Once a producer always a producer.

Now that we’re done with the overly cinematic but hopefully revealing `true story’ prologue, allow me to tell you why I have any business paying tribute to Bette Minott. Quite simply, she was my first. Truth be told, I’d shot commercials before meeting Bette, but I draw a hard line in my career between my pre-Bette work and post-Bette work. You would too.

Working with this woman was/is/always-will-be a learning experience. At least if you’re smart you’ll approach it that way. Alan Kazmer, the legendary ddb creative director, and a mentor we share, once said to me as Bette and I were leaving for a shoot in New Zealand, ‘Come back with the spot that’s in your head,’ adding ‘don’t worry about anything else.’

Bette Minott knows how to get the spot that’s in your head. And unlike the familiar put-down about advertising, it is brain surgery.

She achieves this by caring. By giving a shit. It would be easy for her to automatically reply ‘It’s not in the budget’ to a spontaneous on-set idea. But Bette doesn’t have process reflexes, she has creative instincts. Her talent is her ability keep a shoot dynamic, fluid and creative. Her genius is doing it while keeping an iron grip on the imperatives of cost and schedule.

Some producers want to be everyone’s friend, so they throw budget and process to the wind. Bette wants the work to be your friend, so she harnesses the wind. Some producers, when assigned a job, look immediately at the budget the way an actor might count the lines he’s given. For them it’s a status thing. Bette is as far removed from them as it is possible to be. She looks at the idea first. The budget is just her strategy for getting the idea on film.

Looking back at pictures from shoots we’ve done together, I can’t help but notice how many shots are of Bette being hugged by clients, by crew, by my children. There’s a clue here.

So what joins us, then, those of us who have been fortunate enough to share an aeroplan mile or two of her distinguished and still thriving career? Well first of all, a heck of a good reel. Indulge me while I quickly skip through a small number of Bette Minott produced images, see if they ring a bell. The Rubbermaid drummers, a Volkswagen beetle falling through the sky, ‘I chequed my notebook!’, A Canadian Airlines DC 10 covered in the signatures of its employees, a Nissan commercial asserting ‘We’re not trying to change the world, just build some cars we can live with.’

There is no language I might formulate that could overstate the importance of her contribution to these images. Lots of us owe her a lot.

If you were to ask Bette how she accomplished all this, how she burnished work to such an impressive shine, she’d tell you in a heartbeat it’s because of the people she’s worked with. She’s right. And since this tribute doesn’t allow her to make any kind of `acceptance speech’ I’m going to do it for her. I’ll be brief. Any omissions are mine, so don’t call her and get snooty.

First there’s her family: The Robinsons, Ron Grittani, Alan Watanabe and a bunch of people she refers to as ‘the girls.’ Then there’s Carmelle Prud’Homme. There will always be Carmelle Prud’Homme. And let’s not forget Peter Grech, Don McLean, Richard Unruh, Ted, Marty Cooke, Jim Sonzero. Her proteges: Emma Du Boisson, Janice Bisson (look where they are today!). And most of all, Andria, Andria, Andria.

By way of closing, did I mention that Bette tried to save my life once? It was during that New Zealand shoot I mentioned earlier. At 3 a.m. the fire alarm went off in our hotel tower. A voice on the pa added the regrettable words ‘This is not a drill.’

Bette got the hell out of her room, clutching the pre-pro book no doubt. I wasn’t so lucky. I sprang out of bed, naked, rushed for the door (what was I thinking?), and promptly knocked myself out cold on the ceiling. I should point out that I’m six and a half feet tall, the hotel was designed for Japanese newlyweds and urgency added significant spring to my step.

Cut to Bette and a few hundred sleepy guests outside the hotel. Once it became apparent that I was not coming out, and that the hotel’s automatic safety system was not letting anyone in, Bette switched into high gear. I’d wager the staff remember her to this day. Like I said, once a producer, always a producer. I love you Bette. q

Philippe Garneau, a partner in Garneau Wurstlin Philp Brand Engineering worked with Bette in the eighties at ddb, in the nineties at TBWA Chiat/Day and throughout has faithfully kept her secret as to what really happened in the corner of the Botanical Garden during that Seldane shoot. He intends to keep on doing so.