A few years ago I went to see an exhibition of the very latest in art at the Tate Modern.
They obviously hadn’t finished installing it, because the workmen had left their paints and rollers on trestle tables, all covered by a dust sheet.
Also they’d left crisp packets and empty drinks cans lying around,
One of the cleaners was worried that he would get in trouble for leaving the gallery in such a mess.
So he stacked the tables away in a cupboard and threw the rest of the rubbish out.
It turned out that what he’d thrown out had actually been one of the works of art in the exhibition.
It was a big story next day, across all the newspapers.
But the best part for me was that The Sun immediately made the cleaner their Arts Correspondent.
They admired his taste.
Here was a man who could tell rubbish from art.
The Sun paid him to go round and review all the work on show at the different art galleries in London.
What a great example of finding something funny in real life and turning it into opportunity.
The strange thing is we spend all our time looking so hard for ideas.
But great things are happening all around us, all the time, that could be turned into ideas.
The playwright Allan Bennett says he gets lots of his ideas just from overhearing people talking, and making notes.
Peter Kay says the same thing, “You couldn’t make it up.”
Real life is often funnier than fiction.
And, for some reason, mums are a great source of dialogue.
During the power blackouts of the 1970s, I once heard my mum on the phone to my Auntie Polly.
Mum said, “What I don’t understand is, if no one’s got any electricity how come the cars have all got their lights on?”
Then a few days later, Auntie Polly phoned Mum again.
She said, “You’d better do your hoovering quick because they’ve just said on the news the price of electricity is going up.”
But it isn’t just mums.
There was van driver at BMP called George.
He said to me once, “Here Dave, you like books don’t you? Do you want to buy some?”
I said, “It depends George, what sort of books are they?”
He said, “Big uns.”
Huh?
And then some things are so good, you really couldn’t make them up.
One day Gordon Smith said to me, “What I don’t understand is, if we’re all evolved from monkeys, how come there’s still monkeys around?”
Fair point.
Al Midgeley, an art director at BMP, once told me he was sitting in a pub in Yorkshire reading the paper.
Two undertakers walked in, in top hats, silk gloves, everything black.
They each got a pint and sat at the table next to him.
Then they drank their pints in absolute silence.
After about half an hour, one turned to the other and said, “Death? It’s a bugger.”
Like Allan Bennett and Peter Kay, John Webster knew how to take ordinary things and turn them into ideas.
I was telling him once about a really old pub I used to drink in sometimes, in Barking.
It was called ‘The Barge Aground’ right near Barking Creek.
And it had a really old fashioned public bar with sawdust on the floor.
One old guy used to bring his dog in with him.
He’d order his pint, then ask the barman for an arrowroot biscuit and a saucer.
He’d make the dog lie on the floor and put the biscuit on its paw.
And when the man would say, “Go” the dog would flip the biscuit into its mouth, and eat it.
The man would then pour some of his pint into the saucer for the dog.
I told John about it.
I thought it was just a funny story.
John said, “That’s fantastic, we can use that.”
And he did, and he won a black pencil.
And that’s maybe the biggest lesson I learned from John.
It’s not who says it, it’s who spots it.
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Thanks for another great blog, Dave.
Sorry to spoil it with the next question:
any difference, you reckon, between copying and imitating?
For me, Web’s dog spot was advertising imitating life.
Thanks.
Dave
I always hold true to what the other Dave said, David Abbot that is: “If you don’t have a life, what are you going to put into advertising?” and on the same lines, although not sure if it was John Lennon: “To understand the people, we must walk amongst the people.” When I drink beer in ‘dodgy’ pubs and go to footy matches, I’m still working.
For all the high brow interests (Modern Art etc) it’s important to keep it real.
Hi Ian,
Paul Arden used a quote I like in one of his books,
“It’s not where you take it from, it’s where you take it to.”
lovely ad.
not only is the story funny. imagine there’s probably a person behind bar who’s juggling the dog to look like this. wonder if he got a pint
and I totally agree with ideas being all around us.
that’s one more reason I don’t understand why creatives are so arrogant. arrogance simply closes their minds for life’s little anecdotes. what a waste.
[...] Blog · CST Advertisingears ago I went to see an exhibition of the very latest in art at the Tate Modern. They obviously hadn’t finished installing it, because the workmen had left their paints and rollers on trestle tables, all covered by a dust sheet … [...]
[...] Original post: Blog · CST Advertising [...]
Reminds me of a furniture auction we ran at an estate house years ago. A very large tallboy(double chest of drawers with wardrobe on top) was purchased by a notoriously stingy lady, who never tipped the helpers.
Having paid for it, she asked one of the helpers to bring the tallboy to her van and load it in. The helpers response, “Well missus, I’m the tallest boy here, but I am not going in your van with you.”
Hi Dave,
‘It’s not where you take it from’
Got no problem with that.
I’d love to learn more about…
‘it’s where you take it to’
[...] More: Blog · CST Advertising [...]
I don’t know if I agree about the story of the cleaner. He accidentally threw away a few crisp packets and that somehow makes him an understanding, professional art correspondent, purely for the fact that he recognised blatant rubbish that he sees everyday, for rubbish.
