Art & Copy

Directed by Doug Pray. With Lee Clow, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Phyllis K. Robinson, Hal Riney and George Lois. No MPAA rating. 1 hour, 29 mins. Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse.

They are both subversives and establishmentarians, salesmen and entertainers, people who believe they are in the most exciting business on Earth. They are the giants of modern advertising, and they have some alluring tales to tell.

As recorded by Doug Pray in his dishy new documentary Art & Copy, the men and women who created the most memorable ads of our time, such as "Where's the Beef?" and "Got Milk?," tell rich, meaty war stories that prove the point made by the legendary Mary Wells, who says that people like her were "born with a gift for sensing what will turn you on."

A veteran documentarian, Pray gamely tries to expand this film beyond talking heads. He shows us satellites being launched and periodically peppers the screen with factoids, for instance listing the number of billboards in America (450,000) and the cost of a 30-second TV spot on the Super Bowl ($2.7 million).

The truth is, however, that he needn't have bothered. It's the great talkers of the advertising world whom we want to see and hear. They couldn't be more different from one another, but they are all recognizable as members of the same irreverent, iconoclastic tribe, people who could make you walk a mile for a Camel and smile while you're doing it.

Advertising hasn't always attracted this kind of energy and enthusiasm. In the pre Mad Men days, the ad game was very much an old boys' network, and where you went to school mattered more than the kind of copy you wrote.

One of the main treats of Art & Copy is that it allows us to revisit classic ads, all of which are just as exciting now as they were when they first ran. These advertising men and women just did it before it was a phrase, and their results speak for themselves.

- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times