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One of the most-talked-about commercials in today's Super Bowl — a Matthew Broderick takeoff of his 1986 movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" — sprang from the mind of a native Omahan.
Ariel Shukert, 27, art director at a Los Angeles advertising agency, said she and her partner, copywriter David Sullivan, 32, came up with the idea. The client is Honda.
The commercial, "Matthew's Day Off," is humorously referential to the movie — you could say affectionately deferential. It even uses the same electronic synthesizer music, the pounding beat of the song "Oh Yeah."
"Not only is it great fun, because everybody loves 'Ferris,'" Shukert said, "but everything also fits perfectly."
In the movie, Ferris feigned sickness to take a day off high school. In the commercial, Matthew fakes being ill to take a day off a movie shoot.
Just as Ferris' father believed his son's phony story in the movie, Matthew's agent sympathizes when he gets Matthew's sniffling, scratchy-voice call. The agent tells Matthew to just stay home and get well.
"One of the worst performances of my career, and he never doubted it for a second," Broderick exclaims in the commercial, opening the curtains to a sunny day. "How can I handle work on a day like this?"
Said Shukert: "We tried to inject as much of the movie into the commercial as we could — props from the movie, names that had significance, costumes all hidden throughout."
Just as the movie followed the charming slacker Ferris Bueller around Chicago, the Super Bowl spot follows veteran actor Matthew Broderick, in his Honda CR-V, around Los Angeles: Beverly Hills, the Santa Monica Pier, Hollywood Park racetrack, the Natural History Museum and Chinatown.
The filming, in the week before Christmas, took four days.
The Super Bowl used to be a revelation for TV commercials, an unveiling. But many sponsors now release the commercials ahead of time to build buzz. "Matthew's Day Off" was released on the Internet Monday.
With a 30-second Super Bowl commercial costing between $2.5 million and $2.8 million for air time, plus as much as $2 million to produce, a lot is at stake.
Many at Shukert's firm, the 500-plus-employee RPA (Rubin Postaer & Associates), began work on Super Bowl ideas months ago. Shukert and her partner started in June, and they took some ideas to their creative director.
"He'd like some, kill some, tell us to refine some."
She didn't feel undue pressure, she said, because so many creative colleagues were coming up with suggestions. Then one day in September, she and Sullivan hit on the notion of a Ferris Bueller takeoff.
They wrote, polished and submitted a script, which competed with others at several rounds of staff meetings. It underwent refinements, and by the end of the month was one of four or five ideas presented to Honda.
Honda eventually accepted it, but there was one more crucial step. It's not as though just any actor could play this role. Only one could make it work: Broderick himself.
"That was a huge thing," Shukert said. "You sell the idea internally, you sell it to the client, you go through all the different ranks. But if he doesn't do it, it's dead."
Not wanting to jinx the possibility by saying her idea might become a Super Bowl ad, Shukert didn't even tell her parents in Omaha — planning consultant Marty Shukert and his wife, clinical psychologist Aveva Shukert.
(Ariel's sister, four years older, is New York-based author and magazine writer Rachel Shukert.)
Not until the end of November did Broderick sign the contract.
Ariel Shukert was closely involved in the planning and filming. She said Broderick was great to work with.
"As soon as he gets in front of a camera, the sparkle comes out. He definitely had fun, and he improv'd some things."
He also was gracious when they spoke of his time in Omaha filming director Alexander Payne's "Election," which came out in 1999.
"He said it was a really great city," Shukert said, "and that he really enjoyed spending time there during his shoot."
Growing up in Omaha, Ariel Shukert acted in plays at the Dundee Dinner Theater, Emmy Gifford Theater and the Rose. She graduated from Central High in 2002 and earned a degree in advertising and graphic design from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006. She was soon hired at RPA.
On Oct. 16, in the midst of hoping her Super Bowl idea would come to fruition, she married fellow Washington U. grad Jeffrey Wienir of Los Angeles.
She says in an online profile that she enjoys "playing the piano, laughing and observing."
Those who have observed the online version of the commercial surely have laughed. It runs 2½ minutes but is reduced to one minute for airing. It's scheduled for the game's second half.
Shukert and her husband will watch it at the home of one of her bosses — and, if the Super Bowl score is close, with an audience of possibly 110 million.
Fans of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" have enjoyed spotting the many movie references. For example, instead of a high school teacher (actor Ben Stein) calling roll by repeating, "Bueller . Bueller .," a hotel valet holds Matthew's car keys, droning in the same way, "Broderick . Broderick ."
"I've said it before and I'll say it again," 49-year-old Broderick says in the commercial, repeating a Bueller line from more than a quarter-century earlier. "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you could miss it."
You won't want to miss this one — or the ending that mimics the end of the movie.
"Don't you have anything better to do?" Broderick, sounding annoyed, says to the audience. "Go on. Get going. Go."
Shukert acknowledges that, so far, the "Matthew's Day Off" commercial is the highlight of her young career.
The least her bosses could do, you'd think, is give her a day off.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1132, michael.kelly@owh.com
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Watch more 2012 Super Bowl ads at superbowl-commercials.org.
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