Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
Everyone knows that the Super Bowl is about more than tackles and touchdowns. Many viewers stay glued to the screen between plays so they don’t miss the million-dollar commercials that often are better looking or funnier than the average ad. This year, Palisadian Kristin Dehnert will be watching closely for her own 30-second spot, “Check Out Girl,” which she wrote and directed for the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” challenge, a first-time contest that invited consumers to create their own commercials. Dehnert is one of five finalists–and the only female–selected by Doritos judges from more than 1,000 entries. Viewers determine the winner by voting online (www.crashthesuperbowl.com) through January 19. The winning ad will be unveiled on national television during the first quarter of Super Bowl XLI on February 4. “I was pretty blown away at the opportunity because it’s the mack daddy of all stages,” says Dehnert, a location manager and scout for commercials with a passion for writing and directing. “If you are going to direct, act in a commercial, produce it’whatever’it doesn’t get any bigger than the Super Bowl.” Dehnert learned about the competition last fall and created four no-budget commercials with her producer friend, Leann Emmert. “Check Out Girl” features a spicy grocery store cashier checking-out a customer who is buying bags of various flavors of Doritos corn chips. Their shared passion for Doritos unfolds in a comical and flirtatious dialogue. “I got quite a kick out of the fact that Doritos had so many flavors with so many great names like Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch and Salsa Verde,” says Dehnert, playfully rolling the ‘r’ of ‘Verde’ off her tongue the way the check out girl does in her commercial. “So I thought it would be great to play off all these flavors. And I thought a grocery store would be a great place to showcase the product and have this interaction between two total strangers.” The two leads are played by George Reddick, an aspiring actor and friend of Dehnert’s whom she calls “naturally hilarious,” and Stephanie Lesh-Farrell, one of about 20 people who answered a casting call for the commercial. Dehnert’s friend and casting director Carol Rosenthal volunteered her time to hold the mini casting session. “Stephanie came in and she had her pigtails and she had on an apron and a name tag upside down,” Dehnert says. “She completely knocked it out of the park. We were rolling, we were laughing so hard. She was so funny.” Dehnert and her small cast and crew, all of whom worked without pay, shot the footage for “Check Out Girl” during an all-night (11 p.m. to 5 a.m.) shoot at Super A Foods in Eagle Rock. James West was the cinematographer and Kindra Marra edited the commercial. Dehnert says that while all four spots received good responses, “the one that was the touchdown was ‘Check Out Girl.’ I think what was so neat about it was that it appealed–and it appeals–to a range of ages. Little kids who have seen it are running around yelling ‘Giddy up!’, high school students think it’s a riot and people my parents’ age think it’s hilarious.” A Chicago native who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1991, Dehnert says she was also inspired by her friends’ humor. “I think my friends are, by far, the funniest people in the world. They’re the best people to bounce ideas off of. They’re like my mini audience, so I know if I’m doing it right.” Besides being “pretty darn funny,” Dehnert believes her commercial stands out because of clever product placement. “We purposefully put Doritos and Pepsi [under the same umbrella as Frito-Lay] in the background. You couldn’t swap out the product because the commercial is all about the flavors and the product you see.” Just for making it into the top five, finalists are each awarded $10,000 and a trip to Miami to attend the Doritos Super Bowl party. The national publicity has already opened doors for Dehnert, who has meetings set up with production houses about the possibility of her directing some commercials. “Location managing and scouting is my day job,” Dehnert says. “I’d love for writing and directing to become my new day job.” Dehnert broke into the film business as a non-paid location-scout intern on the 1994 movie “Blue Chips,’ starring Nick Nolte. She continued doing location work on films in Chicago until about 1996, when she moved to Los Angeles to work on “Contact.’ Dehnert, who has lived here for about 10 years, says her favorite day of the year is the Fourth of July in the Palisades. “My friends joke that, one day, I’m going to be the honorary mayor of the Palisades.” Dehnert made her writing/directing debut with an award-winning short film, “Underground,” a political thriller that screened in over 60 international film festivals and won 11 top prizes. She then tried her hand at writing/directing a series of no-budget TV commercials for a car dealership in Oregon. Two of the spots won the Gold and Silver Awards for “Best Use of Humor” at the 2006 Summit Creative Awards. The Doritos contest is Dehnert’s first commercial competition. “Another cool thing about the competition is that it’s so ‘childhood’ to me,” she says. “And it’s so all-American–Doritos and the Super Bowl. Everybody has had orange fingers from Doritos.” ——————- Reporting by Associate Editor Alyson Sena. To contact, e-mail: newsdesk@palipost.com
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