The second greatest birthday present I ever received and I’m going to share it with you!

Three years ago, my children –– who were two and a half and four at the time –– decided that the perfect birthday present for me was a chicken costume.

I’m not making this up. 

They came up with this idea all by their precious little selves, in spite of all the exposure they'd had to mass produced coffee mugs and ties emblazoned with the words “World’s Greatest Dad.” 

My kids are a lot like me in that when they know something is great, they won’t settle for pretty good. They knew they'd come up with the perfect present and they made my then wife drive all the way to Beaverton to find one that they could give me. No birthday present before or since could possibly give me as much joy. 

Only one came close. And you know what’s weird? I got it the same year. 

But before I can share it with you, I have to give you a little backstory. 

Back in the 1970s and 80s, Ed McCabe was heralded as one of, if not the greatest copywriter ever in the history of advertising. He created legendary ads for Volvo, Perdue, Nikon, Cutty Sark, and a bunch of other brands. And I had the incredible good fortune to work for him. 

An ad Ed did in 1973. Makes you feel like
a schmuck for not buying a Volvo, doesn't it?

You weren't hired to work for Ed, you were chosen. And we who had been chosen went to a lot of trouble to be sure we were worthy of the grace we had received. We behaved more like acolytes than employees, studying the Gospel According To Ed and exhorting those who weren’t pure of faith to see the light, quoting him the way young Chinese communists used to quote Chairman Mao.

“A good ad makes you feel like a schmuck for not buying the product.” was one of my favorites.

I found great solace in Ed’s wise teachings. One passage, “If you need an exclamation point, you need a new sentence,” I took to heart, vowing that that I would never, as long as advertising would have me, ever use an exclamation point. Ever. It was a vow of celibacy, sort of, and I even popped the 1 key off the electric typewriter the agency had issued me because as any votary can attest, the best way to resist temptation is to remove it, never mind that a lot of what I was called to write was coupon ads for toilet paper and it's kind of hard to type "Save 10¢" without a 1 key. 

Over the years I've found that there were other ways to be righteous in advertising and my position on some of Ed’s edicts softened. I came to understand that a good ad doesn't have to make you feel like a schmuck after all, although I still maintain that it does have to make you feel. But god damn it, I held onto that exclamation point rule. 

In retrospect, I was like a carpenter who refused, on principal, to use needle nose pliers, even once in a while when you couldn’t get the claw end of a hammer into that tiny space up under the eaves to remove a staple from the old siding because Jesus said not to use them, never mind that Jesus probably wasn’t the kind of carpenter who had call to renovate a Portland four square.

Back to my birthday.

You know how kids are. They pile on top of you, get all excited to give you the best birthday present in the history of birthday presents, and then suddenly they’re off making an art project out of dust bunnies while you sit there, wondering whether it’s okay to take the chicken costume off now because it makes your nose sweaty. If you’re me, you do. And then you log onto Facebook in hopes of finding something, anything, that will prolong the incredible birthday love rush.

And there it was. A birthday greeting. Three words: 

Happy birthday, Brian!

From Ed. 

McCabe.

I try not to swear when the kids are around but I’m pretty sure I used the F word. That’s okay, though, because dust bunny art requires intense concentration and they probably didn’t even notice.

To say this was a big deal was kind of an understatement. This was a  big deal!

Sure, advertising and I and probably even Ed had changed a huge amount in since I wrote coupon ads at Scali, and sure, I’d reconsidered a lot of what I learned from him as I progressed in my career, but when I came to actually putting into practice something Ed specifically told us –– told me –– not to do, I always felt like I was kind of betraying the guy. Like I'd need to be ready with an explanation in case he picked up the phone and called me on it. 

Here was Ed himself telling me that it was okay. 

That was three years ago today. Today, on the anniversary of that birthday, I want to give the gift to you. 

If you shared my obligation to avoid exclamation points, I hereby release you. Let it go. 

