Face to Face with... Graham Rose

Director Graham Rose is a legend of British advertising. Starting his career as a creative, working at ground-breaking agencies including BMP and with talents such as Dave Trott, Chris Wilkins and the late John Webster, he then moved into directing.

He has helmed seminal spots including Hamlet Photobooth,  Weetabix Black Beauty, Holsten Pils Marilyn and Heineken Extreme Prejudice as well as, more recently, the short film mRs mEiTLemleHr.

Since the production company he co-founded - Rose Hackney Barber - closed it's doors Rose has been a freelance director but has recently come back into the production company fold by siging to Believe Media for worldwide representaion.

shots took the chance to catch up with Rose and talk about his career, his background, his thoughts on directing and how rock stardom's loss was advertising's gain.

You worked as a freelance director for a while; what made you decide to come back into a companyʼs fold?

After Rose Hackney Barber closed its doors in 2005 I enjoyed a great freedom. My reel was released around the world, it gathered a lot of interest. Although I always had London bases, thanks to Pink, Generator and Moon Films, 90 per cent of my work came from new territories; taking me to Prague, Budapest, Moscow, New York, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Singapore, Paris, Dublin and Buenos Aries.

My kind of comedy didn’t seem to have frontiers. I’ve even shot comedy dialogue spots for Russia and Germany! I spent a lot of time on planes and eating room service dinners in nice hotels...also met a lot of good creative guys along the way.

I felt I had dipped below the UK ad-radar and I started to miss the British industry. I was still shooting the occasional UK caign, among which was the original, notorious but hilarious Go Compare caign, but felt I’d become invisible.

It was an odd, fragmentary existence with no real continuity or anyone managing my long term career path. The truth is I really missed my old company, I wanted to be part of something again and get back to doing the work I loved best in the UK.

Youʼve signed to Believe Media for global representation; what attracted you to Believe?

Two guys called me up out of the blue not long after Moon Films closed it’s doors last year; Mark O’Sullivan and Luke Thornton of Believe Media. This well respected company has bases in LA, New York and London which is impressive but what really interested me was the fact that they were launching a new comedy division in the U.S called Dapper, and wanted me to be part of it.

One thing in particular I found heartening. Their belief in my experience and relevance as well as their respect for my past glories. It’s flattering I know, but we all need that now and again. I thought to myself, 'I’ve found a home'.

Your reel includes some of British advertisingʼs best-loved visual comedy spots, for brand such as Heineken, Weetabix and Hamlet; do you think that comedic styles go in and out of fashion?

Advertising, for some reason I can never fathom, has always been faddy and super style-conscious. Commercial filmmaking styles, as well as directors, go in and out of fashion every week.

The basic principles that I learned about advertising while I was a writer under John Webster at Boase Massimi Pollitt still hold true today: the impact of creative originality and the power of humour.

I’ve been lucky enough to pursue my career during the ‘golden era’ of creativity when clients placed their trust in the finest creative solutions. The flush economic times allowed agencies and production company’s to be prolific. As a consequence I was able to cut my teeth on the best scripts written by the best writers from the best agencies of their time.

That creative challenge is the same today as it’s always been, tough economic times or clients' shrinking budgets shouldn’t change the game. Hamlet Cigar’s Photobooth cost around £10K to shoot and I think it would still have the same impact today if I had shot it last week.

I think what I’m saying is ‘style’ and ‘trends’ are not what the industry should ever be chasing. There are two current caigns I admire that use the principles I learned. First is SpecSavers, every spot is simple and effective and utilises humour that’s integral to the product. It’s humour is the brand.

I also love the MoneySupermarket caign. The use of straight-faced farce turns the ordinary man into a hilarious super-hero. Brilliant.

What attracted you to the advertising industry in the first place?

I was a suburban boy from Wembley. My expected career path, as far as my dad was concerned, was the Metropolitan Police Force... I wanted to be an architect! I finished my Secondary Mod education with plenty of O levels and an ‘A’ in art. So off I went to art college.

I studied Graphic Design and Advertising at Ealing College of Art, I loved every minute of those four years. There I met the charming Graham Collis, the writer I worked with for many years at Dorland and BMP.

I also met my first wife and the very talented Freddy Bulsara (Mercury) who taught me to play piano and insisted he was going to join a band called Smile and become a rock star. We all left Ealing behind and I got hired at Wasey Pritchard Wood as Andrew Cracknell’s art director.

I loved the business straight off and took every opportunity to move on up. Graham Collis and I kept in touch with Freddy after his meteoric rise to fame and for a short time I toyed with the idea of becoming a rock star too, but that’s another story!

