Couch Potatoes Capture a Mood

Men, it’s time to salute our new heroes.

They are the “Whassup?!” guys in the Budweiser commercials, and they managed to launch one of the new year’s most popular advertising campaigns just by capturing the essence of what we do on Sunday afternoons.

Namely, nothing.

You know the ads, the ones that show men watching football on the couch, in the easy chair and at a bar, calling each other just to say “Whassup?!” (If you haven’t seen these commercials, you’re not watching enough sports and you need to get in touch with your masculine side.)

“It took a piece of what guys do all the time and put it on,” said Paul Williams, one of the actors in the commercial. “Guys--that’s how we do our thing. You ever been on the phone with someone and don’t say anything and you watch the game and somebody gets hit hard and you say, ‘Ooooh! Did you see that?’ ”

The commercials tapped into that common experience and now people in offices, people in airports, even Budweiser executives are going around saying, “Whassup?!”

Williams, his brother and some friends were in Atlanta for the Super Bowl and celebrities such as Emmitt Smith and Tyson Beckford were coming up to them.

All of this is great news, with huge implications.

Fame and money can be yours without even changing the usual routine. Thanks to the Whassup?! guys, an afternoon on the couch constitutes research. A six-pack is a legitimate tax write-off.

The commercial came out of a short film shot by director Charles Stone III as a sort of audition tape. Stone (in the commercial he’s the one on the couch, clicking back and forth on the call waiting) invited his old high school buddies from Philadelphia to his house in Harlem.

They’re a group of African-American guys in their early 30s, but they still call each other by their old nicknames such as “Dookie” and “Mutt.” Stone simply filmed them doing their thing, with sharp camera angles and snappy editing. Same concept as the commercials, only spread over five minutes. It was called “True.”

The short found its way into the hands of the DDB Needham advertising agency in Chicago. Don Pogany, the head creative director of the Budweiser account, pitched it to Anheuser-Busch executives Bob Lachky and August Busch IV at a meeting in November.

“We were just cracking up, laughing,” said Lachky, the company’s vice president of brand management. “We said, ‘This could be adapted very easily. It’s pretty out there, but yeah, OK.’ ”

When it came time to shoot the commercial, they held auditions, but nothing could match the chemistry of the original group. That saved Williams (he’s the one with the overalls and big hair) from a career shift.

“I’m an actor,” he said. “If I didn’t get the job playing myself, I was pretty much going to hang it up.”

The roles won’t get much easier than this.

“It really wasn’t acting,” Williams said. “It was us being us.”

Said his brother, Terry: “That’s how we all kick it with each other.”

Their friend Tatia Williams (no relation) knows it all too well.

“I’ve heard it for a whole year,” she said. “And now the whole world’s going to hear it.”

Which can have its drawbacks. Before, when it got to be too much, “at least I could not call them for a few days,” she said. “Now it’s everywhere.”

Such as on her flight to Atlanta Saturday morning.

“There were a bunch of guys, they were all doing it,” she said. “As soon as they got to the Atlanta airport, it was pathetic. We landed at 7:45 and everybody was screaming ‘Whassup?!’ ”

Of course, the Budweiser guys love this. They previewed their Super Bowl commercial at a bar--the spot features one of the guys at his girlfriend’s house, trying to hide the fact from the boys on the phone that he’s watching figure skating--and received a standing ovation when it was over.

“The crowd was predominantly Anglo,” Lachky said. “It’s a colorless thing to these customers. They say, ‘That’s me and my friends.’ ”

Paul Williams said he has received positive feedback from people of all races. It’s proof that some basic male traits cross all color lines.

“A lot of things we do, we might do them our way because we’re African-American,” he said. “But the things we do, they’re applicable to everyone. It’s universal. Instead of saying ‘Dude,’ we’re going ‘Whassup?!’ ”

About the only dispute is the proper spelling of the catchword.

“It’s probably w-u-z-z-u-p or something,” Paul Williams said. “Wuzzup?!

“I kind of think it’s more of an ‘uh’ sound than an ‘ah’ sound.”

Lachky says the official spelling is w-h-a-s-s-u-p, although there’s an optional extra p on the end.

The first commercial, a 60-second spot, debuted during NBC’s Christmas Day NBA games, and it has been running during sporting events ever since.

The only drawback to that is they play before predominantly male audiences. That means that most of the people stopping Williams to say “Whassup?!” are guys. And that can get a little old.

But the Super Bowl attracts all demographics, and Sunday’s spot was the beginning of more widespread airing of the commercials.

“Life is good right now just because of the buzz it’s created,” Paul Williams said. “Life will be better when they start playing it on the soap operas and the women start coming up to me.”

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com