I pitched an idea in 2005 that connected Nick Lachey and Mr. Clean for a commercial and a sponsorship, playing off the messy-house storylines that kept coming up in the first two seasons of Newlyweds.
It never sold. Until now, nobody has seen it.
My mind went back to that idea recently, and it got me thinking about how much technology has changed the art of the pitch. So I made it again, with the tools I have now.
The house was never clean.
The biggest thing on MTV that winter was a show about a marriage, and the marriage lived in a house in Calabasas that was never clean.
The third season was about to premiere and the network was pushing it everywhere — promos, billboards, the two of them on magazine covers. I'd just come off the Nintendo shoot with the Jackass guys, which had gone better than anyone expected. I had that under my belt now, and it felt like a green light to dream big.
I worked in consumer products, integrated marketing and MTV Films. That meant I watched the show the way you watch anything you might have to sell against. What got me wasn't the fighting. It was the amount of stuff. A counter that never cleared. A towel that stayed on the bathroom floor for days. Jessica walking through a room and leaving a mess behind her, and Nick standing in the middle of it with no idea where to start.
Most of the audience wasn't laughing at a marriage coming apart. They were laughing because their own house was the same. I remember thinking that nobody had sold the mess yet, and that if I could find the right partner for it, we had something.
Superman had somewhere to be.
The commercial I kept going back to was American Express, 1998. Jerry Seinfeld and Superman in a diner, an animated Superman sitting across from a real person, the two of them needling each other about nothing much. It ran as the last spot of the Super Bowl that year, so thirty million people watched a comedian give Superman a hard time about his dry cleaning.
The effects were expensive and the celebrity was enormous, and neither was the reason it worked. Nobody in the spot was impressed. Superman had an errand. He had opinions about the service. He sat there and took it.
Superman worked because he had somewhere to be.
Mr. Clean moves in.
Mr. Clean had one job, and the show was an hour a week of that job going undone.
The idea was a best friend. He shows up at the door one night while the house is loud, and he doesn't leave. There's a handshake at the kitchen counter that turns into a hug, and Nick's face does something it never gets to do on the show, which is relax.
From there it's a montage. The two of them cleaning a kitchen in perfect sync with squeegees. Sunglasses at night in a car. A towel folded on the counter.
And then the movie, which was the shot I actually wanted. You put them under a marquee that says MR. & MRS. SMITH — the summer's biggest movie about a marriage, two people who were very good at their jobs and very bad at being married. Nick looks at Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean looks at Nick. Nobody says a word. They go in anyway.
He comes home to the evidence. Keys still in his hand. Glitter worked into the carpet, a heel on the glass, a yogurt cup bleeding into the sofa.
No music. No dialogue. A fridge humming.
He doesn't yell. He can't — there's a crew in the room. One bead of sweat. The math happens behind his eyes.
Still nothing. Let it sit one beat too long.
The bell. He opens it. Backlit on the porch: a bald man holding a sponge up like a badge. He doesn't say hello. He looks past Nick, at the sofa.
First sound of the spot: the screen door.
Kitchen, morning. A handshake that turns into a hug. The grip does something to Nick's face. Relief, for the first time.
Music in on the first bar. Cold.
Buddy-cop grammar. Two squeegees, one stroke, identical posture, dead serious. They are not cleaning. They are working.
One song, played completely straight. No wink.
Camera outside the passenger window. Mr. Clean soft in the foreground, arm on the sill. Nick drives on the far side, sunglasses at night, ten and two.
Montage continues. A towel folded like a flag.
The multiplex. The board says MR. & MRS. SMITH. Nick looks at him. He looks at Nick. A beat. They go in anyway.
Music drops out on the title.
Screen glow. Popcorn. Nick takes one piece and his eyes go. A hand on his shoulder. It stops being about cleaning.
Room tone. One sniff.
Cut to white. A spotless counter. A Magic Eraser. Beside it, one small gold hoop earring. He'll be back.
SUPER: 'Mr. Clean. He's got your back.'
“Let me think about it.”
Rod Aissa got me on the phone with Joe Simpson. Rod was an EVP at MTV running Series and Talent Development for MTV and MTV Films, and one of the executive producers of Newlyweds. Joe was Jessica's father, and her manager.
Rod and I worked in the same office. I'd moved out to Los Angeles with MTV and MTV Films in 2004, and the move is the reason this call happened at all. In New York, Rod was a name I'd seen on a call sheet.
There was no deck. No boards, no sizzle reel, nothing to look at. I talked him through it. The mess. The guy at the door. The marquee.
He liked it. He said he wanted to think about it.
Then the news came out.
The third season was already shot when I pitched it. Nobody in my hallway said it was the last one, so I didn't know.
It ended in March, and the pitch went with it.
But it was fun.
The access.
What I remember about that year is that I was allowed to say the idea out loud to anyone who mattered.
At MTV then, I could pick up the phone and be on a call with a decision maker the same day. The job put me in those rooms, and the relationships were already in place: agencies, brands, talent. An idea could go from my office to a room at Procter & Gamble in a week.
There were three or four things like this in motion on any given Tuesday, and nobody in the building treated any of them as precious, which is probably why we were allowed to try them.
It was fun to work with that kind of wind at your back. I knew it was rare while it was happening. I just didn't know it was temporary.
Most days it was a good job. I moved between people who made things and people who paid for them, and every so often the two of them stuck.
You could think as big as the company could execute, and nobody asked you to justify the scale of the thought before you'd had it.
I made plenty of bad pitches in those years. I never once had to explain why I was bothering.
I would never have been able to visualize this to this degree back then. That’s the difference between yesterday and today.
A story from the intersection of music, media, and marketing.