A few weeks ago during one of my Ask Away livestreams, a patron of mine — hi,
Madeleine! — asked me what aspect of film analysis I find most interesting.
It was a tougher question than it might seem at first. The answer I gave was that,
basically, I enjoy studying what works, and what doesn’t, and figuring out why.
Hopefully that makes sense, but if it doesn’t, it just so happens that,
a few days after that livestream, I stumbled over a perfect example of what I’m talking about.
It doesn’t involve the work of a legendary filmmaker. It won’t demand a frame-by-frame
analysis of a towering cinematic masterpiece. It’s all about this guy. Remember him?
For you youngsters who might not remember, this is Ernest P. Worrell. He was a big deal in the
‘80s. He was the lead character of nine movies, he had his own Saturday morning
children’s show on CBS that won Jim Varney, the actor who played Ernest, a Daytime Emmy Award,
and he was the first person to ride Splash Mountain! Can you believe it?!
But in this video, I’m not going to talk about any of those things. I love Ernest — I’m a fan,
to this day — but looking back with adult eyes, I have to say that none of Ernest’s movies are very
good. The first two — Ernest Goes to Camp, and Ernest Saves Christmas — are the best of the lot,
and they each have their moments, especially Ernest Saves Christmas — but “best Ernest movie”
is only a compliment in the same sense that “best brand of canned whole chicken” is one.
Ernest’s Emmy-winning TV show, Hey Vern, It’s Ernest! has its charms,
and is a good showcase for Varney as a performer,
but it doesn’t really work for my purposes here. Ditto for Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain,
except for the parts about it having its charms and being a good showcase for Varney —
Fortunately, movies and TV series and specials are not the only works in which Ernest appeared.
Before Ernest went Hollywood, he was the star of hundreds of local and regional TV commercials.
It was as a commercial pitchman that Ernest first rose to prominence in the early ‘80s.
And as a lifelong Ernest fan, I can tell you, the commercials . . . are the good shit, knowhutImean?
Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic short stories were the ideal medium for Sherlock Holmes,
these 30-second ads for car dealerships,
dairies, convenience stores, TV stations and cable companies,
and the occasional national sponsor like Coca Cola, were the perfect vehicle for Ernest.
The Ernest commercials were so popular in their day that Carden & Cherry, the ad agency that
produced them, released a pair of hour-long compilation videos, which are still available
on DVD, and which have also been uploaded to YouTube. This video is about why those Ernest ads
worked — and still work — so well. But, in order to illustrate why they work, I’m also going to
talk about some other, more recent ads, that don’t work. They also star Ernest — sort of.
Sadly, Jim Varney died at the age of fifty, of lung cancer, in the year 2000.
Five years later, Carden & Cherry produced a new
series of commercials starring Ernest — an animated Ernest, voiced by John C. Hudgens.
These new Ernest ads did not catch on. There are several reasons for that, I think,
one of which is obviously the fact that lots of folks found the very idea of doing new Ernest
ads after the death of Jim Varney to be crass and unseemly. While Varney did eventually find success
in other roles — he played Jed Clampett in the feature film version of The Beverly Hillbillies,
and was the voice of Slinky Dog for the first two Toy Story movies — he was always most closely
associated with Ernest, a character he co-created along with Carden & Cherry. There was no way doing
an Ernest project without him wasn’t going to come off like an act of artistic grave robbery.
But there’s another, more basic reason why the newer animated Ernest ads don’t work,
whereas the original Jim Varney ones do,
and that reason brings me back to what brought me to this subject in the first place: film analysis.
Let me start with a simple comparison. I’m going to show you two Ernest commercials:
one from back in the ‘80s starring Jim Varney, and one from 2005 starring the animated version.
They’re both commercials for car dealerships — they’re for different car dealerships,
but they use basically the same script, which makes them perfect for this exercise.
First, the classic Jim Varney version:
You know, Vern, timing is very important. And that’s why you should buy your Tyson’s Toyota
during the last ten days of the month. That’s when they’re overstocked! That’s when they’ve got to
make their quotas! That’s when you can have your choice! That’s when you can dictate the terms!
They’re just a bunch of wimps! Now is the time to strike at the soft
underbelly of Tyson’s Toyota! What about the salesmen? Don’t worry about the salesmen!
Any one of us can whip a salesman during the last ten days! Waaa-hahahahaha! Know what I mean?
And now, the animated version:
Hey, Vern! Timing is everything. And that’s why you should buy your car
at Cerritos Auto Square during the last ten days of the month. They’re overstocked, under pressure,
got to lower their prices, and meet their quotas. They’re just a bunch of wimps! Now is the time
to strike at the soft underbelly of the Cerritos Auto Square! And what about those pesky salesmen?
