But the real showstopper at last night's Golden Globe Awards (get your winners here) came during a commercial break, when a dead person was exhumed and re-animated (yeah, we've already heard the Warren Beatty jokes). It was Orville Redenbacher, the popcorn pitchman who died of a heart attack in his whirlpool bathtub back in September 1995, making history by hawking his wares from beyond the grave.
Sure, dead people have been used in commercials. But officially, last night's debut was "the first time a digital representation of a deceased individual appeared that could be made to say and do anything."
Unfortunate about what the zombie Redenbacher said, though. In its quest for warm and fuzzy nostalgia, the spot had him revive a term for unpopped kernels that had been excised from the original Redenbacher ads decades ago because of its unsavory political incorrectness:
Old maids.
Get it? Even in this age of TV crassness, watch for that line to disappear from the spot in the coming weeks.
The commercial, which showed the creepy dead man hobbling through a party of yung'uns, was created by the ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky out of Miami. The combination of three digitally-merged actors--voice, face and body-- was slightly clumsy and made him look like a Dawn of the Dead extra. You'd expect the young popcorn partygoers to run from the room screaming because dead grandpa was walking around, seemingly running on juice from someone's mp3 player.
However, Orville's real grandson and living popcorn pitchman, Gary Redenbacher, gave a thumbs up. He said: "Grandpa would go for it. He was a cutting-edge guy. This is a way to honor his legacy."
(Fun fact: The original Dawn of the Dead is on Tabloid Baby's list of the Top 50 movies of all time)
Comments (5)
That commercial was just weird. Mildly creepy too.
1 of 5 | Posted by B-Side![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tvgasm.com/newsgasm/nav-commenters.gif)
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Posted on January 16, 2007 10:28 AM
Watched the awards on the DVR, so I must have buzzed past this without even noticing.
Speaking of dead people, I was anxiously awaiting the tranditional review of everyone who died this year so you can see who gets the most applause, but they never did it. Am I mistaken? Do they only do this at the Oscars? I thought the Globes did it also.
2 of 5 | Posted by JasonR![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tvgasm.com/newsgasm/nav-commenters.gif)
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Posted on January 16, 2007 11:40 AM
It looked like they put a load of latex prosthetics on some skinny kid and told him to act like some "hip", old dead guy. It's worse than those freakish SunMaid CGI commercials.
3 of 5 | Posted by Foxbase Alpha![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tvgasm.com/newsgasm/nav-commenters.gif)
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Posted on January 16, 2007 3:39 PM
That commercial just freaked me out! It's sure to be a contender for worst commercial of 2007.
4 of 5 | Posted by busybee68![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tvgasm.com/newsgasm/nav-commenters.gif)
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Posted on January 16, 2007 4:27 PM
At first I thought, "oh, they are going to play an old clip how niiiiiice...." that quickly changed to CREEPY. Just creepy.
5 of 5 | Posted by MrsC![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tvgasm.com/newsgasm/nav-commenters.gif)
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Posted on January 18, 2007 12:02 PM