Not because I said it's okay or even because Ed said it's okay, but simply because we are in the business of communicating and the reason we have rules at all is to guide us, not constrain us. 

The point is, do what works. And by the way, a really good way to figure out what works is to know your audience and genuinely care about them. I gotta believe that's what got my kids to come up with the chicken costume in the first place.

'Jack Reacher' breaks the law.

I don't like Tom Cruise. Personally. Which is ridiculous because I've never met him. There's just something about him that doesn't sit right with me.

So whenever I go to see a movie he's in, it's with the expectation that I'll dislike it.

More often than not, I'm disappointed. Meaning I end up enjoying his movies and even liking him in them.

And yet I refuse to budge from my position on him.

I feel like a Republican congressman on an anti-gay crusade who can't help but hook up with strangers in the airport men's room.

Okay, not quite, but you know what I mean.

So I went to see 'Jack Reacher', fully expecting that it would suck. I should have figured that it wouldn't.

Sure, it's a thin premise. The main character has lapses in the very characteristics that are supposed to define him. The story veers from action to farce, sometimes in the same scene. The whole conspiracy (action films are always about conspiracy) is a house of cards built on a huge flaw. And the woman who plays opposite Cruise? Who let her onto the set? Were all the trained actresses in Hollywood out getting their lips Botoxed the day they cast that role?

Still, it's a fun ride. And up until the end, it's a Hollywood movie.

And then it does something remarkable. It breaks one of the biggest unspoken precepts of American filmmaking. Yes, I'm going to give away the ending. (If you don't already know that the bad guy dies in the end of a film like 'Jack Reacher', please stop reading. Not just this post. Stop reading this entire blog. You're singlehandedly bringing down the average IQ of my readership by a substantial number of points.)

What's interesting about 'Jack Reacher' isn't that the bad guy dies in the end. It's how. Tom Cruise kills him. Not in a protracted fight. Not in self-defense. He pulls out his gun and shoots him in the head.

This does not happen in a Hollywood movie.

Think about it. When was the last time you saw the good guy kill the bad guy? I'm not talking about the bad guy's minions. They're not really people, in movie terms, and if you want proof look at the way their characters are usually named in the credits: Henchman 3, Cop With Scar, Tall Guard.

But Hollywood has a rule about good guys killing bad guys and that rule comes down to one word: Don't. More specifically, the bad guy has to set in motion the very thing that causes his own demise. In essence, it's the bad guy's badness that kills him. In the idealized Hollywood scenario, in spite of it all, the good guy (usually) tries to save him.

Two examples:

'Spider-Man' (2002): The Green Gobblin remote controls his own glider, ultimately killing himself.

'The Incredibles' (2004): When Jack-Jack self-immolates, Syndrome drops him and his cape gets caught in the suction of his aircraft.

The reason for this is moral –– and yes, Hollywood films do adhere to a pretty strict moral standard. The good guy wouldn't be good if he were to actively cause the death of the bad guy. There are exceptions, of course. In 'Lethal Weapon', for example, it's self-defense, but even that's not enough. Both Murgaugh and Riggs fire their weapons simultaneously and we don't know who actually kills Joshua.

'Jack Reacher' is notable because the main character is not an anti-hero. He's a good guy. Unconventional, sure. Off the grid, yes. But unimpeachable. A former army cop who served with honor. For him to pull out a gun and shoot an unarmed man sitting in a chair? That's Hollywood heresy.

And that makes me think two things. First, it makes me not like the movie as much. I want my heroes to be heroic. Jack Reacher leaves the film different from the way he entered. He's tainted.

Second, though, it makes me like Tom Cruise better. This was a huge choice. Most of the people involved in the making of 'Jack Reacher' would have had every reason to fight against violating the convention, not least of which Tom Cruise. In fact, few people in Hollywood even have the power to challenge that unwritten law.

Tom Cruise owns that decision, and whether you like the decision or not, it was a brave one.

Maybe I'll go into his next film with a more open mind.