Today I was working on an Ad that might make it into Playboy. If you’ll remember, this happened a month ago when I had a Sex in the City DVD Ad that was chosen by their art directors, went through revisions, approved to release, went all the way to Mechanical (which means it was prepped to deliver to the printer) and just as I was going to upload it, HBO killed it. They don’t give us a reason when they do that stuff beyond our estimation that they don’t have it in their budget to do so. Wack.  So I was bummed because of course I told everyone to watch for it and counted my chickens before they were hatched and also because I would have actually been proud of the Ad. I received all of these messages saying, “Congratulations!” and all for nothing. The Ad I was working on today is up against 5 other ones and I don’t think I have a real shot. The concept is pretty good but I actually hope it doesn’t make it because tagline they gave us is a lie. Their tagline is, “It’s Juno for the horror set”. Some asshole in marketing came up with it. Its not true because the movie we are making the ad for sucks, a lot. Piece of shit. Seriously. They had us read the script before they even started filming and i nearly pissed myself being incredulous. I thought, “There’s no way a script this bad will actually get made!” But sure enough, I screened the movie yesterday and it was verbatim. Christ. So many good horror scripts out there (Hello, Ali and I struck gold with Dormstalker?) and they have to make that piece of dung.

I’m not going to tell you what the movie is or which studio is putting it out (Straight to DVD of course) because I’d probably get in trouble. But needless to say it is NOT in any way, shape or form “Juno for the Horror set”. There are no pregnant teenagers in it, there are no A-List Actors in it, It is not an Academy Award-winning script written by a former stripper in Minnesota, it will never play in an arthouse theatre, it will never play in a multi-plex, the female star is not the next big thing (she was on Growing Pains) and it will not lead to the rise in sales of orange tic tacs. If this film were reviewed on a Horror site such as DeadLantern.com, it would recieve a 3 out of 10 for looking semi-professionally done for a horror movie on DV Cam with massive points deducted for not being bloody enough nor giving the audience nearly enough of an interesting plot to suspend their bloody disbelief. (And Deejay would deduct points for not showing tits)

Gah. If they pick my design and keep ANY of that Tagline then I am going to barf on my keyboard for knowing that the first large circulation consumer Ad of mine to be released would be for a movie that bad. And so you know, the tagline from the Sex in the City Ad beat out 4 designs was all mine. It was certainly better than “It’s Juno for the Horror Set”.

The other terrible thing that happened today is that I just now finished the screener for Fred Claus. Thats right. I’m working on the DVD design for Fred Claus. I hate working on Christmas films. ESPECIALLY IN MARCH! Can’t I enjoy my Lenten season without Jesus or Santa Claus?

(Hey Ali, I think they filmed some of Fred Claus by where you work. I’m totally sneaking your apartment into the design.)

Ok I feel better now. Merry Christmas everyone.