Tony Kaye: Ad Icon

Having won every award there is to win in filmmaking with his ferocious energy and unique vision, you would be right to be wary when first meeting the notorious Tony Kaye. The intrepid Simon Wakelin tentatively steps into the fray

When you’re meeting the infamous Tony Kaye at his Los Angeles home for an interview, you’re never quite sure what to expect. After all, Kaye is renowned for his outrageous stunts in advertising and fearless crusades in filmmaking. Take the McCann-Erickson/Bacardi debacle back in the 90s where the ending of Kaye’s ad was re-shot by the agency. His response was to set up a 10-piece rap band on a flat-bed truck outside McCann’s HQ chanting anti-Bacardi sentiments in an effort to “embarrass the enemy into capitulation”.

However, when Kaye traded London for the bright lights of Hollywood he committed his most public faux pas on the Nazi skinhead drama American History X. Production ran smoothly, but when New Line seized control of the film he was unable to cut his version of the story. Kaye responded with a personal – and public – war of attrition against one of the most powerful studios in Hollywood. Kaye’s antics included the placement of more than 40 oblique ads in the trades to express his disgust with New Line, questioning why he wasn’t allowed creative control of the film. He went as far as to hire a priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk to sit in on a meeting between himself and studio exec Michael De Luca. He even read books on military strategy.

Kaye became an immense pain in the ass for De Luca, successfully yanking the premiere of the studio-cut film from the Toronto Film Festival, demanding that his name be taken off the film and replaced with ‘Humpty Dumpty’ (or, more amusingly, replaced with the moniker of footballer ‘Ralph Coates’). After the DGA refused his request, Kaye sued them for curtailing his First Amendment rights. Granted, it’s not every day you hear of such eccentricities – but you can’t fault Kaye for his passion. More to the point when American History X was unveiled it seemed Kaye's gritty, hand-held immediacy was still intact, a vision that earned him wide critical acclaim – and Edward Norton’s first Oscar nomination.

Kaye moved on and continued directing commercials while completing his powerful abortion documentary Lake Of Fire, a film that collected the Best Documentary Award at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2007. Kaye was also hired to direct the thriller Black Water Transit, a film perfectly suited to him. It follows the agendas of criminals, cops and lawyers colliding over a shipment of illegal firearms and a double homicide. But the producers became engaged in a bitter lawsuit, leaving Kaye to wonder if his film will ever be released.

One bright spot this year is Detachment – Kaye’s latest feature that follows Adrien Brody as Henry Barthes, a teacher with a murky past who drifts between troubled inner-city schools. It is released this autumn.

Arriving at Kaye’s house I was greeted by hundreds of pieces of conceptual art and I recalled the time he hired a homeless man and ‘installed’ him as a work of art at the Tate Gallery in London. I entered his home and spotted Kaye making espresso. He ushered me in with a warm, self-effacing attitude. I was immediately struck by his introspective nature and, as our conversation flowed, it seemed I had Kaye on a good day.

So began a thought-provoking interview with arguably one of the greatest directors ever to grace the advertising and film world. Kaye spoke about his love for advertising, his new book deal with Phaidon, filmmaking in Hollywood and how ego will destroy us all – unless we keep it in check.

What do you consider the greatest ad agency in the world right now?

I think that Banksy is by far the greatest advertiser/agency/client wrapped into one soul on the planet. No question. No question at all. A billion miles ahead of anyone. That’s the agency of the year for 2011, last year. And maybe next year.

I mean come on. Look at Banksy’s satirical images on Israel’s West Bank barrier. A girl being carried away by a bunch of balloons, a boy painting a rope ladder, and corners of the wall peeled away showing imagined lush landscapes behind. His work says think from outside the box, collapse the box and take a fucking knife to it.

Why do you think Banksy is so much better than effective agencies with huge global clients?

He is way ahead of the game because his ego is more crushed and more condensed than most corporate ad executives because he puts himself on the line. Every single day. He does what he believes in, does what he cares about. He is naked. He learns and moves on.

Banksy has just as many failures as he does successes, but he has the courage to go on, to create because he takes his ego out of the equation, in order to get his message out there. That’s who we, us in the conglomerate of the advertising machine, have to compete against.

What are your thoughts on advertising reaching the audience today with so many new media platforms vying for attention?

I don’t think it’s just new media. TV is still beamed into millions of people’s homes all over the world. Hard copy magazines and newspapers will always be there. People will always want to hold, look and feel something in their hands and that won’t change, for all experts suggest. Then there are walls, benches and streets that we exist within before you even consider new media.

Global advertising companies like Procter & Gamble are successful, brilliant and damn clever, but they need to hire people to make business decisions. They need to find what face its brands will wear in the world, what voice they will adopt and it’s extremely difficult for them to choose.

That’s when you come on to a project as a director and get caught up in all this banal, unintelligent dialogue and you think, Jesus, just beam me away from all of this bullshit because I don’t want to be polluted by it!

Advertising has to be created without fear because a glorious failure can lead to a wonderful victory. All these realms of research to find the answers effectively kills the poetry of advertising.

What ad campaigns have you been impressed with of late? What poetry makes the cut?

You know I noticed Droga 5's Decode Jay-Z with Bing won the Outdoor Grand Prix this year. That made me laugh. It’s Jay-Z’s words. His autobiography. It should win! It’s already brilliant because it’s the verse and text of a genius. It’s got nothing to do with advertising per se, but it is very readable and entertaining, so all of a sudden the work is winning awards at Cannes. Advertising has been reduced to this.

Many would say Decode Jay-Z with Bing is great advertising…

Okay. Look, it’s clever, it’s entertaining – but why are we, who make a living by advertising, not producing work as good as Jay-Z? How about Banksy, Hirst, Kanye?

