The Oscars are full of grandiose accolades, fawning, excessive adulation and platitudes. When those involve someone behind the scenes, viewers often tune out, as the insider flattery falls flat.
A new campaign helps poke fun at this ritual with film stars and award-winning filmmakers singing the praises of an entertainment industry icon who has had a lasting impact on their careers and lives: Otto Descinski, affectionately known to his friends as Otto Desc.
The campaign by Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort pays tribute to Otto Desc, a fictitious Hollywood legend feted in a series of ads by actor Ron Perlman, writer/director/actor Elizabeth Banks, Academy Award-winning VFX supervisor Paul Lambert, and Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Mandy Walker.
A voiceover calls Desc a “world builder, a dream maker, a visionary,” while Banks says she wouldn’t be the filmmaker she is today without Desc. Perlman even states that “if Hollywood had a Mt. Rushmore, Otto would be on it,” while Lambert states with all certainty, “What’s your favorite movie? I bet Otto worked on it.”
In the third and final spot, where Otto Desć is being presented with an award, a woman walks onto the stage and announces there is no Otto and that it’s really the software technology product, Autodesk, that’s getting the accolades. Perlman proceeds to get up and walks off set, muttering expletives.
The faux documentary spots debuted on Oscar night to drive awareness for Autodesk, a leader in design-and-make software. Autodesk’s technology helps Hollywood’s elite creatives and innovators—as well as architects, engineers, students and more—”make anything,” as the tag on the ad states.
Maximum Effort worked with and Jimmy Kimmel’s Kimmelot on the campaign, and Kimmelot’s Dan Sanborn orchestrated the creative partnership with the Oscars, coinciding with Kimmel hosting the show.
“Maximum Effort loves playing with the cultural landscape, and the Oscars are a major cultural event,” said Reynolds in a statement. “Autodesk has been a secret weapon for Hollywood’s artists for decades, and what better way to highlight that than to create a fake man of vaguely Germanic descent to receive an award that doesn’t exist?”
