After directing art, creative, music videos, features and ads for more than 40 years, Bob Giraldi is worth listening to when he speaks about being a director. He says it’s a good job for an old man, as long as your eyes are good and someone can lift you into the chair. Simon Wakelin meets the legend.
Sliding into the swanky Mr. C Hotel in Beverly Hills to meet Bob Giraldi I ponder his prestigious induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame along with the many commercial accolades he has garnered over the years – a list including several London International Awards, Cannes Lions, NY International Awards, Addy Awards, Chicago Film Festival Awards and a plethora of Clios.
Giraldi is personable and open 74-year-old, ready to discuss a long and illustrious career that began in Paterson, New Jersey where, as a child, he fostered his creative spirit with oil painting classes while obsessively playing sports. He then attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on an athletic scholarship before heading to Detroit to becomea graphic designer at General Motors.
A stint as an assistant art director at Campbell-Ewald in Detroit followed, an experience that led to a decade of creativity in adland. Giraldi headed to New York, joining Young & Rubicam – one of the biggest and most experimental agencies at the time – where he met Steve Frankfurt, a hot shot 60s Madison Avenue ad executive who became president of the company at the tender age of 36.
“He was an ad genius, a guru, our true leader,” remembers Giraldi. “I got immense doses of inspiration from him.”
A short stint at Della Femina Travisano & Partners came next, where he became co-creative director and head of television production, collecting awards for work on Channel 7 Eyewitness News, H&R Block, Fuji Film, the Hemophilia Foundation and more. Giraldi then moved into the director’s chair, opening Bob Giraldi Productions, where he has since produced or directed close to 3,000 commercials, music videos and short films:
“I think one of the reasons I’ve stayed working as a director so long is having an understanding and a genuine respect for agency issues,” he reasons. “As an art director I saw what it took to come up with ideas, get them drawn out, approved, then re-approved to shoot. Collaboration creates the best work. You just can’t be myopic about it.”
We discuss story and structure, breaking down how music videos brought Giraldi into a new paradigm in the early 80s. He directed such classic promos as Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Jackson and Paul McCartney’s Say, Say, Say, Lionel Ritchie’s Hello and Running with the Night, plus videos for Diana Ross, Earth, Wind & Fire, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Jermaine Jackson, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Pat Benatar.
Giraldi admits that his videos were unapologetically American, revealing how they rubbed many people up the wrong way – including veteran British promo director Tim Pope:
“I was criticised heavily by people like him who said there was no place for Lionel Ritche’s Hello because it was too saccharine,” he reveals. “In many ways he was correct – but he was wrong to say there was no place for it. Music videos brought Paul McCartney’s career back and made Lionel Ritchie a household name.”
Giraldi’s music video career took off quite by accident after his producer Anthony Payne urged him to try his hand at it. Danny Pearl had just directed Jackson’s Billie Jean at the time, and Payne felt the timing was right for Giraldi to meet the King of Pop.
“I met Michael and he liked my commercials so he asked me to come back with an idea for Beat It – but he also wanted the Crips and the Bloods [real LA gangs] to be in it!” recalls Giraldi. “I went away and played the music over and over and soon realised the video could be my version of Broadway.”
Having previously been the first to helm spots for Broadway – creating ads for hits such as A Chorus Line, Evita and Dream Girls – Giraldi knew he was onto something. But Beat It almost never happened; the Crips and the Bloods became increasingly rowdy on the first day of the shoot, leaving police officers with no choice but to shut it down before anyone was injured:
“I’d only shot the periphery when the cops came to me to call wrap, so I simply begged them to let me try one more thing,” says Giraldi, who quickly pumped out the music to get Michael Jackson dancing. “The Crips and the Bloods couldn’t believe what they saw. All their vendettas, all their wars were suddenly forgotten. It was marvelous to see – and, of course, that video changed my life.”
While discussing the decade, Giraldi admits his most vivid musical memory was sitting with Quincy Jones in a recording studio in early 1985.
“I was the only one with him in the booth the night Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson wrote and performed We Are The World,” he explains. “To sit there and watch that talent was simply unbelievable, easily one of the greatest memories of that time for me.”
With sales in excess of 20 million copies, the song became a global phenomenon. On that note, Giraldi discusses how music videos dance to a different beat today.
“The business is completely online,” he says. “It’s almost like a demystification of an art form. It’s cheaper, grittier and allows for younger, less polished directors to find a way.”
