He’s gone from peaches to apples.
Apple, that li’l tech company you may have heard about, has had its share of memorable advertising campaigns. There was Sir Ridley Scott’s revolutionary clip 1984, the Y2K-riffing HAL 9000 ad, the Laurel and Hardy-esque “Get a Mac” blitz featuring Justin Long and John Hodgman, and the “Think Different” campaign, which changed many of history’s greats into ambassadors of their products, including, weirdly, the notably tech-averse Mahatma Gandhi. (Salman Rushdie had some interesting things to say about that.) With this much competition, the company’s newest commercial may not end up in their all-time top ten, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely amusing.
Timothée Chalamet, the 27-year-old Manhattan-bred Franco-American Nice Jewish Boy dreamboat with an Oscar nomination, has teamed up with Apple, specifically Apple TV+, for an ad geared to delight his fans and film buffs.
With a premise following in the footsteps of a similar gag from last year with Jon Hamm, it begins as something of an homage to the Nicole Kidman AMC ads, with Chalamet wide-eyed in a theater watching last year’s best picture winner, Apple’s CODA. (Before you say anything, yes, CODA, the first-ever movie to live on a streaming platform, did indeed get a theatrical victory lap run after its win.) Impressed by the movie, Chalamet remarks that he was in two of the Oscar-nominated movies from last year. (That would be Dune and Don’t Look Up.)
We cut to the back of a limo, surrounded by Chalamania, in which he’s ignoring his fans to scroll through Apple TV+’s offerings. “Jennifer Lawrence,” he mumbles, referencing Causeway. “Selena Gomez,” he says, noting her documentary My Mind & Me. He tilts down his pad (revealing an open shirt and gold chain, perhaps a wink to his Venice Film Festival attire from last fall) and wonders, “why don’t I have a documentary?”
These gags continue, referencing shows like Ted Lasso and Severance, with the young actor in increasingly elegant spaces (like a Moroccan-looking indoor bathing room, taking calls from Jason Momoa), his mind only on one thing: when, when, oh when will he get the call to appear in an Apple TV+ project?
The final blow comes when he sees a reminder for Killers of the Flower Moon, the forthcoming film from Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. He then flops into bed saying, “hey, Apple … call me?”
Keep in mind one key thing: after Hamm’s bit last year, he’s now expected to appear on the next season of The Morning Show. One suspects Timmy’s call from Apple has already been made. The title of the spot and its central image are also clear references to his 2017 film Call Me By Your Name.
Jordan Hoffman
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