
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990                   TAG: 9004060273
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

'CRAZY PEOPLE' ADS STIR UP TROUBLE

At a time when advertising's credibility is probably at its lowest ebb, a movie comedy about an advertising copywriter who is thrown into an insane asylum for writing truthful ads has the networks nervous and industry executives preparing for a fusillade of bad press.

The movie, "Crazy People," premieres nationally next week. But already two networks, ABC and CBS, have refused to run some ads promoting the movie, and ABC only agreed to run a promo after the studio made "modifications" in the commercial.

Even the American Association of Advertising Agencies is squirrelly on the subject. "We don't have a comment," said a spokeswoman for the group, after thinking about it. "Why would we? It's a movie."

It's a movie that tars the ad business with broad brush strokes of black humor, written with the same biting wit the author, Mitch Markowitz, deployed in "Good Morning, Vietnam."

In the movie, part of which was filmed in Roanoke, an ad for United Airlines uses the slogan "Most of our passengers get there alive." And ad for Volvo notes that the car is "boxy, but good," adding that, while Volvos aren't very sexy, in this day of sexually transmitted diseases, sexy isn't so great anyway. An ad for Jaguar promises men if they buy the car they'll get sex from "beautiful women you hardly know."

In the movie, copywriter Emory Leeson (played by Dudley Moore), who is in the loony bin for telling the truth, becomes the hottest writer on Madison Avenue because his ads sell. He and his fellow patients transform the insane asylum into an ad agency.

by CNB