Thursday, January 13, 2011

Charles Bronson will steal your wife

In 1962 on the set of the film The Great Escape, Charles Bronson met his costar David McCallum's* wife, Jill Ireland. Charles Bronson at the time told McCallum: "I'm going to marry your wife." Charles Bronson was married to Jill Ireland from 1968 until her death in 1990.

Basically Bronson was the real life version of "Chuck Norris Facts."

The following two minute ad for Japanese cologne makes no sense and stars Bronson:



It is a testament to the sheer manliness of Mr. Bronson that he somehow makes this ad cool. It starts out with Charles in a piano bar listening to music that sounds like it was composed by someone who thinks Kenny G has too much edge.

Bronson then gets back to his apartment and throws his shirt up into the air while spinning like he is in the opening credits of the Mary Tyler  Moore Show** or something. Next, as more elevator music plays, Bronson covers himself in a drastic amount of Mandom cologne while imagining himself dressed as a cowboy.

Nothing described in the above two paragraphs is in any way cool sounding on paper, but Bronson somehow pulls it off and makes you want to buy a cologne called Mandom, despite it sounding like some kind of manatee condom.



Footnote(s):
*Who was famous for playing the Russian guy in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and now plays "Ducky" on NCIS.
**There is a statue of Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis, Minnesota because her 70's TV show was set there but not filmed there. This appears to be part of Minneapolis's new tourist campaign, titled: "Minneapolis, absolutely nothing has ever happened here."

2 comments:

  1. That was the most ridiculously directed commercials I have ever seen. How about those jarring cuts and zooms?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good point Christian. I was too busy having my mind blown by the content to notice the production of it. I assume the director of the commercial was afraid to give Bronson any direction, out of fear that a conversation with Mr. Bronson would lead to Bronson stealing his wife, so the director just let Bronson run around the set doing whatever he wanted and then tried to cut together an ad, resulting in the choppiness.

    ReplyDelete