How Stanley Kubrick and beer commercials launched a director’s career: “I was very lucky”
How an artist begins their career is always a matter of interest for their fans. Some are moved by art at a young age, while others find their way to it later on in their lives. However, for Canadian filmmaker Jeremiah Chechik, the origin can be traced back to an odd combination of Stanley Kubrick and certain beer commercials, which the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey once heralded as the finest examples of contemporary American filmmaking.
To be given the nod of approval by one of the finest filmmakers of all time is enough to have garnered a lifetime’s worth of anecdotes, but, for Chechik, things went further as he suggested that with the ringing endorsement of Kubrick, he got his first real start in the movie business.
In conversation with The Flashback Files, Chechik, explained how an endorsement from Kubrick gave him his big break, as he traded beer commercials for a job as a feature director at Warner Brothers. Admitting that he was very lucky, the Canadian filmmaker relayed the moment he realised his beer commercials received the highest praise in one of America’s most widely read newspapers.
He said, “I was on a plane from New York to L.A. and I was reading an interview in The New York Times with Stanley Kubrick, who was promoting Full Metal Jacket. And they asked him if there was an example of contemporary American filmmaking that he really liked and he said: ‘Well I really like these beer commercials. They’re story telling in such a format.’”
As Chechik continued to read the article, it began to dawn on him that Kubrick was referencing his adverts. He said, “I’m reading this and I’m going: Oh my god! Those are my commercials! I patted myself on the should and that was it.”
This was only the beginning, as soon after Chechik was met with a call from Steven Spielberg asking him to come in for a meeting. What followed was a successful career in the film and TV industry working with the likes of Johnny Depp and Sharon Stone. The director explained, “I plunged in and got to know everyone at Warner Brothers.”
After rejecting a handful of scripts, Chechik ended up directing 1989’s Christmas Vacation, which remains a beloved holiday flick, and later he would go on to release another hit, Benny and Joon. The pictures might not exactly ring with the same artistic clarity that Kubrick or Spielberg used for their own movies, but they did provide Chechik with a chance at the big time, even if he did turn those opportunities down.
In the wake of this success, Chechik received many offers to direct more comedies. But he candidly confessed, “I didn’t want to do them. Was that a mistake?” It’s a bold move for a newbie director, but one that he clearly made with a sense of pride. He continued, “My influences were Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks. They would do a war film and then a screwball comedy. I love that. As a television director, I still try to do that. Like you said, comedy needs an emotional foundation. And drama works even better if you punctuate it with lightness or laughter.”
Chechik never quite reached the same heights as Kubrick, either on the big screen or with his photography, but he certainly possessed the same sense of artistic purity. When faced with the alluring chance to cash in and keep making money-driving flicks, he turned down the chance, instead preferring storytelling over everything, ironically, the very thing Kubrick loved most in his work, first of all.
