Beef and Pie

We put Karen in the background of a lot of commercials, but this one we put her front and center.

This was an awesome spot to make.  We got to shoot in the Driskell, The Paramount Theater and an emergency room.  It’s also got cameos galore – the Usher was just off the set of the Coen’s No Country for Old Men.  Our PA Lindsey was the dying patient. Beefy’s cousin and art department lackey was a nurse and yes, that is Poppa Beef – Howard Woolf – trying to not look at the camera behind Farmer Charlie. And stupid me missed Karen in the Opera Box.

What a blast.  We’re having a wedding!!  We got to pick the guestlist (70 Austin extras – most of which showed up bathed), the bride (Amber – one of our all time favorites) the caterer (2dine4 – okay they are often our caterer) and the church was right off of I35.

For years we’ve been shooting with The Tombras Group – and for years our spots have been edited by Brent Farwick from Karma.  For this 7 spot campaign that we shot in Austin we flew Brent in so he could help with continuity and drink a lot of Shiner. There’s no question the spots get better when the editor is part of the process and not just handed the footage.  Thanks Brent.

For this round of Farmer Charlie spots there was a huge cast – at least 30 principles for five spots.  For this specific commercial we’d cast a large group of extras to chase Charlie around the McCoy’s Hardware Store. We just figured two or three of them could deliver the line “Charlie’s here?” How hard could that be?  Wellllllll, turns out it was nearly impossible. Two people utterly failed and we were getting nervous. There was an actor trying to pull out a plank of wood and deliver the line. It was so bad Andrew snapped.  He told the guy to just get out of frame and said, “Beefy just go in there and do it.”  Nailed it on the first take.

Which, a year later, led to a very random phone call from a friend of Mike’s in the Nashville airport – drunk.  He’s watching TV at the airport bar and SWEARS he sees him in an insurance commercial.

Let’s cut to the chase – that is a new baby.  Really new.  Like 14 hours old.  That’s what you get when roll with Beef and Pie. We go right into that hospital and get you a nursery and a baby.  Sure sure we had our doubts. We figured we’d got one a few days old or a few weeks.  We just knew we w0uldn’t go the animatronic route.  Or put a toddler in there and hope people thought it was a baby.  Karen worked with the hospital, found a new mom, induced her the night before the shoot, delivered it and brought it to set.  Karen goes the extra mile!!!