Post by dradtke on Nov 17, 2012 13:52:01 GMT -5
Last night we went to a birthday party for a woman Melva used to work with. I know absolutely no one at the party. Stood around and made small talk with strangers.
Toward the end of the party I started talking to a woman who is an artist and a painter. I talked about some of the painted murals the museum company has done. We got around to talking about previous jobs and discovered that we've both done TV commercials. Talked about the things food stylists do to make food look good in commercials (pumping up warm beer with a turkey baster to give it a head before shooting; spraying the bottle with a sugar solution to make it look cold and frosty; roasting a turkey so the skin is perfect but the meat is still raw; picking the perfect bits out of several cases of canned beef stew and washing them to look good in a bowl.)
Then she mentioned a few commercial parodies she saw years ago. One in which Speedy Alka-Seltzer drowned. One where someone opens a jar of peanut butter to find a small top hat and cane.
Then I asked, "And Poppin' Death?" and she said, "Yes!" and I said, "1976?" and she said, "Yes!"
Finally, after 36 years, I can't believe I actually met someone else who's seen Poppin' Death. I've told this story so many times, and nobody's heard of it, I was starting to think I made it up.
A film student at the U made it. It starts out like a Pillsbury commercial. Someone whacks the tube of dough on the counter, puts the dough on a cookie sheet and pops it into the oven. The rest is shot through the oven door. The Doughboy stands up, looks around, his smile fades. He starts to sweat, wipes his brow. Pounds on the glass and yells but nobody can hear. Then he melts into a crescent roll.
I was working in the Guthrie scene shop. One of the other guys was a film buff, and would run little shorts at lunchtime. She was working as a graphic designer at Pillsbury at the time, so she saw it a few times while management at Pillsbury decided what to do; sue the guy? They decided to not do anything and hope it faded away, and it did.
Before VCRs or YouTube, nobody saw it and it was forgotten. But there are at least two people who saw it and remember.
Toward the end of the party I started talking to a woman who is an artist and a painter. I talked about some of the painted murals the museum company has done. We got around to talking about previous jobs and discovered that we've both done TV commercials. Talked about the things food stylists do to make food look good in commercials (pumping up warm beer with a turkey baster to give it a head before shooting; spraying the bottle with a sugar solution to make it look cold and frosty; roasting a turkey so the skin is perfect but the meat is still raw; picking the perfect bits out of several cases of canned beef stew and washing them to look good in a bowl.)
Then she mentioned a few commercial parodies she saw years ago. One in which Speedy Alka-Seltzer drowned. One where someone opens a jar of peanut butter to find a small top hat and cane.
Then I asked, "And Poppin' Death?" and she said, "Yes!" and I said, "1976?" and she said, "Yes!"
Finally, after 36 years, I can't believe I actually met someone else who's seen Poppin' Death. I've told this story so many times, and nobody's heard of it, I was starting to think I made it up.
A film student at the U made it. It starts out like a Pillsbury commercial. Someone whacks the tube of dough on the counter, puts the dough on a cookie sheet and pops it into the oven. The rest is shot through the oven door. The Doughboy stands up, looks around, his smile fades. He starts to sweat, wipes his brow. Pounds on the glass and yells but nobody can hear. Then he melts into a crescent roll.
I was working in the Guthrie scene shop. One of the other guys was a film buff, and would run little shorts at lunchtime. She was working as a graphic designer at Pillsbury at the time, so she saw it a few times while management at Pillsbury decided what to do; sue the guy? They decided to not do anything and hope it faded away, and it did.
Before VCRs or YouTube, nobody saw it and it was forgotten. But there are at least two people who saw it and remember.
