SPRINT // BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

That time you get a real Super Bowl brief that has a real media plan and a real budget behind it because it’s a real assignment and not a maybe-we’ll-do-a-Super-Bowl-spot-if-you-impress-us assignment, and you have to use the Sprint robots because they are the faces of the current campaign that definitely no one sees or remembers, but it’s in the part of the brief labeled “mandatories,” and you’re like, okayokayokay robots—I guess I can work with that, and you do, and you and your team come up with this great “never meet your heroes” idea where the Sprint robots meet the Terminator exoskeleton and become totally disillusioned when they find out he’s overpaying for wireless service... *somewhere in Kansas City a client squeals in ecstasy* ...and the clients buy it, and the Russo Brothers want to direct it, and you’re deep into talks with Paramount, and then the clients become obsessed with the fear that the Terminator exoskeleton might not be recognizable on its own, and we have to see Arnold in the flesh or at least a poster of Arnold in the same shot as the exoskeleton, we just have to, but we can’t afford to see in-the-flesh-Arnold or poster-Arnold, which is fine because the whole “people might not recognize the exoskeleton” fear isn’t based in any kind of logic because “logic” and “clients” are natural enemies, but they won’t let it go, so Paramount finally gives them the hard “no,” but then James Cameron gives the whole damn project hard “no” because you’re not allowed to be funny with the Terminator exoskeleton because he’s not that sort of guy, and did you know he’s actually pretty much the opposite of that sort of guy, which is why it was so funny to begin with, but apparently James Cameron doesn’t think so, and you wish you’d had known what James Cameron had thought, oh I don’t know, not four fucking weeks before Super Bowl, but now it’s four fucking weeks before Super Bowl, like the actual day of Super Bowl, and you’re starting at zero and writing scripts 16 hours a day, and you actually come up with a solid alt about aliens un-abducting a human because the human isn’t smart enough for them, and everyone likes it except the one client who makes the decisions because, and I quote, “aliens would never abduct a human in the first place because they know they are an inferior life form,” and you are speechless for several moments, then you have a hundred wild-eyed conversations about how alien abductions are, like, one of the most iconic ways aliens show up in entertainment and culture, and you never imagined you’d be in a position to need to defend that, but basic human logic is no longer a factor and probably never was if you look at the evidence, so you go back to the drawing board and meanwhile the client makes a secret deal with 90s football star Bo Jackson to appear in the Super Bowl commercial, because, unlike the totally unrecognizable Terminator exoskeleton, everyone will DEFINITELY recognize Bo Jackson after three plus decades, and he’s, like, a football player which is, like, SO relevant because the Super Bowl is, like, also about football, and most of all he’s from Kansas City, and guess what, so are the clients, so it’s pretty much a match made in heaven, except you’re like, what the actual fuck, I’m making a Super Bowl commercial with a football player because that’s never been done before, but you try make the most of it because PMA or whatever, and everyone works really hard to make the whole production happen in less than three weeks, and you can kind of be proud of that because that’s kind of something, but deep down you’re really like, fuck you, James Cameron.