Jack & Jones clothes Made From Cool: The creative and the films are so spot on in every way. At what stage did Danish agency &Co start talking with you about the campaign and how did the brief and treatment evolve?
We talked about the project very early on. And it took a long time to get it all together.
Having a tag line with a word like “cool” is pretty tricky.
The moment you say something is cool – it gets uncool.
We knew that, and we knew that “Made from Cool” would only work if what we did stayed premium somehow.
The creatives had this idea that Mr. Walken could be the tailor.
In fact we all agreed that he probably would be the only character on the planet who could do this.
So we built all our ideas and our hopes that he would join the project, and having him in our mind as the lead man, the whole concept and visual identity came alive.
Was it immediately apparent to you that the slow pull back with the camera was the way to go or did you play around quite a bit with different ideas for camera framing and movement?
It was the intention from the beginning.
One of the spots does include a lot of cuts (the one where he cuts the fabric), but the simpler spots where everything is built around one single take feels cooler somehow.
It´s like “keep it simple” – why cut here and there when you have someone so strong in front of the camera.
The tricky part was to find a way to do that with the post effects we had to do.
It was almost rocket science to get those long takes to work.
We did loads of tests with Bacon X who really worked their heads off to find a way where we could be sure that Christopher could act the way he felt like while still making sure that the tricks would come out cool as well.
Who else did you consider for the lead role or was Christopher Walken always the chosen one? (Obviously chosen not only for his deadpan presence but his remarkable hand trick ability with buttons or was this a double?).
No one really. It was like when we did the George Clooney wedding film. It was Clooney or no other person.
There is no one like Christopher Walken. Who would that be?
Where did you find the location? Did you shoot all five films together?
Well to begin with we had to shoot in New York as Chris lives close to NY. But it was very difficult to make that work.
So I talked with my favourite art director Peter Grant, and we decided to try to persuade Walken and his team to come to Copenhagen.
And against all odds that became possible, and we ended up building the location on studio.
It gave us the possibility to design the place exactly as we wanted.
Did the scenarios change at all while you were shooting? For instance, we love Christopher Walken dancing and this has to be the best little routine since his Weapon of Choice music video – did you purposely storyboard this in?
All scenes and action were set in stone. The dancing part was a special wish from the creatives and Jack and Jones.
And yes, surely because they had seen Chris dance in Spike Jonze´s video.
Chris is a former dancer from Broadway, so dancing has been very much part of his life.
We Europeans might not know that but I think all Americans do. So my aim was to keep the dancing really subtle, as a quiet homage to that side of him.
But everything else was pretty planned out.