Don’t worry about the salesmen! Any one of us can whip the salesmen during the last! Ten! Days!
So. Having watched each ad only once, let me ask you:
other than the fact that one is live-action and one is animated, and other than the fact
that they’re for different clients, what is the difference between those two ads?
There’s more than one answer, so I’ll just show you what I’m getting at. Here are the two ads
side-by-side. I’ll stop ‘em when the difference I’m talking about first becomes apparent.
Stop.
What just happened in the animated ad that didn’t happen in the original?
There was a cut to a new shot. Let’s keep going.
There’s another one. And another one. In total there are seven cuts in this 30-second ad.
Meanwhile, in the original version, there are . . . none. That’s important.
The classic Ernest ads were built around direct, uncomplicated premises. Sometimes
there was a gag — Ernest gets his hands caught in a closing window, Ernest gets mildly electrocuted,
the car Ernest just parked starts to roll away — sometimes it was just Varney delivering a
short monologue with a funny punchline. But they all had one thing in common:
they were presented with Ernest addressing the camera, in a single take. One shot, no cuts.
The reason that’s so important is because the conceit of the ads is that when he addresses the
camera, Ernest is talking to his neighbor, Vern. We experience Ernest through Vern’s perspective.
The animated ads have the same conceit — Ernest is talking to Vern, telling him
all about the given product or service — in this case, the car dealership’s big sale — but
they’re missing the unity of presentation that comes from a single shot. We’re told
we’re seeing Ernest from Vern’s perspective, but it feels wrong because of the cuts.
We don’t live life in montage. We might remember it that way, but in the moment, it’s all one take.
To say it in another, fancier sounding way, the animated Ernest ads lack verisimilitude.
Of course with both the original and the animated version, we’re fully aware we’re watching a
commercial. But the original Ernest ads take the concept of the character addressing the camera
as though it were a person and present it in a way that feels true to our experience.
If Ernest was talking to us in real life instead of Vern, that’s pretty much what
it would look like. The multiple cuts and other unrealistic elements of the animated ads break
the illusion that Ernest is just a guy talking to his ol’ buddy Vern — and through Vern, us.
And if you take that illusion, that verisimilitude, out of the Ernest ads,
you’re not really left with much. That’s because the appeal of the Ernest character is inextricably
tied to that illusion. Jim Varney is an affable and appealing onscreen presence,
but Ernest is essentially a pest. He approaches Vern uninvited to lecture, ridicule, or boast,
and it’s obvious that, while Ernest perceives them to be close friends, Vern doesn’t really
like him. When was the last time you shoved one of your close friends off of a ladder?
Ernest is the uninvited guest, the interloper, the know-it-all who’s always
offering unsolicited advice and sticking his nose in Vern’s business. That’s the premise.
That’s the foundational joke that allows all the other jokes built on top of it to land.
We’re on Vern’s side. But in order for any of it to work, we need to be able to suspend
our disbelief and feel for those thirty seconds that we really are in Vern’s shoes. The classic
Ernest commercials understand that, which is why they’re presented in single, uncut takes,
and why they’re still funny today, thirty or forty years later. The visual style of the animated ads,
specifically the use of frequent cuts, makes that suspension of disbelief impossible, which, for me,
is the most important reason why they’re not funny and have been all but forgotten.
So, what’s the lesson here from the perspective of film analysis? Don’t cut? Montage is bad?
Of course not. Montage is arguably the single most important innovation ever in the visual
language of cinema. It’s one of the most powerful tools the filmmaker has at their
disposal. But like all tools, it must be wielded with intelligence and precision.
Whether you’re making a 30 second commercial for a car dealership or a regional restaurant chain,
or a cinematic magnum opus destined for Venice, Cannes, and Berlin, if a single uncut shot will
convey the feeling or idea you want more effectively than a series of intercut shots,
you should go with the single shot.
One of the most important things any artist does, whatever their chosen medium — film,
canvas, clay, sound — is to define at a basic level what a given work is.
What is it doing? What is its purpose? What is its nature? Once that has been determined,
the task of the artist is to realize that purpose while remaining true to the nature of the thing.
For as silly and artistically inconsequential as they are,
I think the Ernest commercials do an excellent job of illustrating this principle. The original
live-action Ernest ads are done in a way that is true to their nature; the animated ones aren’t.
That’s why one works, and the other doesn’t.
When you’re working to create something, find the spirit of the thing and stay true to it.
It’s important. And it applies to a lot more than corny 1980s TV commercials.
Are we communicating here? Comprendo? Do I have to go through this again?
Thanks so much for watching, everybody. If you enjoyed this video,
please consider supporting this channel with a monthly donation. You can become a
patron by going to patreon.com/steveshives, or become a channel member by simply clicking the
join button right here on the YouTube page. Thanks again, and I’ll see you next time.