Huckster: Monologue Of An Ad Job (Read In The Voice Of Morgan Freeman From Shawshank Redemption)

There’s a job like me in every ad agency in America, I guess. I’m the project that can give it to you. Stress-induced hives, grey hairs, a bastard child conceived while working late into the night with someone of the opposite sex. Damn near anything.

I’m also the job that won’t go away. Been around this agency since 2005, making the rounds, you might say. One minute, I’m with the account executive, then the production manager, copywriter. Then back to the AE, who’s lunching on Quaaludes. No, I just won’t go away. I’m like that bad cough that sticks around for five winters. You know the one.

Sure, I look innocent enough. One peek and you might even volunteer to jump on for a ride. Won’t be long, though, before you’re jacking open the door, leaping out, even knowing I’m going 65 on one of them blind curves in Santa Monica. Even knowing the water below isn’t water at all any more. No, that water’s been replaced. By living, breathing razor blades.

Anyway, I’m what you call a collateral job. Brochure. Funny thing is, I was opened three months early. You know. Give the guys an early start. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. New coordinator kid damn near killed himself on me, started sawing at his wrist with the edge of my folder one night after everyone had gone home to their families. Cleaning guy came in and saw the whole thing go down, from the moment the kid started till forty-five minutes later, when the folder finally loosened enough blood that the boy nearly passed out. Kid had to call 9-1-1 all on his own. Why? Don’t know. You’d have to ask the coordinator himself. Or the cleaning guy, who was standing there the whole forty-five minutes.

I was opened in September 2005. Supposed to talk about all the different services the company had. We do this and we do that. Well, the entire thing was written and laid out by the time the client decided to kill me. That’s that, everyone thought. Couldn’t have been more wrong. I was resurrected some two weeks later, back from the dead, like Jesus ascending to heaven on Yom Kippur. But instead of breaking bread with his good friend Joseph Smith, I was about to break the entire team’s back.

You see, my services changed. That’s the simplest way I can put it. Sure, I still did This, but I didn’t do That anymore. That was old news. Now, instead of That, I did This. So they called in the surgeons, and I’m not talking about a simple Rhinoplasty. No. I’m talking severe Rhinoplasty.

This didn’t just happen one time. Or two or three or even four. No, this happened three hundred and twenty four times. You know how some people talk about how they got into the business? Well, I’m how they got out.

One guy got a lobotomy.

I hope I’ll get produced one day. I hope to be placed into a customer’s hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

Whatever that means.