Just Say No

My job involves me doing silly things sometimes. Which wouldn’t be so bad—we all do silly things sometimes, right? Except that they all seem to end up getting broadcast on TV. This isn’t even so bad except when it involves being in an ad that gets shown over and over and over again.

The first time I was in an ad, it was very Hollywood. Well, it was IN Hollywood. We were shooting out there for budgetary reasons—we had period sets and costumes, and wheatgrass juice, and those are easier to find in CA than UT. I got to have my face spray-painted with foundation, had porn star lashes stuck on my lids, and it was all very fun until I remembered how much I want to scream when people spend more than about fifteen minutes messing with my face and hair. And when I realised I couldn’t sit down in my dress. My presence in that ad was unremarkable except for the (negligible) length of the dress, and people usually don’t know it’s me in the ad unless I (or a “kind” friend) tells them. I get a little teasing a.k.a. sexual harassment about it once in a while, but the ads are coming to the end of their run, at least in Utah, so that’ll be that. It really was kind of fun, I was glad I did it, and said at the time that I probably wouldn’t want to do another.

Ha.

If you work at an ad agency, you are apparently fair game for “friends and family talent” (i.e. the budget is really small, so they can’t afford real talent for any but the essential roles).

I was at a shoot, minding my own business and chatting to my client, and asked the creative director who he was going to use for the last ad. “You,” he said. “In that case, I want make-up, and lots of it,” I said. It appeared that he was serious, so I got a bit of powder, lipstick, hairspray, and a jacket from wardrobe, but not the dark glasses and wig that I was rather hoping for.

The bit I’m in is over very quickly, which is all to the good. The worst of it is, I’m doing an American accent. For those of you who have heard my American accent, you’re probably smirking right about now. My American accent is not really for public consumption. It is not good. It’s more of a party trick, and, quite frankly, sounds a lot better if you have a few drinks inside you, which means it’s wasted (ha) at most of the parties I go to. It is definitely not the sort of thing that should be sprung on an unsuspecting public who may be prone to strokes.

[If I were GOOD at doing an American accent I would use it to order water in restaurants, thus avoiding the “what?” “water;” “huh?” “WATER,” both-of-us-stare-pleadingly-at-my-dinner-companion-until-he/she-translates sequence that typically ensues. ]

But our creative director seemed to think that doing an American accent must be easy because of Minnie Driver and Hugh Laurie (cheers, mates), and so I mumbled my way through a line that didn’t have too many tricky vowels and hoped that speaking softly would disguise the flaws.

I dunno. Maybe they can dub it later.