MR. TINE SR.: [Motioning with weatherman’s pointer to U.S.O. stenographer to transcribe verbatim.] Seen it yet, Buster?
MR. YEE: Negative, Rod. Just in with these folks here. Kennedy completely socked in. Mo had to charter a chopper. I’m sitting here cherry.
MR. TINE JR.: [Tapping edge of ruler on tabletop.] How’d you fare getting up here, Sir, if I may?
MR. TINE SR.: Mountain comes to Mohammed, eh Tom?
MR. VEALS: How come I only came two clicks down here and I’m the one with a fucking cold?
MR. TINE JR.: I’ve been here in Boston as well.
MR. VEALS: [Checking connections on Infernatron 210-Y Digital Player and Viewer System.] So shall we?
MR. TINE SR.: OK, for the record. Mo. Demographic target?
Ms. HOOLEY: Ages six to ten, with marginally reduced efficacy four to six and ten to thirteen. Let’s say target’s four to twelve, white, native English-speaking, median income and above, capacity on Kruger Abstraction Scale three or above. [Refers to notes.] Advertable attention-span of sixteen seconds with a geometric fall-off commencing at thirteen seconds.
MR. TINE SR.: Spot-length?
Ms. HOOLEY: Thirty seconds with a traumatic graphic at fourteen seconds.
MR. VEALS: [Hawks phlegm.]
MR. YEE: Proposed insertion-vehicle, Mo?
Ms. HOOLEY: The ‘Mr. Bouncety-Bounce Show,’ spontaneous dissemination at 1600 M to F. 150 °Central and Mountain. Cream of the crop. 82 Share on spontaneous receptions for the slot.
MR. YEE: Any data on what percentage of total viewing in the slot is Spontaneous versus Recorded cartridge?
Ms. HOOLEY: We had 47 % plus or minus two as of Year of the Yushityu 2007. That’s the last year the data’s firmed up for.
MR. TINE SR.: So say 40 % of total viewing for the spot.
MR. YEE: Give or take. Impressive.
MR. TINE SR.: So check, check, check. We got rough costs?
MR. YEE: Production just over half a meg. Post-production —
MR. VEALS: Bupkus. 150K before matteing.
MR. YEE: I might add that Tom’s pro-bonoing his part of the production.
MR. VEALS: So you all ready to eyeball this or what?
Ms. HOOLEY: Since ‘Mr. B-B’ ‘s contracted as a no-public-service-spot vehicle, dissemination charge’11 come out around 18 OK per slot.
MR. YEE: Which we’re still of the position this seems a bit steep.
MR. TINE JR.: The upcoming year’s Glad’s year, Buster. You wanted the year. You want the Year of Glad to be the year half the nation stopped doing anything but staring bug-eyed at some sinister cartridge while little whorls went around in their eyes until they died of starvation in the middle of their own exc—?
MR. TINE SR.: Shut up, Rodney. And quit with the ruler-tapping. Buster I’m sure knows the incredible good will that’s even now accruing from their proud sponsorship of probably the most important public-service spots ever conceived, given the potential threat here.
MR. VEALS: [Sneezes twice in abrupt succession.] [Comment unintelligible.]
MR. TINE SR.: [Taps telescoping weatherman’s pointer on edge of table-top.] Righto then. The spot itself, then. The spokesfigure icon thing. Still the singing Kleenex?
MR. YEE: The what-was-it, Frankie the No-Thankee Hankie, warning kids to say No Thankee to unlabelled or suspicious cartridges?
Ms. HOOLEY: [Clears throat.] Tom?
MR. TINE JR.: [Taps ruler on edge of tabletop.]
MR. VEALS: [Hawks.] No. Had to shit-can the dancing Kleenex after the response groups’ test data were analyzed. Various problems. The phrase ‘No Thankee’ itself perceived as archaic. Uncool. Crotchety-adult. Too New England or something. Summoned images of a leathery-faced old guy in overalls. Took attention away from what they’re supposed to say No Thanks to. Plus phrase-recognition data was way under minimum slogan-parameters.
