Doug Pray

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“He Said It Was One Of The Greatest Rocks He’d Ever Seen”

February 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Levitated Mass Hysteria,” Victoria Dailey’s new Los Angeles Review of Books essay about unusual things which hold the public in thrall, particularly Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art:

 “Southern California, long used to fads, bubbles and exaggerations, was recently in the grip of an event that Mackay would certainly have added to his anthology of popular frenzies. Not only did it harken back to the past when the transportation of granite obelisks created awe, and when colossal rocks exerted powerful forces upon humankind, it also incorporated the modern mania for fame and celebrity, demonstrating the incurable tendency to prefer myth over fact. This event centered around a rock — a 340-ton, 21-foot high, 150 million-year-old boulder that traveled across four Southern California counties in order to be installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

What inspired the popular interest in this megalith was a project devised by Michael Heizer, an artist known for land art, and Michael Govan, the director of LACMA. In 1969 Heizer, who was in the midst of creating several massive earthwork projects in the Nevada desert, envisioned finding an ideal boulder, then installing it within an art framework. The project was delayed for over four decades, because it seems the right boulder could not be found until the artist discovered one in a rock quarry in Riverside, California in 2006. It had been blasted from a mountainside, and was too big for the quarry’s purposes, so someone contacted Heizer about it. As Govan, a friend and supporter of the artist, stated: ‘Mike was calling from the Ontario [California] airport and said: ‘I found this amazing rock.’ […] He referred to it as the Colossi of Memnon and compared it to the great pink granite Egyptian obelisks for the quality of the stone. He said it was one of the greatest rocks he’d ever seen.'”

 

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The boulder arrives, March 10, 2012:

Teaser for Doug Pray’s film about the megalith:

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New DVD: Art & Copy

May 16, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Ad exec Lee Clow has me wanting to buy an iPod.

When infamous murderer Gary Gilmore egged on his executioners with the phrase “Let’s do it,” he couldn’t have known he was helping a copywriter birth one of the most famous advertising campaigns in American history, Nike’s overwhelmingly successful “Just Do It” marketing blitz. When late ad exec Hal Riney struggled through an unhappy childhood in Washington state, he had no idea that his longing for an idyllic existence would someday provide images for Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” TV commercials. The origins of these ubiquitous images from our lives make up the crux of Doug Pray’s intriguing documentary, Art & Copy.

If you’re looking for a philippic about the evils of capitalism, you have to search elsewhere. Perhaps still reeling emotionally from his thorny family documentary, Surfwise, Pray doesn’t focus on the moral implications of advertising but rather the people who fuel the industry by dreaming up 30-second spots in which American Tourister luggage is thrown into a gorilla cage. All of advertising’s living legends are interviewed. George Lois, the Bronx-born genius behind everything from the brilliant Harold Hayes-era Esquire covers in the ’60s to the astoundingly successful “I Want My MTV!” campaign in the ’80s, bemoans the current crop of young ad people. But the beat goes on, as talking heads share interesting insights into their profession.

Considering that advertising has used dubious means to sell everything from cigarettes to fat-laden foods to politicians, there is definitely room for numerous docs that examine the dark side of the ad biz. At one point in the movie, industry legend Mary Wells matter-of-factly states, “I think you manufacture any feeling you want to manufacture.” Wells is simply stating a rule of the game, but the sentence exists equally as a cautionary tale. That’s especially true since even the most seasoned ad people are often surprised by the reach and power of their campaigns as they permeate through the culture in unexpected ways. (Available as a rental via Netflix and other outlets.)

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