The Influences on Our Taste : JOE SEDELMAIER : The King of Those Twisted TV Ads

This is Calendar’s third annual listing of Taste Makers, individuals who have brought a distinct focus to 1987 and who we feel will continue to influence the world of arts and entertainment long after this year passes. They were selected not so much for specific contributions in their respective fields but because they are clearly creative forces who move and shape taste. They were interviewed to find out what kinds of influences have moved and shaped them.

We’ve selected these eight individuals to reflect a broad range of creative work, though each year we try to vary the disciplines. For instance, in 1985 we interviewed architect Arata Isozaki, composer Philip Glass and restaurateur Alice Waters, among others. Last December, the group included choreographer Mark Morris, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown.

What follows, we hope, is a look at the thinking behind some of this year’s brightest creators and commentators . . . 1987’s Taste Makers.

This project was edited by David Fox, assistant Calendar editor.

The tube’s most distinctive TV commercial director. Opinionated and original , he creates the kind of crazy characters remembered long after you’ve forgotten the product.

The rage of the ad business today is home-movie style TV commercials. The executives in AT&T;’s new ads drift in and out of frame--and focus. The camera jerks up and down in the new Lipton Tea ads. The current Michelob Light and Miller Genuine Draft beer commercials also feature wobbly, amateur-hour footage.

These commercials cost millions. And at least one--maybe more--may end up winning an armful of Clios, the ad industry’s equivalent of Oscars.

Joe Sedelmaier hates these pseudo- verite ads.

“I watch them and I feel like I’m in a nut-house or something,” says 54-year-old Sedelmaier, whose office windows here are lined with Clio statuettes. They are the fruits of a nearly 20-year career in advertising that, thanks to outrageous ads for Federal Express, Wendy’s and Del Taco, has made the outspoken commercial director television’s most recognizable advertising stylist.

“It’s like the guy running the camera is on something. You see the camera weaving around, dropping down to people’s feet, rushing over their heads. It’s totally stupid.

“We go through these fads in advertising all the time. Kubrick put ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ in ‘2001’ and suddenly every dope was using it. Now E. F. Hutton is using ‘The Mission’ music. Hey--it’s only a stock brokerage firm!”

Sedelmaier laughed. “What’s so wrong about the home-movie trend is that the ads are fake. It’s like camp. As soon as you’re self-conscious about it, it isn’t camp anymore. It has to be sincere or it doesn’t work. And self-consciousness usually doesn’t have much sincerity to it, does it?”

The balmy characters in Sedelmaier’s ads have slipped way beyond self-consciousness--they appear to be residing in an altered state. Dazed, disoriented, even disturbed, his people look like they should be starring in a local sanitarium production of “Death of a Salesman.”

After seeing Sedelmaier’s strange traveling circus of harassed office workers, sad-eyed salesmen and bewildered consumers, you get the feeling that his biggest influences were Franz Kafka, Buster Keaton and Mad magazine. Sedelmaier happily admits to all three--and adds writer Shirley Jackson, whose macabre Gothic fantasies were especially popular when Sedelmaier was growing up.

“You know which modern film really reminded me of Jackson?” asked Sedelmaier, an animated conversationalist whose office walls are dotted with several caricatures by another major influence--German expressionist George Grosz. “It’s a truly great film--’Blue Velvet.’ It’s not only incredibly innovative, but it goes in so many directions. The whole mood of the film is eerie, and yet funny.”

That’s a perfect capsule summary of Sedelmaier’s own work--where unlike most commercials, you remember the people, not the products:

His Federal Express commercials, which won acclaim for their portrayal of the world’s fastest-talking executive, were like mini-horror movies, starring a series of traumatized employees, demoralized small businessmen and somnambulistic postal workers.

His PSA and Alaska Air ads offered such hilariously traumatic travel fantasies that you see echoes of them in John Hughes’ current hit, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

His rollicking Wendy’s ads were such a hit that they not only spawned a media darling (the late great Clara Peller) but the ad’s punch line (“Where’s the Beef?”) became one of the major slogans of the 1984 presidential race.

Sedelmaier says the secret of great TV commercials is good casting. “I was very influenced by photographers like Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who really loved the human face,” he says.

“The people I use are people who haven’t spent their whole lives wondering who they are--they’ve acquired real character by living a real life. They’re not perfect like the people in the plastic commercials on TV. In fact, I like those little imperfections.”

When it comes to comedy, Sedelmaier is a confirmed minimalist. He believes in situation, not shtick; subtlety, not sprawling dialogue.

“As a kid, I loved Chaplin and Keaton and the great radio comics--Henry Morgan, Bob & Ray and Jack Benny, who was brilliant because he underplayed everything. He knew how to use silence. Now you hear these radio commercials and it’s as if the guy paid for his 30 seconds and really he wants to get his money’s worth.

“Look at Peter Sellers--he was a comic genius, from his earliest films to ‘Being There,’ which is just phenomenal--and because he always trusted his audience. You never saw him use a double-take or some other cheap device.

“Sellers taught me a great lesson--sometimes you’re funniest when you lose your sense of humor.”

When Sedelmaier was a young copywriter at J. Walter Thompson, one of his first TV ads was a Chung King commercial, “How to Eat an Egg Roll,” in which a man at a party became so intent on decorously consuming an egg roll that he failed to notice that he’d spilled his drink.

“One of the agency guys kept telling me, ‘Why don’t you have him give a reaction?’ And I said, ‘No! That’s what’s so funny--that he doesn’t react. He tries to keep his dignity.’ ”

Sedelmaier admires film makers like Woody Allen (“especially ‘Broadway Danny Rose’ ”) and Martin Scorsese (“ ‘King of Comedy’ is a classic”), but he cites as an unforgettable influence perhaps the most unpretentious show ever on television--”Candid Camera.”

“If I ever taught comedy, I’d just show ‘Candid Camera’ episodes,” he says. “It’s all about people trying to keep their dignity. I love the show when they secretly take the motor out of the car and push the car to the service station. Then the attendant looks under the hood and--with complete bewilderment--says, ‘Lady, you don’t have an engine in this car!’

“You don’t need any shtick there--the situation itself is what’s funny.”

Sedelmaier willingly cites other favorite comic artists--he swears undying loyalty to John Cleese, who is consistently funny “because he always believes in the person he’s playing.” But he worries that younger film makers look to the media too much for inspiration.

“The problem with our business is that people don’t watch people anymore--they only watch movies or other commercials. Everyone’s just watching what the other guy is doing!

“That’s why I don’t belong to any organizations and it’s part of why I like being in Chicago. I can keep my distance. Your ideas don’t come from talking shop with other directors. You become too insular. I’ve got ad (copywriters) who try to give me a Sedelmaier now, which is always terrible--it’s a parody of a parody!”

The medium Sedelmaier has mastered thrives on dream logic--TV commercials are full of abrupt leaps in time and space, radical shifts in perspective and fractured narratives. It’s no wonder he’s such a master of visual shorthand. “When I was a kid in the ‘40s, I wanted to be a cartoonist--and for the same reason I was drawn to TV,” he said.

“You could create another world, a world that appeared to be real, but was really a little off-kilter.”