Advertising has a responsibility. If we advertise anything – a spot on TV, on the radio, even a poster on the wall – we have a responsibility to do it with intelligence. My point is it’s got to be as good as a verse from Jay-Z, not just Jay-Z’s verse.

It has to be like a piece of graffiti by Banksy, like a sculpture by Damien Hirst, like a Bob Dylan song, like a performance by Arcade Fire. It has to exist in that space. To me the best agencies and the best clients are wrapped up in souls like Banksy, like Jay-Z, who communicate in a proactive way.

It’s been a difficult road since American History X. How was the experience on Black Water Transit, taking the reins from Samuel Bayer when he dropped out of the project?

Movies come about in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways. On paper it was a $45m movie. I was offered the film when Bayer dropped out and told I could bring in another writer to do my own version of the story. Then they gave me $8m to shoot it in New Orleans – but the bond company freaked out. I still have this reputation floating around after American History X, but it was a storm in a teacup and we soon began production.

You are known as a director but you are also a cinematographer. What’s the difference between directing and being a cameraman?

I believe I made a mistake. I should have been an actor. Brando told me I should have been in front of the camera. But being a cinematographer allows me to be an actor on set. The camera becomes a character. You don’t see it, you don’t hear it – but you feel its presence and everyone does. It’s there in the movie. It’s there on a dolly, it’s there on a track, or resting on my shoulder. The camera is observing everything. It’s one of the characters in the mise-en-scène.

Have you collaborated with other cinematographers?

I don’t because it’s a singular vision. It’s all about the spontaneity of where I choose to put the camera myself. I am the one placing the camera in the scene, the one choosing the lens, the one positioning the lights – or not having any lights at all, which is usually the case.

It just wouldn’t happen in quite the same way having a cinematographer with me. There would always be a dialogue happening, a hybrid that would end up being different. I’m not saying collaboration wouldn’t be better, just that to date it has enabled me to do the work extremely fast. For example, Detachment was shot in 22 days with great depth and coverage. I would defy any other director to do what I did on that film.

When you look back on the debacle of American History X and New Line what are your thoughts?

Look, that was an idiotic and stupid Tony Kaye back then. I had fear. I was a fucking coward. For the record, I’d love to work with Edward Norton again. As painful as it was at the time I learned a lot from the whole experience. Looking back now I know that I needed him to do what he did.

What do you see for yourself in the future?

I’m 60 years old. I’ve won everything that can be won more than once and now I’d like to be a part of the industry in a useful way. What I’m interested in is working with brands and manufacturers to make their product better, the packaging better and then selling it. That’s what I’m really interested in.

I fucking love advertising. I took to the industry like a duck to water. Not that I wanted to be there, not that I trained for it, but I loved it. It’s been a lifetime in the profession. I’ve been a graphic designer, a commercial artist, a copywriter, an art director, a commercials director, a photographer, a cinematographer, a book designer. The list goes on. I have done almost every job on the creative side in the profession of advertising.

How do you make advertising better?

It’s about two words. KILL EGO. If you can do that, if you can kill that you open up a whole new discussion. Part of the problem in making commercials is that when you walk into a meeting you are with people who work for big corporations and agencies and there’s a monster in the room and it’s called ego.

I’m not saying that I’m Moses, I’m saying that unless you can break that down and humble yourself, unless everyone in the room can do that, and talk about the real grassroots of what the problem is, about how are we going to advertise this product and make it better, how can we look at the product itself and get rid of all the fucking bad ingredients in the product that damage, harm and kill people, and how can we make the packaging, so that it looks cool and doesn’t damage people’s lives by breeding bad taste. It needs to be all about making advertising in a proactive way.

Is regionalism still alive?

No, it’s universal now. We’ve all become, in a way, suburbs of the States. We’re dealing with youth here. Youth governs us. The US, as far as I am concerned, has the greatest business mind in the world. America’s business acumen is second to none. Now there are great artists everywhere in the world and I don’t believe for one moment that America produces the greatest artists, but the one thing that American advertising has is global control. America can take anything that it chooses and make it the biggest thing all over the world. It becomes mythic, especially advertising that is translatable in a very simplistic sense to the global community. I think to procure success, ideas need to be wrapped within a franchise. Think Harry Potter, James Bond or Jason Bourne to keep a brand’s identity intact.

I think anything you do has to be a campaign; and there has to be some singular thought, some unique message that is always apparent.

Ego is obviously a problem. What else is required to make the magic happen?

Trust. The most successful relationships I have experienced in advertising have come from brave clients that trust me.

I remember years ago I had to give a lecture at a big advertising seminar. I was working on a Nike spot with Myung-Joong Kim. I asked him if he had any ideas for the lecture I was gonna give. He looked at me for a second then said: “Yeah, just say the word ‘trust’.”

Just go out there and say one word? Go up on the stage, say one word, and walk off? I said, you know, that’s a fantastic idea. I’m gonna do that.

They flew me first class thousands of miles, put me up in San Francisco in an incredible hotel suite overlooking the city for the big day. I went to the seminar with a big crowd of people waiting for some genius to come out and give them a Steve Jobs keynote speech. I come out, I look at everyone, I say the word “trust” into the microphone and walk off the stage. But that’s what it is. That’s what any lecture would have come down to. Trust.

What drives and inspires you after so much time in advertising and film? What gives you passion?

Being connected with God – and I don’t mean an old guy in the sky with a big white beard, but in the sense of God being the global energy. When you create a poem, shape a chair, make a painting, shoot a commercial, write content for the internet, sing a song – all of these you create with all of mankind, and all this collective energy, that global energy has a power.