This is your brain. This is your brain on foreign cars

Last Sunday, I wrote about a video guaranteed to make you cry. This one won't, but it might make you smile.

If you remember http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo&NR=1">a certain anti-drug commercial from the late 1980s, it might even make you chuckle. And if you feel strongly about buying cars from American companies, it might make you clap your hands.

Throw in the fact that all of the professionals involved with creating it worked for free, it might make you clap your hands and stomp your feet.

Dan Birney of Royal Oak is 35, which means he grew up with "This is Your Brain on Drugs" and the other early messages from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Now he's a copywriter for Campbell-Ewald, and when he and his 30-something advertising friends get together, they're as likely to reminisce about the commercials of their youth as they are the television programs that contained them.

One day last summer, Birney, art director Lewis Baker and copywriter Mike Oxner were sitting around Oxner's apartment, trying to think of ways to make Honda drivers fling their keys into the Detroit River and buy Chevrolets instead.

"You know what we need," one of them said, "is some sort of re-education program," a campaign to make people realize that a 2009 Malibu bears no relation whatsoever to their neighbor's 1982 Dodge Omni that conked out after 62,000 miles.

As the mental dominoes fell, they thought of a campaign patterned after those old public service announcements. And then somebody said wait, not a pattern. We should do parodies.

They thought of a few examples. Like, remember the one where the impossibly old Native American wept at the thought of pollution? Instead, they could have him gazing out over the Santa Monica Freeway, crying because everyone was driving imports.

Intrigued with the possibilities, they pitched the idea to Chevy, Campbell-Ewald's biggest client.

No thanks, Chevy said.

Chevy needs to sell cars, not make broad philosophical points about the need to support American industry.

Video in the making

Birney and the others understood that, but they found themselves chatting about the campaign again in December when they were in Los Angeles to help steer sportscaster and spokesman Howie Long through a Chevrolet ad.

During a lunch break, the director of a different commercial overheard them. "Man, that's great," said Anthony Garth. "I'd love to do it." Because it's a teeny little world sometimes, Garth turned out to also be from Royal Oak. He works for Avalon Films on Fourth Street, and when he got back to the office, "everyone jumped on board."

It was like one of those old movies where the kids put on a show, only with state-of-the-art equipment. This isn't a complete list, but if the opportunity arises, you can buy a drink for Campbell-Ewald producer Matt Duggan, production house Milagro Post of Southfield and editor Kevin O'Brien, actors Donald Boza and Hugh Holesome, and Avalon owner Audrey Pask.

Boza's drink should fizz, since he's a teenager. As for Pask, she owns the house in Plymouth where the crew spent eight or 10 hours filming one day in February.

The bedroom in the video doesn't really look like the one in the classic commercial they were imitating, but the good thing about professionals is that they can fake it.

Note the attention to detail. The matching lamps, for instance: Somebody on Garth's crew found one in a different color and painted it yellow.

They updated the first kid's stereo and headphones with an iPod and ear buds, and he has fresher posters. But there's still a guitar by the bed and a black-and-white scarf hanging from a peg, and the dad still has a blue dress shirt, an open collar, a striped necktie, a faintly New York accent and a cheesy mustache.

Holesome, a former WDRQ-FM (93.1) disc jockey, was one of 60 actors who tried out for the two roles knowing they wouldn't be paid. His mustache was glued on.

Birney took it home after the shoot and wore it out on the town that night. Women did not flock to him, much as viewers have not flocked to the commercial in the month or so it's been posted on YouTube.

There's still hope, though. A few links here and there, "and the next thing you know people will be holding us aloft on their shoulders, parading us through the streets of Detroit because we saved the auto industry."

Or maybe they'll just remind some buyers that the domestics are worth a look. That would probably be enough.