Ms. HOOLEY: Problems with the icon itself.
MR. VEALS: [Blowing nose one nostril at a time.] Kids hated Frankie the Hankie. We’re talking levels past ambivalence. Associated the hankie with snot, basically. The word booger kept coming up. The singing didn’t help.
Ms. HOOLEY: Which is why in this case thank God for response-group testing.
MR. YEE: This business’ll make you old.
MR. VEALS: Had to go back and completely reboot at square one.
MR. YEE: Does anyone else smell a peculiar citrusy floral odor?
Ms. HOOLEY: Tom’s boys’ve been at it twenty-four/seven. We’re extremely excited at the result.
MR. VEALS: It’s previewable but rough. Not really quite there yet. The first Phil’s digitals had a bug.
MR. TINE JR.: Phil?
MR. VEALS: A small bug, but nasty. Dregs of a turbovirus in the graphic encoder. Phil’s head kept detaching and floating off to the upper right. Not a good effect at all, given the message we want to send.
MR. YEE: Like orange blossoms, but with a kind of sick sweetness.
Ms. HOOLEY: Oh dear.
MR. VEALS: [Sneezes.] And debugging put us behind on some of the fonts, so you’re going to have to use some imagination here. Has this 210 unit been downloaded for schematic matteing?
MR. TINE JR.: Excuse me. Phil?
MR. VEALS: Introducing Fully Functional Phil, the prancing ass.
Ms. HOOLEY: More like a mule, a burro. A burro.
MR. TINE JR.: [Tapping like mad.] An ass?
Ms. HOOLEY: Horse-characters were copyrighted by ChildSearch. Their ‘Patch the Pony Who Says Nay to Strangers’ spots.
MR. TINE JR.: A prancing ass?
Ms. HOOLEY: The perception of naïveté and clumsiness about a mule-icon provoked a kind of empathy in the response groups. Phil’s not coming off as an authority-figure-joy-killer type. More like a peer. So the cartridge he warns against gets none of the forbidden-fruit-type boost of being warned against by an authority figure.
MR. VEALS: Plus the kid market’s a frigging horror show. Near every species was copyrighted. Garfield. McGruff the freaking crime dog. Toucan Sam. The O.N.A.N. bird of prey. Let’s not even get into the bears or bunnies. It was basically either an ass or a cockroach. Never again the kid’s market as God is my witness. [Sneezes.]
Ms. HOOLEY: Once we went with the burro, Tom opted to accentuate the clumsy-incompetence factor. To almost ironize the icon. Buck teeth, crossed eyes —
MR. VEALS: Extravagantly crossed. Like he’s just been whacked with a sock full of nickels. Eye-response was through the roof.
Ms. HOOLEY: Ears that won’t stay upright. Legs keep getting all rubbery and tangled when he tries to prance.
MR. VEALS: But prance he does.
MR. YEE: But surely it doesn’t present itself as an ass. Surely it doesn’t prance out and say, ‘Take it from me, an ass.’
MR. VEALS: A fully functional ass.
Ms. HOOLEY: Tom’s rather ingeniously played up the functionality angle. The energy and verve versus passivity angle. He’s never just Phil. He’s Fully Functional Phil. He’s a blur of kid-type activity — school, playing, teleputer-interfacing, prancing. Tom’s got him storyboarded for a number of thirty-second activity-packed little adventures. He’s a goof, an iconic child, but he’s active. He stands for the attraction of capacity, agency, choice. As versus the spot’s animated adult who we see in a recliner ostensibly watching the Canadian cartridge, little spirals going around and around in his eyes as his body sort of melts and his head starts growing and distending until the passive watching adult’s image is just a huge five-o’clock-shadowed head in the recliner, his eyeballs huge and whirling.
MR. TINE JR.: [Taps his ruler against the edge of the tabletop.j
MR. VEALS: Let’s just roll the thing for them, Mo.
MR. TINE SR.: I’ve got to say I foresee trouble selling a certain Commander in Chief on a prancing ass as an improvement over a singing Kleenex.