Surreally!?!
When I awoke, I found myself orbiting planet Fred Rated in the Earth year of 1986.
Fred Rated was a zany, cocaine-fueled pitchman who messed with the control knobs of reality in a long-running series of offbeat television commercials for The Federated Group, a now defunct chain of home electronics retailers in the western and southwestern US.
The character and ads with a cult following grew so popular they were the subject of a two-page spread in Time magazine. They were the creation of Shadoe Stevens and a merry band of guerilla filmmakers, of which I was a foot soldier / jester.
Two years out of one of America's top advertising programs, I should have packed my straight A's in a gunnysack and headed out for Madison Avenue. Instead, my love affair with filmmaking rerouted me to LA and a journeyman's existence eked out learning every aspect of production in whatever crucible appeared next. In the mid-80's, my next laboratory was gripping for the maddest of scientists–Fred Rated.
Reliving those very heady LA days and all-nighters working on those insane, low budget commercials, I'm beginning to think that maybe I couldn't have had a more valuable apprenticeship after all. Like the lessons learned on the front lines versus in a West Point classroom, I was in the trenches mastering the art of moving some product while showing everyone a good time along the way.
"Everybody laugh. HA HA!"
