"I've learned in commercials that I enjoy dealing with dialogue and actors," says Morris. "The fact they have to play out in 30 seconds is important, maybe even crucial. In movies I can sit someone in front of a camera for hours and use the best 20 minutes of the interview. This is not effective in creating a 30-second spot."

While Morris is best known for documentaries like Mr. Death, the Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. and Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, he has directed a geometrically expanding array of spots via @radical.media.

"If it is seen as just a job, it's really not worth doing, even though it is, by all accounts, extremely well paid," says Morris. "It's important to think of directing commercials as filmmaking, as trying to achieve something - and I don't hesitate to use this word - artistic. Of course, don't get me wrong, I can be as cynical as the next guy about commercials." Morris compares his role to that of the pyramid builders in The Ten Commandments. "There are the push/pull men and the stone greasers. I consider myself a stone greaser of the world economy."

Morris has lubricated brands like Miller Highlife, Levi's, Adidas, Volkswagen, ABC College Football, 3Com, Robertson Stevens and PBS. This varied spot work is in addition to directing his First Person TV series for Bravo and considering new feature projects such as Insanity Inside Out and Lobster Boy.

"I'm not sure I keep all the projects separate, but like everything I do, there are different ways to do things using different methods," says Morris, who recently applied several of his theories to the PBS "Stay Curious" campaign out of Fallon, Minneapolis, MN. For one, Morris believes the line of demarcation between actors and real people is a naïve construct.

"The fact of the matter is there is no such line. My job is getting a good performance out of talent no matter who they are," says Morris, referring to the 60-second spot "Photo Booth." Opening with a dolly-move through a hole-in-a-wall, the ad shows a man using the titular booth to capture himself singing an aria. He takes the multitude of photos home, cuts them into a flip book and observes himself singing along as an opera record plays.

"If you need someone specific, like an opera singer, get an opera singer," extols Morris. "We went through it in casting, going through a lot of actors and, of course, no one could do it. So I said, let's stop this and bring in people who can actually sing."

An opera fan himself, Morris located a member of the Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and was also involved in selecting the aria, a 1905 Caruso recording of Di Quella Pira from Il Trovatore. Morris also created the flip book effect for the spots.

"I set up a digital video camera and filmed him singing to Caruso's recording," explains Morris. "Using the Avid, you can take a clip of film or video and do a "strobe motion" effect, freezing every three, four, five or six frames, you specify. We printed every third frame, bound the images together and turned it into a flip book."

The inquisitive characters in "Photo Booth" and the other PBS spots conform to Morris' most easily recognizable aesthetic imprint.

But in his pursuit of stimulating American haikus (as Morris terms commercials), Morris has delved into the middle American male psyche for Miller High Life or athletics branding for Adidas.

"To me, branding is more than style. It's not a question of 'how is the film going to look, is it going to be naturalistic, dramatically lit or emulsion X vs. emulsion Y,'" says Morris.

"Often there is this enormous fear of looking like you are selling something even though everyone knows you are trying to sell something. There is some sort of game that is played to sell without selling or to sell while looking as though you are not."

Working within the boards-to-conference call process is not always pleasant for Morris, as working from creatives' fixed storyboards is not his idea of spontaneous creativity.

"I know that part of what interests me is an element of spontaneity, the unexpected, an element of reality or believability," says Morris." There is a tendency in filmmaking in general to want to control everything, especially in advertising with all of the money and people involved; of wanting to know exactly what will transpire at every moment. However, this desire for complete control often turns the end result into a kind of taxidermy. All the life has been beaten out of it."

Perhaps this is why both Morris and Fallon creatives Michael Hart and Chris Lange were pleased with the PBS campaign. Rather than working from strictly-defined boards, Lange says there was a collaboration from the earliest stages.

"One of the things that was so great in our early conversation and in the film was the idea of the camera being curious," says Lange. "He (and DP Peter Donahue) used a unique approach and way to frame close-up shots so they appear untraditional."

The use of an iris to open and close the spots also contributed to the sense of curiosity. Lange equates the viewpoint to an inquisitive peek through a keyhole.

Morris says the same peephole effect was also used in Mr. Death, using a specialized endoscopic lens.

"The lens is like a probe, a cylinder that goes through the wall. There are brand names like Superscope or Cinewand," says Morris, a well-known fan of innovative production technology. In addition to the Interrotron interview device of his own invention, Morris was happy to make use of an intervalometer in shooting spots for investment bank Robertson Stevens out of Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, OR.

"The agency wanted something simple, in one shot. I chose to combine different kinds of motion in that one shot; fast motion and ultra slow motion," says Morris.

Morris says the challenge was to unify the campaign visually, a point on which the agency was at first unsure. He explains the solution he provided:

"I suggested we use a locked down camera and shoot a number of plates at different speeds, not just fast, but also slower and relatively normal. The fixed element and the elements moving at different speeds ended up really quite beautiful, I've never seen anything quite like it."

Morris adds: "Robertson Stephens wanted to tell a story about their role in the high-tech investment business, to create a feeling of how, in San Francisco, they were on the edge of a new expansion, not a Western expansion but of an expansion into the possibilities of the future. They wanted a sense of place, a sense of ongoing possibility and a sense of timelessness..."

So, for Morris, finding the art in advertising is trying to capture in powerful images the ideas presented by agency creatives (and navigating the bureaucracy). As for divining faith or deeper meaning from the American haiku?

"I gave someone a perverse argument not so long ago about why advertising is better than movies. You want to hear it? Movies operate from a really disingenuous premise, that people are heroes," says Morris. "I know a lot of people and have had an opportunity over the years to observe them. Are they heroes...? Let's put it this way. Advertising tries something simpler and more believable: Products as heroes. I guess the idea is: When all else fails, put your faith in conditioner."