No newspaper page prints until the "news hole" is fitted around sold ads space. Or, as one of my radio/TV station owners told me a few years ago, "Yes, we're in show business, but without the business, there's no show." With that in mind.....
With so many boomer faves coming back to network and streaming platforms I was delighted to see efforts to bring back ABC's "thirtysomething" may soon bear fruit. Yes, the first season was little more than yuppie upper-middle-class guilt and navel-gazing, but seasons two through four were sensational....especially the penultimate episode, "The Dance of Advertising".
This was the jaw-dropping episode in which protagonist Michael Steadman (Ken Olin), an advertising agency creator and campaign manager, in a fit of self-imbued integrity and morals, comes face to face with the diabolical advertising agency owner he's worked for all this time: Miles Drentell, brilliantly portrayed by David Clennon, lacking only horns coming from his head.
They cross swords over a decision by a major, major client, Dursten Beer, whose CEO is a proud military vet who served in Vietnam. He's delighted with the ad agency's finished commercial for Dursten, about to run on major networks....until it comes to light that the star of the commercial, Randy Towers, is an actor who was prominent in some anti-Gulf War activism. Now the client is demanding that the commercial be re-shot and with a different actor.
Hoo-boy...is it about to hit the fan.
Before you read this exchange, keep in mind that the creators of "thirtysomething", Marshall Hershkovitz and Ed Zwick, knew this was to be their second to last episode, so they had nothing to fear or hold back....and they didn't. They used this bully pulpit to bite that hand that feeds the network (ABC) in the service of truth, prompting several of the series' top advertisers to pull their commercials from the series' final two episodes....especially THIS one.
In one unforgettable sequence, Michael is driving through Philadelphia and stops alongside a bus, with a huge ad along its side featuring former Miss America Shawn Weatherly, whose image comes to life and explains the whole advertising concept to him....but not quite as bluntly as his boss Miles.
Here's the dialogue that so shook up Madison Avenue....and ABC's advertising execs:
"Ad agency owner Miles Drentell: I'm curious to know, Michael, just what you think this company does? On a very basic level, you seem ignorant of what you and I do for a living. Have you been sleepwalking all this time? In a trance? I don't know how else to explain your coming in her with that 'I'd like to buy the world a Dursten' concept.
Ad creator Michael Steadman: All right, Miles, we'll give Dursten his patriotism, full tilt, Yankee Doodle, everybody's gonna feel safe, and united, and secure, and God bless America, man!
Miles: From sea to shining sea.
Michael: Which is great, because I do believe God does bless this country. But he blesses all the rest of them too, doesn't he?
Miles: This conversation is approaching inanity.
Michael: All Randy Towers did is ask a question, Miles. Just because we won the war doesn't mean we can't ask any more questions, does it?
Miles: The thing that appalls me here is your hypocrisy.
Michael: MY hypocrisy???
Miles: Do you actually imagine there's some difference between this campaign and everything else that we do?
Michael: It IS different, Miles!
Miles: No, it is not.
Michael: It has to be!
Miles: Or what? You know what I love about this country? Its amazingly short memory. We're a nation of amnesiacs. We forget everything. Where we came from, what we did to get here. History is last week's People Magazine, Michael. So don't pretend to cry for Randy Towers (the antiwar actor who was fired). No one really cares.
Michael: All he did was express an opinion.
Miles: He expressed an unpopular opinion, Michael. No one wants to be unpopular. That's why we're here. That's the dance of advertising.
We help people become popular. Through popularity comes acceptance. Acceptance leads to assimilation. Assimilation leads to bliss.
We calm and reassure. We embrace people with the message that we're all in this together, that our leaders are infallible, and that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong.
That is what we do. It's what we've always done, and under your gifted stewardship, what we will continue to do.
In return for our humanitarian service, we are made rich.
I'm sorry if you misunderstood the nature or this covenant, Michael, but you've done so well up until now. I thought you knew."
Like Premiere Magazine once wrote in its review of the movie "Sunset Blvd.": "Studios have been backing away from its wormy truths ever since." Same could be said for the ad biz here.
I still have blood on my hands from working on a radio ad campaign for David Stringer, a former state rep who was drummed out of the State House because the Phoenix New Times published documentation proving that, while practicing law in Washington and Baltimore, Stringer sometimes picked up boys from a nearby park and paid them to come back to his apartment and shower with, then have sex with him. One of the young boys was mentally handicapped.
Stringer, to keep his law license, convinced the court there to expunge the charge and accept a plea deal, but the New Times uncovered the actual documentation confirming what he had done.
Yet, because he was legally registered to run for YAVAPAI COUNTY ATTORNEY
(wrap your head around that for a moment) we were obligated to take his money and air ads promoting his candidacy, and I was required to interview him on my talk show, just like all the other candidates who bought airtime. Today, Sen. John McCain....tomorrow, David freaking Stringer. I needed a puke bucket in the studio just for him.Fortunately for my esophagus, Stringer lost the election.
Those last two seasons of "thirtysomething" just crackled with great storylines and dialogue. I loved how in one scene they filmed Clennon in his darkened office, dressing down Ken Olin during a thunderstorm, showing Clennon in lightning flashes like the devil.