The Blog | Danny Miller: Audrey Hepburn: Dead is the New Alive | The Huffington Post:
I know I should reserve my outrage for more important matters, but I just saw the new Gap commercial featuring Audrey Hepburn and my mouth is frozen in a silent scream. As part of their new "Keep it Simple" campaign, the Gap uses footage of the late actress from the Stanley Donen film "Funny Face." We see Hepburn in a Parisian café saying, "I rather feel like expressing myself now. And I could certainly use the release." She then starts dancing wildly and after a few seconds jumps out of the film onto a white Gap-like background and continues her frenetic dance to the tune of the AC/DC song "Back in Black." According to Trey Laird, creative director of the Gap, "We wanted to do something really special to re-launch our skinny black pants and thought who better to showcase them than actress Audrey Hepburn--an iconic woman famous for dressing with sophistication and classic style." What did he say? I couldn't hear that last part because it was drowned out by the sound of Audrey Hepburn spinning in her grave.
I have to assume that the Gap secured the rights to Ms. Hepburn's glorious image and I don't want to pass judgment on her family members who I assume held those rights. But even though the commercial is a technical marvel and fascinating to watch (you can find it on YouTube), it begs the question, "Just because something is possible to do, does that mean we should do it?" It's not the first time a major movie star has posthumously starred in a TV commercial. In an even more unsettling ad campaign, Hepburn's "Funny Face" co-star Fred Astaire appeared in a 1996 Dirt Devil commercial dancing expertly with a vacuum cleaner. Astaire's young widow was roundly criticized at the time for selling out her husband's reputation for a buck. Astaire's daughter, Ava McKenzie, unleashed her fury in a letter to the manufacturer. "Your paltry, unconscionable commercials are the antithesis of everything my lovely, gentle father represented, " she wrote, adding that she was "saddened that after his wonderful career, he was sold to the devil."
3:26 PM
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