If, like 57.19% of the world's population, you have seen Charles Bernstein's cult-classic Yellow Pages ads from the late 1990s, you might reasonably have some questions: Did Charles hurl a bottle of improperly-chilled spring water at a hapless PA? Is Jon Lovitz really just two children in a rubber suit? What is a Yellow Pages? You'll find all the answers you need in this 2019 recording in which Jeff Preiss, who conceived and directed the spots, shares how they came to be.
It all started with a well-received ad Preiss directed for the NBA starring Bill Murray. "Then the Yellow Pages — poor Yellow Pages — they were about to just die. There was no saving the Yellow Pages. Yellow Pages were on life support and they hired an agency to try to figure out a way of keeping the Yellow Pages relevant. Now in hindsight it was really just hopeless." That "absolutely terrible" idea was disposing with the beloved "let your fingers do the walking" slogan and imagery and switch their iconography to a light bulb, thus making the book "a kind of an inspirational text and a work of literature, where it gives you ideas." "A beautiful idea, but a doomed one," as Preiss recollects.
Because the Yellow Pages didn't have the money to get Bill Murray they wound up with Jon Lovitz instead, but Lovitz was reluctant because "the scripts [weren't] funny," though working together Preiss and Lovitz were able to revise them into something workable. Now they needed a literary critic to deliver a few lines, "and I had this idea to cast Charles and I figured Charles, it's so perfect for him, he'll be able to just go for it." Everyone at the agency was please with the results — "Charles is amazing ... like, it's beyond" — to the extent that they wrote and shot a second series of spots starring Bernstein exclusively.
They then took all of this back to the Yellow Pages, and that's where things start to break down. Listen in to hear the company's reaction, Preiss discussing his long friendship with Bernstein facilitated through filmmaker Henry Hills, and more. We're very proud to be able to host the full set of radio and TV ads Preiss made, along with outtakes, which are well worth checking out whether you already know and love them or if you're just seeing them for the first time. We're also grateful to Davide Balula, who made the recording and serves as interlocutor throughout, for sharing this with us. Click here to start listening.
