldn't see what the death of a small, fluffy and totally innocuous animal had to do with the product in question and considered it little more than exercise in bad taste.

Contrary to popular belief, the Kevin ad was never officially "banned", although ITC did rule that future airings of the advert should not take place before watershed hours.  Levi's marketing director Amanda Le Roux claimed that this was all moot anyway, as the advert had only ever been slated to air over that one weekend.  She also claimed that the campaign had been extensively researched and that test audiences had absolutely adored the hamster ad.  Kevin the hamster himself was even trotted out publicly, with owner Trevor Smith confirming that he was "alive and well and very loved", and that he was now being heavily-sought after for appearances in future advertising campaigns and TV shows.  I doubt that many of the 544 who complained did so because they thought that Kevin had actually perished in the making of the ad, but I presume that the idea was to give peace of mind to the children who'd been brought to tears by his apparent demise.  (Of course, hamster lifespans being as short as they are, Kevin would certainly be long-passed by the time of writing.  I'd be curious to know if he did make any further media appearances within his lifetime.)

The clue to understanding this rather baffling and unsettling ad is in the "original" part of the brand name that appears at the end.  It was part of a wider campaign, devised by advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, built around deliberately weird and surreal situations, which hinted toward a vague kind of theme about originality and the importance of thinking outside of the box.  In some cases the theme was cleverly applied and executed - notably, an ad directed by Gore Verbinski featuring a small boy beating a shape sorter, literally and figuratively, by hammering a square peg through a round slot.  In other cases the originality link seemed far more tenuous - one featured a man, naked from the waist down, riding up a mall escalator, while another centred upon a man who's claim to originality was through his polygamy (he had six wives).  Kevin, by contrast, appears to be a far more cautionary example - he dies precisely because he fails to think outside of the box and to adapt to life without his wheel (although in his defence, he is a hamster living in an otherwise barren cage - what else is he supposed to do for entertainment?).  Or maybe the whole "original" thing was just an excuse to throw some random nonsense together in a deliberate effort to catch the viewer off guard.  Everybody in the late 90s was doing it - Guinness churned out a few real oddities with their "not everything in black and white makes sense" campaign and until I started researching for this article, I had falsely remembered the "six wives" ad as hailing from a similarly peculiar campaign for Irn-Bru (an inevitable risk whenever the precise content of your advertisement isn't clearly linked to the product that you're selling).

One thing that I can definitely say in favour of "Kevin" is that I never forgot it, and ever since that fateful summer of 1998 (like many a young person at that time, a highlight of my Friday night was sneaking into the spare room to watch South Park, then enjoying its first UK terrestrial TV run on Channel 4, without my parents' knowing) the fate of poor Kevin the Hamster remained permanently etched into my brain and continued to haunt me for long after.  It was strange and unpredictable and, certainly, I had never seen anything quite like it before.  Still, contrary to the ethos of this entire campaign, mere originality isn't everything, and in my opinion it's easy to see how Levi's were setting themselves up with this one.

If we're to assess the advert purely in terms of its weirdness factor, then "Kevin" does strike a number of highly effective notes.  There are multiple unsettling elements at play here, from the eerie flatness of the voice-over narration to the off-screen presence controlling the pencil movements at the end, coupled with the gruesome rigor mortis exhibited by the hamster corpse (yes, I know that's really a stuffed specimen) as it topples over.  No question that it's an extremely quirky and eye-popping piece of advertising, but unfortunately it's not a particularly likeable one on top of that.  It's sufficiently unorthodox, but also rather mean-spirited, and the overall vibe seems to be one of attention-seeking via shock tactics than anything else.  As a statement in encouraging consumers to view their brand differently, Levi's August 1998 campaign was a bold curiosity, but ultimately a little too loosely-defined in its weirdness to cement much of a fresh identity, and the "originality" concept far too abstract to translate into a particularly resonant message about why wearing this specific brand of jeans was cool.  Even if the story of a hamster who perishes from lack of stimulation had somehow been more clearly linked to Levi's product, it seems unlikely that such an ad would have gone down a treat with all tastes regardless.

Kevin the Hamster proved to be something of a misstep for Levi's, but they rebounded the following year after teaming up with an odd yellow puppet named Flat Eric, and a classic campaign (not to mention a hit single) was born.  As for Kevin, his legacy in having inspired the biggest number of complaints made to ITC over a television advertisement was finally usurped in 2003 by an advert for chewing gum in which a man is seen to vomit up a live mongrel.  The little guy lives on, however, in that every time I pass the Levi's at my local shopping outlet, my train of thought inevitably seems to wander back to him.  I still find it rather baffling to think that a dead hamster was ever expected to translate into increased jeans sales, but if Levi's really wanted to be the designer brand that I associated with a dead hamster, then mission accomplished.

The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) - The Deleted Scenes

An element of The Jeffrey Dahmer Files which was evidently downplayed within the finished cut of the film but still survives in the deleted scenes included in the Region 1 DVD release has to do with the wider community that surrounded Dahmer, and the perfectly banal, everyday situations in which their individual lives would intersect with his, as both parties went about their respective businesses.

