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June 7, 2009
Robert De Niro signs up for Subaru advertising
Source: Times Online
As the boxer Jake La Motta, he roared the word “Why?” almost 40 times, his bare fists pounding cruel desolation on to the stone walls of Dade County Stockade.
Nearly 30 years and two Oscars later, Robert De Niro looks a little different in his latest performance. He jaunts out of his house, nods archly into the rearview mirror, and takes off in a Subaru Legacy. Speeding through unidentifiable Arcady, he passes a sheep. He nearly grins. The words “Love Your Life” fill the screen.
Fade to nausea.
The 30-second advert is a horror that can mean only one thing in these dark economic times: arguably the finest actor in Hollywood has become a star hawking a reasonably priced Japanese family car.
In honour of their hard-won thespian megastar, the manufacturers of Subaru, Fuji Heavy Industries, have not skimped on production values. Compared with Harrison Ford’s pub-based touting of Kirin lager and Nicholas Cage’s sedentary, crimson-suited pitch for pinball machines, De Niro’s spot is high art. The director of photography is Bob Richardson, a two-time Oscar-winner, and the background music is by the Scottish rock band Travis.
Fuji Heavy keep the numbers vague, but it is thought that the star of Goodfellas and Cape Fear was paid about $1.2 million (£750,000) for approximately ten seconds of on-screen appearance.
De Niro’s decision to take the Tokyo shilling, say Japanese advertising industry analysts, is surprising on several levels — not least because De Niro has been in hot demand from Japan for many years but has previously resisted. Many other Hollywood stars before him have given in to the temptation of easy Japanese money: Brad Pitt, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and Sir Sean Connery feature prominently on the list, but more than 100 other stars of music and screen have trodden the same embarrassing path.
De Niro’s decision also feels like an anachronism, said a researcher at a large Japanese advertising agency. Before the internet and YouTube, Hollywood stars could afford to be a little less red-faced about their commercial sojourns in Tokyo because few people outside Japan would see the adverts. Now that it is well-nigh impossible to police the global distribution of the adverts, the stars are less easily bought.
That has coincided with Japanese companies losing faith in the idea that paying millions to have foreign stars peddling ham, bath salts or octopus fritters is worth the money. Annual surveys of Japanese consumers show that they too are less impressed by the selling power of Hollywood stars.
Check out the video: Robert Deniro Subaru Legacy 2010 JDM commercial
Source: Times Online
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