Last spring, Taxslayer.com befuddled many a video contestant when they awarded first place and $25,000 in their annual Taxslayer commercial contest to frequent contest winner, HappyJoel Levinson. Here’s his winning entry:
Winner, 2009 Taxlsayer commercial contest. Prize: $25,000
The other contestants were befuddled because well….that’s a really weird video! It’s funny but obviously it wasn’t something taxslayer could actually put on tv. And that’s why so many of the other contestants were confused. The year before, Taxslayer aired the winning entry as-is. (click here to watch it) So contestants assumed that Taxslayer would be doing that again and many of them sunk a lot of time, money and production values into their submissions. I actually entered this contest and it was my first video contest loss. (winning was pretty easy back in 2007 and 2008.) In the days after Happyjoel’s video was picked I followed the reaction and let me tell you, people were PISSED. I’ve seen a lot of angry youtube comments in my day but damn, the other contestants flipped the fuck out.
Taxslayer explained that what they liked about Happyjoel’s video was the idea and they weren’t actually going to air the commercial. Instead, they were going to have professionals re-shoot it. I only spent about 80 bucks on my entry but I remember some really slick submissions. (here’s the one I was positive was going to win) If Taxslayer had let everyone know they were looking for “ideas” and not ready-for-tv ads, they would have saved a lot of filmmakers a lot of money.
Fast forward to tax season 2010. Happyjoel’s re-made video has finally hit the airwaves:
I’m glad that happyjoel actually got to play the part he created in his contest entry. But you know what? I think I prefer the original version. The (somewhat) fancy re-make is a bit stiff and the orginal was watchable because of how super weird it was.
Speaking of super weird, Taxslayer apparently decided to re-shoot a second entry from the 2009 contest. Here’s the re-make:
Yeah…that was pretty lame. But the weirdness deepens. Check out the entry that commercial was based on:
The orginal was funnier and more interesting than the remake! Whoever posted the re-shot version to youtube added this note: “Tax Slayer 60 second spot. This commercial was derived from contest creative. The spot was toned down to not look like an abduction, but rather a spoiled brat not wanting to conform.”
I cannot for the life of me figure out why Taxslayer chose that ad to remake or why they turned it into something that was thoroughly not funny. Whoever wrote that remake forgot the oldest rule in comedy; abduction victims are way more hilarious than spoiled brats.
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i really like the idea of this contest.
to shoot a rough low budget version. and then get it re-made with a big crew and budget.
and dam, happyjoel is one lucky son of a b*#@!
funny ad
I’m with Beardy. Like the actress Clara Pellar exclaimed in those famous Wendy commercials back in the day…”Where’s the beef?”.
Sure I’m biased since I created the first national spot for the TaxSlayer brand, but I think it is pretty obvious that the comedy got strained out just a bit from these two spots through the whole re-write process. A shame too because I could have taken Joel’s concept, produced it here in LA with Happy Joel (:30-1:00), maintained the original comedic strength (maybe even bumped it up a notch) keeping Joel in the lead role and probably for a lot less $$$ then TaxSlayer ended up paying. Go figure. I have a second script filed away for the day TaxSlayer wants to re-employ the original chubby Tax crusader.
[...] these are all kinda “meh.” Just like the re-shot Taxlsayer commercial I wrote about on Wednesday, the original versions all have more heart that the slick re-makes. The flaming fart [...]