I did enjoy the post though, I also enjoyed the video, and as another comment mentioned, was the advert copying or imitating. It was neither. It was a starting point for exaggeration. I find this to be quite effective, yet it’s to be considered to not cross the line to actually lie to the audience.
Nice one.
[...] See the rest here: Blog · CST Advertising [...]
Got it now. Just need to find an agency.
Censored again! What am I a Leopard?
I only said that Pentagram are sign writers, just like all Graphic Designers. After all they used to be called Commercial Artists? A proud trade.
As shown here, good ideas come from truths. Bad ideas come from anywhere.
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/05/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-39.html
___________________
@John
I’m glad you mentioned Abbot’s question…
I keep asking the same thing and I never get an answer. People get very irritated when I say that spending your life around older professionals is not going to help you add something new to this industry.
Inspiration is one thing, imitating someone else’s life is another.
Dave
Overheard recently:
“Who’s that man out at the moment with the long nails? Razorman.” (Talking about Wolverine and his blade hands)
Do you think there is any chance that this would work for Gillette?!
Is that a big chip on Kevin Gordon’s shoulder?
NO !!!!! I have a chip on both shoulders.
Talent imitates, but genius steals. - T.S. Elliott.
Always loved that one.
mm
Absolutely Michael.
Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DutVyuiy-xA
Oi Fred Weirdname. When you’ve contributed as much to this blog as Kevin maybe you can start talking about his chips. Until then get a life. And don’t buy my books or mugs, I don’t want people like you having them.
Kevin,
Another way to look at the same source material.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDKiQfBs9lo
Michael - surely that was Oscar Wilde?
Ant & Michael.
I’d always heard it as Picasso: “Bad artists copy, Great artists steal.”
I assume he was referring to himself.
Dave
That’s a great link.
“You’re on thin fucking ice my pedigree chums and I shall be under it when it breaks”
BTW did you see RocknRolla. We’ve seen it all before, but
John.
After Revolver I didn’t bother.
But I may download it now as I’ve just finished the 5th and final series of the Wire, and there’s nothing much else to watch at present.
By the way, you must have recognised that this post came from swapping stories about our mums.
Dave
You had me at ‘Tate Modern’.
You should check out ‘Entourage’. Agent Ari Gold glistens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyXeClFPNfA&feature=related
[...] Where Does an Idea Come From? [...]
[...] This post was Twitted by TrudiEsberger - Real-url.org [...]
Michael - surely that was Oscar Wilde? Posted by Ant Melder on May 13th, 2009 at 9:53 am
“If, with the literate, I am impelled to make an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit; we all assume that Oscar said it.”
- Dorothy Parker
And this from the CSI Fan Fiction site:
Grissom’s smile widened even further as he squinted to read, in Sara’s best attempt at a legible hand, the inscription on the front piece:
Gil – For all the times you are in want of words remember - “Talent borrows, genius steals” – Oscar Wilde
- Sara
He cocked his head to one side and said, “I thought you said that quotation was a serviceable substitute for wit.”
“I believe that was Oscar Wilde as well,” she countered.
I thought that trying to locate the source of this quote would make a good mental breakfast this morning and an interesting topic for research; the outcome of which is the *toasty* irony that the source of this quote (on stealing ideas) is quite obscured by the broad array of famous idea-men to whom the quote is attributed, and to whom the thought police could just as easily be issuing warrants at this moment for STEALING it. There is some post-modern lesson in there somewhere.
Cut to the chase: a quick search on the internet provides the following list of people to whom the quote is attributed
Allen, Woody
Beecham, Sir Thomas
Dali, Salvador
Elliot, T.S.
Marx, Groucho
Picasso, Pablo
Stravinsky, Igor
Wilde, Oscar
Zimmerman, Robert
I will offer the following evidence, though, with the hope that a pre-1932 citation can be found. The game is on.
T.S. Eliot in his essay “Philip Massinger” wrote:
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne.”
- Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1932), page 182.
mm
That dog thing really happened then? very funny.
i was in a pub in ireland once. it was around lunch time. the pub was mostly empty. suddenly, a dog nosed his way through the front door. He walked up to the bar and looked up at the bartender making that worried sound dogs make. Without missing a beat the bartender looked up from his newspaper and said to the dog “He’s not here. You might try Murphy’s”. The dog apparently understood this and immediately left the bar. Presumably to go to Murphy’s bar up the street in search of his owner.
nobody batted an eyelid. meanwhile i was choking on my pint in disbelief. has to be a guinness ad in there somewhere i immediately thought.
Brilliant Vinny,
If Webster was still around he’d be writing it up right now.
It’s too good not to end up in an ad.
Can you help me out here guys?
Most games are a game of inches. Everybody lies.
For instance golfers mimicking how far they were from the hole is inversely proportional to the one that got away when fishing. The one thing that is true. Bud.
Any legs?
…maybe the endline could be: Be true to yourself. Bud.
Or Murphy’s Bitter: It’s a dog’s life.
Hi John. Sorry to be so direct, but:
Loads of things are true.
Many are truer than a Bud.
You don’t need a Bud to be true to yourself.
You just need to be honest.
If anything, once someone’s had a few beers…
I suppose you could say:
‘Your Bud won’t lie to you’.
That’s based in truth because a Bud can’t speak to you,
well ….not unless you’ve had a case load.