Welcome to 88 Questions, the newest feature on our Think page. To let you get to know our team a little better, we tasked each 88er with coming up with a series of questions for somebody else in the agency. The results are fascinating, funny and sometimes, we hope, enlightening.
To kick us off, our ever-be-headphoned Account Supervisor grills our renowned food blogger/Associate Creative Director.
As 88’s resident culinary expert/foodie, I’m sure you’ve sampled your fair share of incredible eats. I’d like to know, what’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?
My best meal has actually been a whole string of them, eaten at Lucien in New York City’s East Village. For me, the meal is as much about the experience as the food, and this neighborhood French bistro nails it. The atmosphere is cheerfully noisy, relaxed and friendly—hip without being hipster. We discovered it several years ago and always make sure to eat there at least once when we’re in New York. If we lived there, we’d be regulars. As it is, we’re often treated like regulars.
Case in point. On a visit with Marion and our then 17-year-old daughter Laurel, I ordered a bottle of wine. Our server—an extravagantly tattooed filmmaker named Lola—brought three glasses to the table. I told her that while we served Laurel wine at home, she was underage and I didn’t want the restaurant to get in trouble. Lola took the glass away. A full year later, we were back in New York with Laurel and of course went to Lucien. Lola hugged each of us, saying, “It took you long enough to get back here!” When I ordered wine, she again brought three glasses, loudly announcing to Laurel, “I remember I carded you last time you were here and you were 25.” She then poured the tasting sip for Laurel.
But food does matter, and Lucien nails that too. Authentic French bistro fare, expertly executed, from steak frites to foie gras, escargots, rabbit and cassoulet. Okay, I just had lunch, and I’m totally ready to be eating there right now.
I’m always impressed by your ability to pick out a specific passage from a book, or expertly describe a scene from a movie. That’s why I’m curious what character from literature or cinema you might most closely identify with, and why?
I don’t know that I identify with this character, but he certainly holds my interest. Jason Bourne, as played by Matt Damon (the Jeremy Renner version was a one-film mishap in the franchise). It surprises some people that I’m a huge fan of certain action films, smart ones with complex characters that also deliver the action goods (“Sir, he drove off the roof.”), but I am. More than that, though, in the Bourne series, we get to watch the main character solve problems intelligently on the fly—and, more important, figure out who he is and who he was before they broke him. Especially in the first two films, we watch him become more human as he does, more compassionate. Damon shares this beautifully, with subtle changes in expression and simple gestures. We own the first three films, and I will watch one of them every month or so, start to finish. Every time I do, I see something new.
Your robust vocabulary is put to the test daily as a copywriter, and your colorful use of language is heard around the office daily, but what if you could only say one phrase for the rest of your life? What would it be, and why? (Must be safe for work.)
That’s a toughie. Not because so many phrases some to mind, but because so many of my phrases contain, shall we say, adult content. But once on a pre-GPS road trip, my wife and I were in some small town with a deficient paper map, trying to find a restaurant we’d heard about. I happened to see one of those pictogram road signs indicating a library ahead. I said, “A library! We’re saved!” We were indeed saved. They helped us find our destination right away. The phrase has now entered the family road trip lexicon. Whenever we’re traveling and see one of those signs, one of us says, “A library! We’re saved!” Of course, it helps that we’re a family of library geeks. We occasionally amend the line to match particular situations. As in, “A liquor store! We’re saved!”
Your advertising career started in the ’90s, so it’s needless to say that the industry has changed significantly from when you first got your start. From the time that you started your career to now, what do you think has been the most positive change that has taken place in the advertising industry, and what do you think has been the most negative change?
I actually remember advertising before the Mac. The introduction of the Mac and everything that has come with it has been a huge positive change, energizing the creative process. Instead of imagining typefaces and point sizes in headlines, art directors could see them right away. Flush left, flush right, centered? Done. Images and other elements could be moved around instantly. More important, the impact of an idea—or lack thereof—could be seen right away.
The most negative change may also be the introduction of the Mac. It has sped up the whole process of what we do, sometimes to our detriment. The built-in time of hand drawing a layout for a concept or waiting for type to be set also created time to think more about the idea, to refine it. All too often, creatives jump right on the computer when a new assignment kicks off, taking their first (and maybe second) ideas and refining them, instead of sitting with a pad of paper and seeing how many ideas they can come up with. It has also made clients more literal, I think. They react to the color of someone’s sweater in a stock photo and not to the idea being proposed. In the end, what we do is all about the idea. With or without the Mac, we should make it as good as we can.