Production affiliations: US - Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ) / Canada - Radke
Years directing: 7, following nine years on the agency side.
Shoot days in 2001: 70
Geography: Australian, based in Los Angeles
Favorite spot: H&R Block "Worried About Bill." "It's close to my heart because it was the first time I really felt the power of the actor."
On getting cozy with talent: "About four years ago I really started embracing the actors and realized that's what a commercial is about - relating to humanity."

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Delivery and pacing is king in humor, and 16-year ad veteran and top rank US comedy director Craig Gillespie has it all figured out.

"There are two ways to tell a joke," says Gillespie. "One is to chuckle and laugh it up until the punch line, the other is to be totally stone-faced and the joke comes out of left field. I'm the latter."

Left field to be sure. His work for H&R Block, Pacific Bell SBC and Citibank show us people in seemingly normal situations before we are shepherded down a path of neurotic and comedy-of-errors humor.

For instance, "Worried About Bill" for H&R Block from Y&R, Chicago has an eager taxpayer embarking on tax season. On day one, he gleefully announces to his family that he's doing the taxes on his own. However, he soon deteriorates to a man plagued by numbers and by day 13 he's hiding in the closet with his cat. Work for Pacific Bell's broadband Internet services illustrates life without high-speed, and spots for Citibank from Fallon show people going to ridiculous lengths to save money.

"I like things that are dark and human and all about the characters," says Gillespie. "With any of the comedy that I do, I always play it like it's a real situation, usually in a defeated, low- energy way."

Gillespie says he reached the pinnacle of his style with "Worried About Bill," but has recently been applying his comedic sense to different styles of spot. Buddy Lee "Barbershop" for Fallon delves into the mildly slapstick as Gillespie weighs in on the ongoing desire to "Be like Buddy Lee," while Chevy "Cops" for Campbell-Ewald - wherein a pair of cops in pursuit of a car full of plastic-masked bank robbers stop to repair the felons' flat tire in order to sustain the thrill of driving their Chevy - allowed the director to stretch his action-flick chops.

"I try not to let anything other than the characters dictate the pacing and where the jokes are going to be, as opposed to having the lighting or camera work do it," he says, indicating that no matter the genre, his approach is the same.

Webfiles:
Radke Films> http://www.radkefilms.com