And after a successful career as an art director/writer you turned to directing; what prompted that decision?

I always wanted to direct; I grew up in the sixties in love with movies... saw everything that Peter Sellers did, what a genius. But more speciifically TV comedy... Bilko, Hancock, Morecombe and Wise, Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers. It’s the best drug, I’m addicted to humour, I can’t help but see the funny side of life experience, no matter how tragic.

During the seventies, humour in commercials reached an award winning peak... it set the bar for creative excellence and effectiveness. Stunning work by the CDP guys and the new hot shop, BMP. Then John Webster hired me to work at BMP, a great TV agency. John Webster [below] created brilliant, unique commercials and I was in awe.

He inspired a generation of superb writers who I was privileged to work alongside; people such as Dave Trott, Chris Wilkins and Alan Tilby. As well as being inspired by these talents I was also knocked out by the work being created across the pond.

We avidly scoured the New York Art Director’s annuals for the latest award winning US spots. Director Howard Zieff’s painfully hilarious Alka-Seltzer spot for Mama Mia’s Spicy Meatballs and his unforgettable Funeral Procession for VW.

But when I discovered Joe Sedelmaier I split my sides and saw God. All this fuelled my ambition to direct commercials. I was also lucky enough to have the UK’s best commercials director’s of the time shoot spots that I’d written; Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Bob Brooks and Roger Woodburn. It was a thrill to watch these guys work... I soaked it up. I knew that was what I had to do next.

How has commercials directing changed since you first started?

Nothing much has changed as far as I’m concerned. We’re all still struggling to produce one film on the day that respects the creative’s baby, lives up to the agency’s promise, resembles the director’s vision and can be achieved on the clients budget.

It’s always impossible but always a rewarding challenge when you pull it off. One aspect has changed though, since I started. Directing’s an over-subscribed and de-valued profession. I think there are around five thousand directors in London fighting over one thousand ads that are produced every year.

So at least five directors are pitching for every script these days; sure, it sharpens your game but your hit rate goes down. It can erode your confidence but you can’t let it, it’s the way it is.

After achieving so much in the business, what keeps you motivated?

It’s funny but true, I must have shot over two thousand ads in my wonderful career but I still love doing it. I still get excited by a good script, I still get moments of raw fear thinking, 'is this the one I fuck up?'

I still get an adrenaline buzz when we push the idea onto a new level or when an actor improvises a brilliant, funny moment. Every day on set is a challenge to accomplish stuff that can’t actually be done in thirty seconds but we do it, and it works.

Recently I found myself in between set-ups in a studio, walking from the camera across the set, past video village, the clients and the crew to grab a coffee from a machine at the back of the stage and I thought, 'this is weird, I’ve been walking this same route for thirty years but I know how to do it right and I love it'. There’s nothing else like it. That and the fear of ending up on a golf course if the phone ever stops ringing.

You have a feature film in development; can you tell us a bit more about that and what stage itʼs at?

Well, I’ve been offered a comedy that is scheduled to shoot in the US this year. I can’t tell you about the story because of a non-disclosure agreement but we’re casting actors in LA and we’re well down the line with funding.

I’ve been collaborating with the writer over the past year, it’s an exciting process evolving the dynamics of the story, characters and humour over longer narrative.

Shooting commercials is a demanding challenge. It’s taught me how to tell a story in thirty seconds. Every shot becomes an important story turning point... it’s pure economy of expression, no fat.

So the rules are the same for a feature. No scene or shot exists in a movie unless it advances the story or increases the urge in us to find out what happens next.
It’s character driven situation comedy on a grand scale for me and I’m revelling in it.

Do you have a favourite of your own commercials directing work?

Yes I do. I shot a caign for a South African car insurance client, MiWay Insurance. One of the three spots features two old ladies wreaking havoc on the roads and pavements of Jo’burg driving a huge old Mercedes.

As they jump through red lights, crash over roundabouts and demolish pavement cafes the v/o tells us quietly that ‘most insurance premiums are based on everyone else’s driving, with my MiWay your premiums are only based on your driving’.

I started casting elderly actresses but could only find a few and they were very theatrical. So I started searching old people’s homes for little old ladies and found two wonderful 80-year-olds. Having never acted before in their lives, I let them improvise their own dialogue; it was hilarious. I had a precision driver do the stunts of course! It’s called Muriel and Mavis, it’s the first one on my new reel.

What are you working on at the moment?

Two spots for a fruit drink that has real fruit chunks in it for Dubai. One features Zombies and the other a talking Gorilla.

And strangely enough, I’m developing a comedy road movie about two octogenarians that break out of an old people’s home on a quest to find a long lost love. I wonder if those South African ladies are still with us?