MonKeyArtAwards

Saturday Morning Quarterbacking

If you’re like us, when you awoke on Saturday to find your L.A. Times in the driveway thusly bound and bagged, your first thought was not “Holy jumping jeezus! This exciting drama is on Lifetime TONIGHT at 9pm!” but rather, “Uh, duh. The title is The Tenth Circle, so shouldn’t their faces be vignetted in a circle and not in some amorphous blob?!” and therefore, like us, you completely missed the call to action and ended up watching “Fishzilla: Snake Invasion” on the NatGeo channel instead.

Everyone Is Getting So, Like, Ambitious

If you’re like us, you can’t help but notice how our tiny, self-important world is being overrun with oodles and oodles of creative directors and creative executives and senior creative executive vice presidents.

Goodness gracious! Such inflated big wiggery! Doesn’t anybody want to just be a moody, sensitive art director anymore? Have goatees and Timberlands gone that out of style?

Paneful Expressions

If you’re like us, you never, ever, ever tire of this sort of playful imagery!

An Overwrought Reader Writes

In case any of you are wondering what we mean by the term “high-strung creative type”, here is an email recently received that we believe to be representative of the species:

Dear Ms. Trout,

Must we all endure YET ANOTHER poster with someone holding his or her "rabbit ear" fingers up behind an unsuspecting actor?! I think this concept needs to be banned once and for all and finally put to rest!!! I'm sorry, but I had to say something, because as you know, evil will thrive if the good say nothing.

Most sincerely,

Art Director for The Good of The People

Living in this post-9/11 world, it’s not always easy to put hysteria aside and view things with a calm and dispassionate eye; nonetheless, we were able to find little cause for this art director’s alarm. In fact, we uncovered only one other instance of evil-doing:

Oh, My! Just Think Of The Great, Big Inaugural Balls You’ll Have!

Crew Creative has named Jenny Wall as it’s new president, and just to make sure things are as presidential as they can be, she’s going to have six - count ‘em six! presidents reporting to her:

Scott Edwards, will continue as president of the audiovisual department; Lisa Bourcier-Sams becomes president of network print; Heather Johnson is now president of theatrical print; Julianne LaMarche, becomes president of interactive; Matthew Rachleff will be president of strategic initiatives; and Seth Phillips Althoff is the new president of human relations and IT, which, as we all know, falls under the category of non-human relations.

Find Out Why CBS Is All About “Let’s Get Back Inside The Box!”

Click here to watch a couple of guys with mikes stand around New York discussing the network’s upfronts, including an all new, cool, sexy preview the CW’s all new, cooler, sexier 90210!

Plus, more Key Art Awards Show celeb clips. (No, not you insignificant art directors and editors, we mean REAL key art celebrities.)

Misty Water-Colored Memories Of The Way We Were

Download Getty Images' scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind.

Celebrating Self-Aggrandizement in the Entertainment Advertising Arts and Sciences

If you’re like us, you have trouble swallowing the party line about how the Key Art Awards are a tribute to the work done by the artists, when we all know the creatives’ participation in this event has been totally marginalized by the studios’ marketing execs.

But how can we possibly celebrate the “work” done by marketers? They don’t make things, build things, touch things. No. They qualify things, that is, they characterize stuff by naming its attributes.

Ha! Imagine a grown man doing THAT for a living.

That’s why marketing people love to butch it up with kick-ass expressions like “cannibalizing the core” and “targeting demos” and “seizing eyeballs.” It helps them to forget what weenies they really are.

And yet, as we've shifted from an industry-based (making something) economy to a service-based (qualifying something) economy, these weenies have completely incorporated this parlor trick of theirs into the marketplace - inserting themselves between the people doing the work and the people paying to have the work done, like a layer of inert gas.

And what, after all this time, has been their greatest achievement? The jacked up influence of the 16-year-old male target demographic in nearly every piece of entertainment crap we see.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Very Special Olympics

Click here to watch Kenji Thielstrom make irony-laden air quotes as he explains the Key Art Award’s wacky, zany “special" recognition category.

Full Circle Jerk

At last night's gala Key Art Awards show, visionary film maker Judd Apatow, after having his buttocks smooched by movie marketers, responded, "This award brings me full circle because I started out thinking you were all fucking assholes."

We assume he meant that, upon completion of the circle, he is back to thinking you are all fucking assholes again.

Anyhoo, here’s a partial list of the night's Pointy Thingy winners:

BEST CAMPAIGN: No Country for Old Men

BEST OF SHOW PRINT: The Simpsons Movie/ Drissi

COMEDY PRINT: Juno/ BLT

ACTION/ADVENTURE/HORROR PRINT: Grindhouse/ BLT

BEST COPY LINE: The TV Set/Crew

DOCUMENTARY PRINT: Taxi to the Dark Side/Cold Open

DRAMA PRINT: Premonition/Ignition

OUTDOOR ADVERTISING PRINT: Transformers/ BLT

INTERNATIONAL PRINT: Knocked Up/ Crew

Careful With That Pointy Thingy Or You’ll Poke Someone’s Eye Out!

We look forward to seeing each and every one of you tonight at the ultra-fabulous Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in 20th Century City!

Index Finger Index

I Feel Stupid And Contagious. Here We Are Now. Retailtain Us.

If you’re like us, your summer officially begins not with the 4th of July, but with the annual Licensing International Expo, which opens this week in New York.

What we look forward to most is not the new products making their debut, but rather what new words and phrases the marketing weenies will be unveiling.

First out the gate this year is Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products, warning us how the downturn in consumer spending threatens to put a pooper in our licensing and merchandising party.

"Buyers are being careful and making decisions later," Leigh Anne lamented to Adweek. "They still have to bring consumers something new, and they're looking for partners to bring excitement to create that retailtainment."

Desperate Army Housewives

If you’re like us, you awoke on Sunday to find your L.A. Times in the driveway thusly bound and bagged and, in your state of pre-coffee confusion, you were momentarily stunned into thinking that the beloved Terri Hatcher had been replaced overnight by the even more beloved Demi Moore.

Now THAT’S What We Call A Database!

Apparently inspired by our previous post, one of the many faceless freelancers we count among our readers sent us this helpful link to IMDb’s list of movies that blow.

Why It’s Called COPYwriting

Click on image to enlarge.

Note the comprehensive use of the word “sometimes” on the Good Luck Chuck one-sheet. This is what’s known in marketing as strategic copywriting (see diagram).