friday flashback--Tom Hanks, creative director, 1986

My 19-year old goes back to college next week and in searching for bonding activities of mutual enjoyment, I netflixed Nothing in Common, an advertising movie I missed somehow. (Oh, right. It came out the year I birthed my first child, a year in which the only movies I saw were reruns at 2 in the morning while breastfeeding.)

It was a great choice, a fun, funny, shareable film. Early Tom Hanks. Bess Armstrong. Sela Ward. "I can't believe it!" I gasped when Jackie Gleason's name flashed on screen. My daughter gasped, too. Someone her age likes Jackie Gleason? Nah. Opening credits were scrolling over first scene which takes place on a plane and announcement is made to extinguish all smoking materials. "You could smoke on a plane?" she said, incredulous.

Which had me noticing all kinds of things that have gone the way of smoking sections and DOS:

marker sets in 87,987 graduating colors
shoulder pads
storyboard pads with frames that looked like mini TV screens
Flashdance-type cutoff sweatshirt sleeves--for guys
epaulets
purple lipstick
mechanical snow makers on set
long gloves worn with wrist-bling on top
designer briefcases
portable phones with pull-out antennas
wall phones
secretaries

Of course, some things never change:

pencils stuck in acoustic ceiling tiles
presentation jitters (Don't bother me now, I'm in pre-game.)
cubicles
theatrics during new business pitches
clueless clients
impossibility of juggling work and family
bosses who get it--and bosses who don't
window office envy
toy collections in creative offices
on set--"client areas" to keep clients as far away from director as possible (But why can't we watch the monitors over there.)
nepotism