We venture back into the subject of commercial filmmaking, discussing the merits of digital and its ability to acquiesce with an audience through ever-expanding conduits of communication. Currently teaching a short filmmaking course at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Giraldi’s classes include The Interactive Idea and Ideation, challenging topics that give his students’ minds a good workout:
“The courses look at internet marketing, focusing on how you can invent and create a brand and keep it alive through non-traditional methods of engagement,” he outlines. “No print, no TV, no radio – everything has to be replaced by new media outlets that require interaction, engagement and more. “Today digital for brands is all about making friends – giving, engaging, interacting, donating money to social issues,” he continues. “Smart advertisers understand that they have to make friends and prove that they are not greedy bastards.”
When I opine that the 30-second spot is not dead, Giraldi nods in agreement – but counters that, “a 30-second commercial seems like a long time now. There is no true marketing story you can’t tell in 30 seconds or less.”
Then how does one go about creating branding that successfully converses with its audience?
“If you were to ask who was the best advertiser in America over the years, most would say Nike,” he answers. “But, for me, the number one brand for delivering consistently smart, creative, legitimate messages has been Volkswagen. [DDB Stockholm installation] Piano Staircase is a great example. It made people take the stairs instead of the escalator while making the event fun. That was pure audience engagement, and The Force was simply a brilliant TV commercial. Smart, well acted, well performed.”
When asked which directors inspire him, Giraldi admits to a handful. For features he favours any movie by John Sayles, plus Gus van Sant and Barry Levinson, while Spielberg gets top marks because “he really cares about making good films”.
“Lance Acord I like very much,” he adds when pushed on commercial directors. “I also think that Bryan Buckley is at the top of his game. Dante Ariola, Craig Gillespie, Noam Murro, the list goes on.”
Raised on the East Coast, I had to ask what Giraldi thought of Los Angeles. “For better or worse Los Angeles is a town that is immersed in faux,” he answers. “You never know when you stop for gas if it’s a set or a real gas station. Los Angeles is a place with one industry, the business of entertainment.
“You go to a fine party in Manhattan and you are surrounded by interesting, creative people with varying jobs in different fields,” he muses. “The same party in Beverly Hills? You meet people with different job descriptions but that are all in the same business – the entertainment business.”
As for the road ahead, I ask what gets Giraldi out of bed in the morning. At present it’s a short film that just wrapped in New York:
“I just finished a lovely three-day shoot where I rolled out of bed every day with two Alexas and a crew,” he answers. “I went and spent time in rainy Brooklyn shooting something for love – and that will never change. I had 70 set-ups in three days, mostly with no light.”
Also up ahead for Giraldi is his aforementioned induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame, joining a prestigious Class of 2013 alongside Nike founder Phil Knight; Shelly Lazarus, chairman emeritus of Ogilvy & Mather; Byron Lewis, founder of Uniworld; Gerry Rubin, founder of Rubin Postaer; Bob Scarpelli, chairman of DDB Worldwide; and Rance Crain, president of Crain Communications.
“I am the first director nominated so it’s really something,” he says on the subject. “There are two emotions for me. One is being awarded for the work I’m doing now, and the other is being appreciated for the work I’ve done in the past. Luckily I can feel both of these emotions.”
Before I leave Giraldi to delve back into his current commercial work in LA, I ask what it is that makes a good director. “Someone who gets their vision on the screen as clearly as they can,” he says. “But someone who doesn’t cripple too many people in the process.”
I close wondering about the fate of advertising, and what it takes for brands to stay relevant. “All brands need some kind of positive energy because people realise when they are being conned,” he says. “Good advertising is when you don’t lie. Simple as that.”
We shake hands at the end of the interview and Giraldi makes one final pronouncement.
“You know, directing is a good job for an old man,” he laughs. “At some point you can’t play tennis, you can’t play football – but you can be a director as long as you have good eyes and someone to lift you into the chair. “I’m still driven to do things, and that hasn’t changed. When I was young I’d be pissed if someone like Pytka got a job instead of me – but not anymore. Popeye says it best: ‘I yam what I yam’. I’ve come to terms with who I am and I like more parts of me than ever. You die fast unless you calm down and push all the bullshit away. “It’s all about the story. I do this to spark an emotion. When I can’t make people cry or laugh then it’s over for me.”
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