Bird Watching by Larry Bird

Author:Larry Bird [Bird, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), SPO004000
ISBN: 9780446930437
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 1999-12-13T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

On Endorsements and Lifestyle

Here’s something else I’ll never get used to: the demand for celebrity athletes to endorse products.

When I first started doing commercials, even coming from a small town, I didn’t want to do anything for a shaky company. It had to be a big-time company, like McDonald’s or 7UP. I never did an ad for something I didn’t respect.

Some of the commercials look like a blast when they’re done, but what you see in thirty seconds can take a whole day. It’s unbelievable what can foul up what you thought was a perfect take. Maybe it’s because this guy doesn’t like the lighting, or that guy didn’t like the way one of the actors said their lines. That’s my only complaint about commercials. They just take up too much time. Everything is union, so everybody has got to do their own little thing. During a taping someone might call out that they need a ladder, but if you ever touched the thing some guy would start shouting, because that’s his job—to move ladders. That kind of stuff drove me crazy. Also, they make you wear makeup. I really hate that.

My first big commercial was for 7UP in 1979, the year I was a rookie with the Celtics. I guess I was a little nervous at the start, but it took so long to film the thing that by the time it was over I was just tired. I always liked 7UP just fine, but when my agent, Jill Leone, picked me up after filming that ad, I ordered a glass of milk at dinner. I drank close to two cases of 7UP during that taping, and I couldn’t even look at another 7UP for a long time after that.

The other thing you have to get used to with all these commercials is the special effects they use. I did a commercial for Canon cameras in 1980, and they shot it in Boston. They wanted to create the feeling of a musty old gym, so they filled the room with all this smoke. Rick Carlisle, who was my teammate at the time, was in that commercial with me, which turned out to be a mistake, because the people at Canon wanted a shot of me dunking the basketball, and they made me stand on a crate to do it. As you can imagine, Rick had something to say about that. Back then I was dunking on guys all the time. Sometimes I see old footage and I can’t believe I could do all those things, because after my heel surgery and two back surgeries I never moved the same again. Anyhow, I told the people at Canon I didn’t need any crate, but after doing it about fifty times I understood why we had it there. If I had to dunk that many times for real, I would have been exhausted!

The first commercial I ever did for McDonald’s took fourteen hours. I couldn’t believe it. I remember thinking to myself, “You won’t catch me wasting time like this anymore.

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