**½/****
directed by Doug Pray
by Jefferson Robbins The metaphors that Doug Pray's subjects arrive at to describe their chosen medium–advertising, in all its forms–are atmospheric. "It's like air and water," says Jeff Goodby, creator of the "Got milk?" campaign. "It's around you. It's gonna happen to you." Art director and ad legend George Lois ("I want my MTV") is perhaps more honest: "I think advertising's a poison gas." Pray's documentary does a great job of illustrating where we are now in our relationship with our ads. Where it doesn't succeed is as a history lesson, save for opening nods to the era familiar to fans of "Mad Men". It was ad pioneers like Bill Bernbach who paired artists with writers beginning in 1949, sparking the "creative revolution" that put paid to Don Draper's business model. But in one sentence, I just told you more about that era, including its relevant date, than all of Art & Copy does. The personalities of DDB and other groundbreaking agencies aren't much explored; understandably, as a filmmaker, Pray is far more interested in the ads themselves, particularly TV ads. Moreover, he's only interested in the successful campaigns, not the stinkers. His earliest hero on that front is Mary Wells, a DDB veteran who later ran a campaign for Braniff Airlines that turned its ads (and planes) into theatrical productions. (In 1977, Wells taught us how to ♥NY.) Pray's talking heads display an unexpected philosophical bent (save Goodby's partner Rich Silverstein, an epic douche who thought "Got milk?" was a stupid idea). The late Hal Riney, who sold wine coolers and Ronald Reagan's second term with the same sepia tinge, admits to an unhappy childhood that fed into his advertising style. The best advertisers, all agree, are less artists than antennae–they capture what's already in the air, and spur their clients to strive for quality. "If the product isn't any good, I'll put it out of business," the wonderful Lois roars, "because people'll run and buy it and find out it's a piece o' shit!" Despite the theme they spell out for him, Pray can't successfully tie these amazing characters to his advertising-infrastructure factoids, and he seems to imply that we've been creating and consuming advertising ever since we made the first rock carvings. I'd prefer to think my ancestors had larger souls than mine.
