Angry

I'm disproportionately outraged by the MasterCard commercial that blatantly rips off the scene in Swingers where "Mike" calls "Nikki" 47 times on the night they first meet. They even use the same names. At least somebody else has noticed it. I don't know if she's just speculating on the fact that the Swingers people are getting residuals, or if she has some inside information (if it can even be imagined that a "celebrity gossip" writer for the Post might know more about the Hollywood scene than me), but either way I'm angry. Either at the MasterCard people for the blatant ripoff, or at the Swingers people for selling out. And, some guy I've never heard of, Marty Z, is with me (forgive me for not respacing after the cut and paste; I'm tired):

MasterCard has a commercial out that does not only borrow, but blatantly steals a scene completely from "Swingers", the hilarious 1996 indie-flick starring Jon Favreau & Vince Vauhn.They even use the same NAMES, "Nikki" and "Mike" in the commercial --- the classic scene that's copied, nearly verbatim, is when Jon Favreau's character "Mike" tries to leave a message on the girl's answering machine that he met earlier in the evening -- the plaigarism in this commercial is so flagrantly apparent, it makes me nauseous -- way to go McCann-Erickson --- way to be original with your near-decade-old "priceless" ad campaign. The ad MIGHT be funny if it came out NINE YEARS AGO when Swingers was released. I need answers here, people. Was this ad approved by Favreau, or did MasterCard just flounder again, by stealing ideas for their lackluster ad campaign -- read about their clever "baseball-road-trip" commercial".

So it's unanimous. Rumor has it it's going to snow again tonight. I'll be reporting from a big-ass-pile-of-salt tomorow morning.