Donald Brittain is writhing in his grave.

Until his death two years ago, Brittain was considered Canada’s greatest documentary filmmaker. Over a long, illustrious career, he succeeded through sheer virtuosity in raising this genre of film from glorified journalism to a form of art, earning worldwide respect for himself and the National Film Board.

Looking on with horror

Wherever Brittain is now, he must be looking on with horror at much of today’s Canadian television advertising, which seeks to commandeer the documentary film technique to create our industry’s flavor of the year; advertising verite.

You’ve seen it: real people or actors portraying real people droning on about real life. Real banal. Real tv.

Mind-numbing sameness

After three long days watching several hundred entries as a Bessies judge, I was struck by the prevalence and mind-numbing sameness of these apparently unscripted, 30-second docu-ads. After a while the Pontiac spot started looking like the Ford spot, which resembled the Esso spot, which reminded me of the ibm spot, or was it one for Radio Shack?

Which is a shame, because in isolation some of these are fine, even charming commercials. But when you view them in clusters as consumers do, you see a frenetic blur of ordinary folks serving up a series of sound bites about, well, some rather ordinary things. You cannot tell them apart.

Holding up a mirror to the workaday world and broadcasting its crude reflection doesn’t necessarily make for powerful footage, particularly when a dozen others are doing much the same thing.

Brittain knew this. He knew the difference between merely pointing a camera at reality and interpreting reality by imposing his own strong brand of narrative and dramatic structure. One is reportage, the other is storytelling. One is cops, the other is The Thin Blue Line (I know, not one of Brittain’s films).

To the delight of this year’s Bessies jury, there were a good number of glittering gems which stood in welcome relief against this backdrop of homogeneous docu-blab.

Thinking triumphed

These were simply contrived beauties that did not supplant the craft of writing with the technique of interviewing. Thinking triumphed over amateur video.

There is the Moosehead beer campaign which uses direct, pithy writing and the wry performance of Alan Arkin to create a blend of honesty and cynicism rarely found in commercials. Arkin feels every bit as real as those neighbors-next-door-ad-libbing in the new cibc commercials, and yet he has a larger-than-life quality that makes him irresistible.

Anti-smoking spot

Consider the spectacular power of the anti-smoking spot for the Ontario government. It explodes a Porche 911 to illustrate how 20 years of smoking is akin to throwing away $70,000 worth of dreams, and in doing so, explodes the misconception that smoking is hazardous only to one’s health. The insight hits you like a spear between the eyes.

What about the exquisite romance of the Prince Edward Island campaign and its reminder to anyone who visits there to turn back his watch. Years. The three-minute version is particularly seductive. The words of Lucy Maud Montgomery wash over you like the tides they promote.

Happily, these and many of the other ’94 Bessies winners do not resemble anything else on the air. How long before everything else on the air begins to resemble them is anyone’s guess.

In the meantime, I’ll take smart writing and an insightful eye over skilled interviewing and a City-tv videographer with palsy any day.

in addition to being judging vice-chair of the Bessies, Jack Neary is creative director of Cossette Communication-Marketing. Feats accomplished during a career that began 20 years ago as a daily newspaper reporter in Calgary include helping to ‘create Arnold Schwarzenegger’ (Neary was senior editor of Muscle & Fitness magazine in l.a.) and helping Chiat/Day win Strategy’s Agency of the Year competition two years running (he was Chiat/Day’s senior vice-president creative director at the time).