I was quite intrigued when I saw that this release came packaged with a few deleted scenes, hoping that there might be additional or extended interview footage with any of the film's three interviewees, but alas, no.  Not that I wasn't still fascinated in seeing what didn't make the final cut.  There are five deleted scenes in total, all of which depict further episodes from the life of Andrew Swant's Jeffrey Dahmer as he wanders around Milwaukee in his typically nonchalant manner, although for the most part these centre far less on Dahmer than they do upon the people around him, giving us inklings of the lives that ran parallel to his own, casually rubbing shoulders with Jeffrey without ever suspecting that they were in the company of a habitual killer.  Presumably, the idea here is to give a sense of how Dahmer appeared to other people, of the miscellaneous connecting points in any urban environment which enable all varieties of lives to unwittingly intermingle, and to convey something of the disconnect which the highly introverted and secretive Dahmer felt from the community in which he lived (his terse verbal interactions with others tend to be mostly functional, and there's a definite sense of nobody with whom he comes into contact being in any way close to him).  Here's a rundown of what we get in the deleted scenes:

Foul Odor: This sequence is particularly interesting in that it contains a "cameo" appearance from Apt. 213 (which was Dahmer's apartment number in real life, although for some reason that I cannot quite fathom Thompson's film has had him move next door to 214).  Here, it belongs to a neighbour who's seen making her way down North 25th Street on a mobility scooter, returning to the Oxford Apartments and proceeding to knock on Jeffrey's door to complain about the highly unpleasant odor leaking from his apartment.  Dahmer politely insists that he has no idea what's causing the smell but promises to contact the landlord about it tomorrow.  She responds by warning him that, “Neighbours are talking also, and they may not be as nice as I am trying to be.”

Glasses: Dahmer goes to the opticians to pick up a new pair of glasses, while another customer reluctantly tries on a pair of frames at the insistence of the woman behind the counter.  He casually asks for Dahmer's opinion on the frames and is told that they look good.  Dahmer pays for his glasses by cheque, as he is seen to do for just about every onscreen purchase he makes throughout the film.

 
Painting: Two graffiti artists spraying an abandoned warehouse are startled and run away when they hear Dahmer approaching.  Observing him from a distance, neither of them recognises him or has the foggiest idea who he is, but finally decide that he is harmless when they see him pull out a can of beer and start drinking.  At this point, they feel safe to ignore him and return to their art, which they conclude is "not bad at all."

Smoking: A scene between Andy and Brian from Eye In The Sky, seen smoking together in their van before calling at Dahmer's apartment to discuss home security.  One of them (Andy) tells an anecdote about how he dealt with a noisy snorer in the adjacent room while staying at a hotel in Iowa by giving him a sneaky midnight telephone call.  "I hear him answer it - hello, hello, hello - like he got startled and just woke up.  So I just hang up the phone right away.  He’s stopped snoring, and I fall asleep.  Pretty fucking hilarious.")  This story has nothing to do with Dahmer and is a total tangent, so it's not too surprising that they wound up jettisoning it.  I'll keep that tip in mind though, Andy.

Suitcase:  This is the one deleted scene where the focus is firmly upon Jeffrey himself, and deals with his hasty purchase of a large suitcase in order to smuggle the body of Steven Tuomi out of the hotel room where Dahmer killed him while heavily intoxicated.  We see a blatantly flustered Dahmer run into a bag store and immediately snap up their biggest and cheapest.  The sales assistant who's approached him comments upon his quick decision and asks if he is going on a trip somewhere, but gets only the most monosyllabic of responses.  “Yeah”.  “Sounds like fun.”  Dahmer pays by writing a cheque (of course) and then makes a speedy exit.

Of all the deleted scenes, this is the one whose excision from the finished film I find the most regrettable.  Perhaps Thompson figured that there were enough sequences revolving around the Tuomi incident and how it would have appeared from the exterior for viewers to already get the idea, and that to show Dahmer hastily singling out the suitcase for purchase would just be superfluous.  All the same, it is interesting to see a situation in which the cracks in Dahmer's demeanor are vaguely visible, and another individual is able to pick up that something isn't quite right (albeit not to the extent where they come anywhere close to figuring out the truth).  I also really dig the mise-en-scène with that "All Sales Final" sign, with its implicit warning of there being no turning back (this, fortunately, can still be glimpsed in the final cut).

Finally, if you do want to hear some supplementary material from Pat Kennedy on the case, then this interview with shock jocks Opie and Anthony might be of interest (Thompson's there too, apparently, although he barely seems to get a word in edgeways; they also both exit around the 33:10 mark, at which point you're okay to tune out).  Kennedy talks at great length about his experiences with Jeffrey Dahmer, and while much of this is just repeating information given in the film, he expands upon what was said there quite substantially, and also touches upon a couple of issues which he doesn't get to cover in the film itself - namely, his reaction to Dahmer's death in 1994 and his perspective on the two police officers who infamously returned an injured victim to Dahmer's apartment.  Kennedy also mentions a book he'd written about his personal experiences in working on the Dahmer case which he was then in the process of shopping around to various publishers - is there any possibility of this being published posthumously?