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Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie’s Cars.com Super Bowl Ad

Posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 by Peter Sciretta

After seeing the Wes Anderson-styled Cars.com television commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, I went on a mad search to try to find out who directed it. Thankfully one of the crew members on the shoot responded to my information request on Twitter (I’m loving twitter and crowdsourcing more and more everyday). Turns out the spot was directed by Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie, who won a DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials in 2006.

Titled “Lifetime of Confidence”, the commercial uses “the epic life story of fictitious character David Abernathy to illustrate how even the most confident people need a little extra help when it comes to car shopping.” If you missed the television spot, you should check it out after the jump.

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TV Spots, Television Commercials by Big Directors, 

  • Cute and Simple. Super Effective.
  • I think when he said Gompers and Aristotle, that part was really Andersen inspired. The voice over just needed to be Alec Baldwin and it would have been the opening to the Royal Tenenbaums
  • i hate commercials.
  • Robbie
    I really liked it until I found out it was for cars.com!
  • I also was thinking to myself "this is really trying to me Anderson-esque" when I saw the spot. But that was only because of the writing. The shot compositions weren't nearly as refined as what Anderson pulls off.
  • Barbara
    Okay that was cute, but the shot where the guy was about to go into the dealer looked so wrong, it looked like he was about to do a drug deal, or kill somebody. Seriously. Did not buy it.
  • edward
    anderson-eqsueness( I know its not a word but deal with it) bothered me a little at first, now I see he's a full fledged feature director...seems like a little bit more of a rip-off now.
  • GOOFRIP
    Quit the hating!

    Fav Part is when the newborn shakes the doctor's hand for a perfect delivery!
  • What a different advert! beats the usual upbeat hit song attatched to a car speeding past
  • cib3k
    This kind of commercials are like meeting a real interesting person, who has fascinating things to say, only for finding out in the end that all he wants is your money.
  • The spot started out really good then died at the end.
  • I completely agree. It was so clever and witty at the start. and when he becomes flummoxed at buying a car, it just killed the commercial. A great start with some artful direction, and then you get to the product/service being sold, and it just didn't work.
  • I thought it was the best non-movie-trailer commercial...none of the other ones are worth mentioning
  • I missed a lot of the commercials during the game yesterday so I hadn't seen this one. I really liked this one. Might be my favorite, of the ones I've seen.
  • frank
    Wes Anderson-styled? Not sure what this means. It didn't have quirky music played on a casio while the kid was wearing green adidas with a 3 piece suit so I guess I don't see it. Wes Anderson didn't invent classical music or the voice over...
  • Quite a fascinating and heart-warming commercial that was (well the first fourty-seconds anyway). "At 24, he applied to Princeton, for the position of Dean."
  • Jonny Begood
    Young David A. has good taste. I'd like to bone Carrie Peacore in each opening.
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