Ford - "The Importance of Paying Attention"

I've been buddies with J.J. Sedelmaier for a long time, he's been one of the stars of NYC animation for years.  Also, parenthetically, his father is the famous Joe Sedelmaier, who did some of the funniest and most famous commercials of the last 50 years.  (Remember those FedEx commercials with the guy who talked really fast?  And who can forget Wendy's "Where's the Beef" campaign?)

J.J. called me a few months ago to do a short spot for Ford Motor Company, it's a campaign to promote safe driving, how there should be no distractions while you drive.  In other words, our mission was to create the most wacky, far-fetched examples of drivers losing their concentration when behind the wheel.

The other two artists involved were Al Jaffee, the famous MAD magazine cartoonist, and the great M.K. Brown.  I've been a fan of M.K.'s cartoons since the old National Lampoon days, and she was also married to one of the great cartoonists of all time, B. Kliban.

My story was about a woman who, after discovering a mark on her teeth, proceeds to pull a dentist's drill out of her glove compartment and performs a delicate oral surgery operation on her teeth while she's driving at 80 mph.  You know, of course, that it's going to end badly - and it does.

However, even though they asked us to go crazy with our imagination, they forbid me to use a scream as her teeth fly out of her mouth when she hits a pothole - so I had to change the sound to something like "Ouch" or "Oh, dear!"  It doesn't have the same impact as a woman screaming - it's just not as funny, but I gess they were afraid of dentists calling in to complain about the gratuitous violence.

In any case, the three spots are very funny.  Please check them out on line here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL0I1P1VLMI&feature=youtu.be&list=PLCFM1h5Oz66gOeyMczRt-_-5E2UgiKbCh