Titanic rise and tragic demise of top TV admen: Keith Rose and David Feldman
Since at least the late 70s, South Africa has notched up a solid reputation for producing some of the slickest, greatest, and most entertaining TV commercials in the world.
This was mostly back in the day…before the internet…when we would look forward to ads, between our favourite TV shows, and revere them for the compacted works of art they were. The good ones were almost like 30 – 60 second, inspiring, transportative short films.
We'd look forward to the reruns, sing along with the jingles, and when a new one popped up, the nation would debate or interrogate them the next day in class, or around many a water cooler at work.
That was back when TV commercials were entertaining, alluring, memorable and less sickeningly ubiquitous.
Unlike the undisciplined, unimaginitive, paint-by-numbers, mediocre to miserable, corporate crap we get bombarded with now, 24/7.
Picture this…
It's Cape Town, 1988. You're Christopher White, and you're driving home along Chapman's Peak Drive late at night. You're tired and not paying attention to the road. Before you know it, you've gone over the edge. Your car plunges 100 meters, slams nose-first into the ground, and then rolls countless times at high speed down a very long, steep bank. You experience every whip, spin, bash and bump in that vehicle…which finally comes to a stop.
After a few seconds, you emerge from the car, completely unharmed, for two reasons: 1) You were wearing your seatbelt, and 2) you were driving a Mercedes-Benz.
Sound familiar…?
Here's another one…
Two elephants, a baby and an adult bull, are wandering together through a semi-desert. The bull clears the path of thick branches and supports and nudges the kid up difficult, steep patches. The soundtrack is playing a hit song by The Hollies called He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother .
Recognise that one?
Then there's the ad with a mouse (actually, a rat) running along the top of a sleek BMW steering wheel, causing the wheel to turn, demonstrating the new 318i's featherlite power steering. The whole scene is set to the classical strains of The Blue Danube .
How about the VW commercial of happy, smiling people working well and hard for the company, singing a song together (that goes something like) 'V W and me…we all believe in quality…', and the ad ends with an aerial shot of all the company's staff assembled in the shape of a giant VW logo.
Or the other high-octane, hi-speed VW commercial that looks like a blend between Top Gun, Days of Thunder and The Right Stuff .
Of course there's also that adorable commercial, much loved by saffers, featuring a small boy in his bedroom playing with his toy Ferrari. He parks the car next to a little plastic petrol pump, labelled Sasol . And 'fills' his Ferrari with…'Ama-Glug-Glug'. To the boy's shock, the toy car suddenly roars to life, speeds off, burning twin rubber trails, and smashes through his bedroom wall.
If you're old enough to remember those ads…you're probably also old enough to know those were some of the top award-winning TV comercials to come out of this country.
What you probably didn't know is that those ads were just a few of many world-class local productions by producer David Feldman and director Keith Rose.
Born in Johannesburg in 1954, Feldman started out early in his career as a shoe-buyer for the Truworths Group, before becoming marketing manager for a local retailer. That led to him being invited by Ogilvy & Mather Rightford (Cape Town) to join the company as account manager.
From there, Feldman took the now well-trodden path from ad agency to starting up his own commercials production company in Johannesburg in 1983 with only one director, David Cornell. The company, Feldman Cornell , became David Feldman Film Productions after Cornell moved to the US in 1986, and went on to be one of the world's leading commercial directors.
In 1990, Feldman, by now an executive producer, picked up South Africa's first ever Gold Lion award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, the ad industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards (Oscars).
The award was for the Mercedes-Benz ad titled Chapman's Peak , produced for SA ad agency D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Johannesburg, for whom Feldman worked on more than 40 commercials. The agency once described Feldman as 'one of the country's best producers'.
David was apparently well-liked and widely respected in the industry. Described by a former colleague as 'a terrific account man', Feldman allegedly 'spent more time down in the studio with the directors, contributing to the creativity, than he would upstairs'.
Aside from pushing the envelope on cutting-edge creativity in commercials and managing numerous productions with a strict fiscal eye, Feldman was also known for his ability to spot and champion new talent. He was widely credited with almost single-handedly instigating South Africa's 'second wave' of commercial directors who, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as the director Leslie Dektor, have since moved on to international success.
