It cracks me up that the TV show, Mad Men, is all the rage.

In another life, after graduating from St. Helena High and Cal, I lived in New York. Having no marketable skills I wrote television commercials. It was a good life. We were young and single. We mirrored Mad Men, except we dressed worse and smoked, drank, and frolicked more.

My last job, at J.Walter Thompson had private bar on the 4th floor.
I had worked inside agencies and as a free lancer. I could barely make a buck freelancing. Fortunately, I had a used tuxedo and a tennis racket, so I lived like a king.

One day, Don, a creative Director at JWT, New York, called from California. He wanted me to turn legit and go back inside.

I was down to my last $200 so he had me. Ed c ounseled, “No more of this Berkeley Bologna. This time no arguing. (I’d quit my last two jobs). You just give them all the paper they want, and every two weeks they’ll give you a little piece of paper with numbers on it.”

A former Gag writer for Carson, Ed had been around.

I reported to the Graybar building above Grand Central. My secretary told me Don was on the horn from L.A. “Has Burt found you yet?”

“No.”

“Good. He wants you to write something . Hide under your desk (true story). Have Debbie get a cash advance and a first class ticket on the red eye. Take the stairs (Burt will watch the elevators) and grab a cab. Be here (Hollywood) in the morning.”

I could see I was going to like this job.

I skied to the coast and checked into Stevie Wonder’s Regency Hotel at the end of Hollywood Blvd. This pattern was to repeat itself (sans sneaking down the stairs) every June for the next five years.

The stories are too numerous. But the greatest was when we were launching the New Ford Ranger. We were going to parachute the new Ranger out of a plane to announce that the “New Ford Ranger has landed!”

The spots were shot on dry lake beds near Palmdale, where they land the Space Shuttles.

We had nine sky divers with cameras on their hats.

Trust me. Galileo had never dropped a Ford Truck and sky divers. They don’t fall at the same rate! We would fly to 17,000 feet. A drogue chute would open at 14,000 feet, to slow the truck down so the sky divers could film the payload, twin eye beam suspension, cab interior etc. At 4,000 feet, the 100 foot chute would open so the truck would land safely.

As a creative director, I always liked to do a something on the shoot. This time I would “plug in the camera” that was mounted at the rear of the cargo plane.

They strapped a chute on my back and I paraded into the cargo hold with the other sky divers.

The plane had no back door.

I was unaware that as altitude is gained, if a cabin isn’t pressurized the pounds per square inch lessens--and gasses (like those trapped inside one’s body) naturally escape. As we got up around 14,000 feet the flatulence generated by 10 of us almost drowned out the engine noise.

Then a different odor assaulted my senses. It was gasoline. The change in pressure had caused gas to ooze up out of the tank. The engine had been removed from the truck. There was no need for any gas in the tank.

Now the plane reeked of gas fumes. Surely they would abort the mission.

No. They wiped up the gas with rags and were going to go ahead.

I shouted. “When I plug in the camera it makes a spark!” “Dooooooon’t do it,” they yelled.

Next thing I knew, they cut the cable, the truck slid out and the sky divers jumped out after it.
We circled back down and landed. A jeep picked me up and drove me to the truck.

It looked familiar but was the size of a coffee table –completely pancaked--no tires.

We dropped 5 trucks that day. Three times the shoot didn’t open.

I wrote another spot using the crash footage butoriginal copy, and added—“It’s built Ford tough--tough enough to withstand anything—(as it nose dived into the earth)….. Well, almost anything.”

The c lient didn’t laugh. So we lit up and had a drink. That’s the ad game.