On Reflection: Tom Kuntz Tastes the Rainbow

Trade, Leak and Beard were the first spots I did for Skittles, so I didn’t have a relationship with the guys [Ian Reichenthal, Scott Vitrone, Craig Allen and Eric Kallman] at TBWAChiatDay New York yet, although I ended up doing a ton of work with them later, including Old Spice.

At the time they’d done a few Skittles spots that people liked. Now everyone’s doing work like that for candy [brands], because Skittles became the voice for the entire category, but back then it was almost like – oooh, they’re trying too hard to be weird. 

What excited me about those scripts – compared to what they had done before – was that they were all tragedies. They seemed really dark to me. Or maybe it’s just that I brought the darkness. The sadness of humanity is a space is where I find a lot of juiciness. Trade, in particular, felt like some sprawling old folk tale. It gave us a licence to get twisted and mischievous. 

One of the funniest things about Trade is that the voice of the rabbit was actually CD Ian [Reichenthal]. During production we got all these demos of people doing crappy opera singing. It sounded like a bad frozen pizza ad – all these guys trying to sound Italian. We went through days and days listening to this stuff, until someone said, “You know, Ian was very funny when he did the voice in the meeting.” So we recorded it and thought... ‘that’s it’! 

Skittles: Trade

The rabbit was basically an animatronic rabbit with a lot of wires hanging out of its butt that we had to hide up the actor’s sleeve. Guys with joysticks wiggled them about to make the bunny look alive. There was a lot of work in-camera, though we finessed it in post. They did a lot of 2D warping on the mouth. But with this kind of comedy, when the CGI gets too good, it loses a bit of its weirdness and charm. 

We shot it on the Universal back lot. It was a three-spot package, so we shot the outdoor part in a weird little backyard of one of the houses that we made look really rural and crappy. 

With the rain and the lightning, we wanted to go full horror. We had a rain machine. The poor bastard [playing the main character] was freezing, just standing around in the rain. We were shooting at four in the morning. Back then, I was a really irresponsible director and I would always do about 50 takes. 

The first cut that my editor [Gavin Cutler] did is basically the version that went out, but at first he cut it so you saw the ending first. Then there was a rewind back to the beginning with sort of horror-movie music. I thought it was hysterical, but the agency thought we were out of our minds and it had gotten too dark.

I did really like Trade; what appealed to me was the scale of it. Skittles’ ads were usually quite small-scale; this had a bigger swing. But Beard was almost the opposite of that – it was so strange and static. It was strong at the other end of the spectrum.

Skittles: Beard

The casting sessions for all those Skittles spots were brutal. You’d see maybe a hundred actors and be thinking ‘this is horrible’. Everything only comes together when you find that actor who makes you jump up and down in your pants cos you’re so psyched to be bringing this thing to life. All of a sudden someone like the Beard guy would come in, and you’d think, ‘Oh, of course, he’s got to be a sociopath’. He ad-libbed the end line, “Ohhh, funny,” and we improvised the bit where he tosses the last Skittle into his mouth. 

The same man who operated the rabbit, operated the beard. He was a puppeteer with a rod. We painted him out later in post. The beard was mine; I just shaved it off for the job!

The funny thing about Leak is that although it looks really basic, for the time, it was a real head-fuck to get right. In order for the little guy to be lifted to that height, we had to shoot him in a huge green room and he was basically picked up on wires pulling him left and right, and lifted 24 feet in the air. It was oddly complicated. That spot would’ve been funny just because [it featured] a miniature dude, but what’s really funny is the dynamic between the two. That’s what turns the comedy into something more sublime.

Skittles:Leak 

Those three ads were not really indulgent with the Skittles. We didn’t use that many. Not compared to how many we used in Touch. 

I wasn’t really surprised that the ads won awards. I knew they were good. I’ve never looked at the comments [under the ads] on YouTube, but if they really have entered pop culture that’s more surprising to me. People hate advertising. If and when our industry does produce something that breaks through, I think that’s really cool. But I think it happens a lot less than we think it does. 

What would I trade my Skittles for? That’s extremely private information that I can’t share with you. But I’m sure if you use your imagination you can come up with something.