Apart from Dave Cornell, Feldman also discovered and launched the career of the late Keith Rose, another virtuoso visionary director cited as part of a creative renaissance in South African advertising.
Born in Johannesburg in 1955, Rose started his career at the SABC as a sound technician, but did every course the SABC offered and freelanced on film sets, doing whatever dogsbody work was needed until he progressed. His first break as cameraman was landing an operator job on Zulu Dawn (1979) after the assigned cameraman fell ill.
After the SABC, Rose spent several years working on movies in the UK and Europe, then returned to SA and worked as a cameraman on commercials. By 1990, he'd directed four of his most iconic ads and started his own production company, Velocity Films , with US producer Barry Munchick.
It was Keith Rose who directed the 1990 Chapman's Peak Mercedes-Benz commercial for producer Feldman and the agency. His work won every top international and local award going, including seven Gold Lions at the Cannes Lions festival. Two of those Lions at Cannes, awarded in June 1992, were for directing the BMW Mouse commercial (voted in some circles as one of the best car ads ever made).
Rose was one of a select few to be inducted into the Clio TV Hall of Fame for that commercial, as well as into the Creative Circle Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Loeries Hall of Fame in 2014. He was named by UK trade magazine Shots as one of the top 100 advertising people of all time and by Campaign magazine as one of the top five directors in the world.
On 1 October 2018, Rose died at the age of 63, reportedly by suicide. In an eerily surreal twist, his body was allegedly found…on Chapman's Peak Drive.
While I was studying TV/Video Production at Technikon in the early 90s, our course would sometimes receive esteemed industry talents as guest speakers.
In our first year, the first renowned guest was the late great William Faure, director of the original Shaka Zulu TV mini-series (1986), who really opened our eyes with invaluable tips on, among other things, camera blocking, coverage and shooting to edit.
In our second year, the second prestigious guest was the acclaimed, multi-award-winning, commercial producer David Feldman.
David took us through his enviable showreel of stunningly produced stylised commercials, giving us some intriguing insights into the production process and how some of the ads were made.
(For instance, he told us about how, on the Sasol 'Ama-Glug-Glug' ad, the crew set off fireworks to get the kid to react genuinely alarmed and cover his ears.)
After his presentation, some of the students cornered Feldman and grilled him, picking his brain about production and the industry. He graciously and patiently listened to our questions and offered solid and sage advice for us fledgling wannabes. Advice like, 'Guys, take the time to compose your shots.' (Said the producer whose commercials always boast superb cinematography.)
As we chatted and listened to this TV titan, none of us, least of all Feldman himself, could possibly have foreseen that, within a few months, he would be dead.
In early July 1992, I awoke to the shocking news that the country's top, multi-award-winning commercials producer, David Feldman, had been killed.
Feldman had just gotten back the week before from promoting the South African commercials industry in Cannes and Germany – where he reportedly met with veteran British film producer David Puttnam, who was considering filming in South Africa.
As I later read in the news, on 7 July, exactly 23 years ago this week, a man – with a gun – walked into David Feldman's offices at his production company in Johannesburg. He approached and got into a volatile argument with one of Feldman's woman employees – his wife. Reportedly, she was in the process of divorcing him…and taking their toddler with her.
David Feldman and his partner/accountant, John van Staden heard the commotion and came out of their offices to investigate. When they tried to placate the aggressive gun-wielding man, he shot them both dead.
The man then walked out of the offices, made a phone call to his mother and told her what happened. 'I've just killed two people,' he said. After the call, he reportedly turned the gun on himself.
I felt compelled to commemorate the life and work of both these iconic talents – for two reasons:
One, because between those two deaths, South Africa lost a pair of giants in the local and international Film/TV commercials industry…who brought SA and the world a dose of inspiring, life-affirming, feel-good magic through their enchanting ads.
But the second reason is that it's yet another daunting indication of just how fragile and fleeting life can be, particularly in this country, even for the mighty Captains of Industry.
One minute, you're flying high, master of the celluloid universe…a golden god of advertising. The next, your life unexpectedly hard cuts to black…or slow dissolves to a final Fade Out.
A reminder for us all to carpe diem . Or as Woody Allen once quoted, 'Enjoy yourself…it's later than you think.'
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