Beer

Year releasted: 1985

by Keith Phipps
November 8th, 2000

Though the essence of the pitch might be eternal, advertising must struggle to reinvent itself with the times, a fact discovered the hard way by the executives of Norbecker Beer, "the beer of kings." Jealous of competitors employing ingenious, presumably inimitable spots featuring anonymous attractive young people engaging in leisure activities to the tune of ingratiating jingles, the head of the company (Kenneth Mars) threatens to switch advertising firms. Rising to the challenge, ad whiz Loretta Swit begins a search for a "man for the '80s." She soon finds not one, but three, when William Russ, David Alan Grier, and Saul Stein unwittingly thwart a robbery in a New York bar. Swit recruits the new national heroes for a series of ads, then coaxes legendary director Rip Torn out of retirement. (Torn, a recovering alcoholic, understandably sees a series of beer ads for a struggling company as a chance to stage a comeback.) After achieving initial success--symbolized by a montage sequence alternating between a fleet of beer trucks and shots of the boys on the covers of such beer-ad-concerned publications as Life and People--the Norbecker campaign takes a controversial turn. Adopting the slogan "Whip Out Your Norbecker," Swit launches a series of ads in which Russ, Grier, and Stein harass, fondle, and otherwise molest scantily clad women. An appearance on It's Controversial, a talk show with an energetic white-haired host (Dick Shawn), does little to calm matters, but a plane crash stranding Torn and his actors in the desert causes each to rethink his priorities. Meanwhile, Swit, in what may be a satirical touch, concocts schemes to profit off their supposed deaths. The matter is forced to its conclusion, as such matters often are, by a rowdy gay-bar finale featuring veteran little-person performer Charles Bolender.