You could say director Elias Mehrige's life up to his first commercial, "Bucket Brigade" for PBS, has been made in phone calls. He'd done four years at Columbia film school, and shot and directed his first feature Begotten (1991), when important call number one came. She said her name was Susan Sontag. "I think your film is a masterpiece of the avant-garde." Mehrige was a touch skeptical, thinking it was one of his friends.

"I'm on the phone thinking okay, I'm going to go along with this and really fuck with her." In the end, it turned out that it really was Sontag. Despite having been taken the piss out of, she invited Merhige to screen Begotten in her living room with 21 of her closest friends, including Annie Liebowitz.

Life-altering phone call number two came several years into his Hollywood experience. After the notoriety of Begotten, Mehrige packed his bags and headed for Hollywood on the promise of several feature film projects. Within weeks, he'd been given the royal treatment, Hollywood-style. All the deals fell apart. He stayed, getting by on script doctoring work for friends. And then the phone rang again. This time it was Nicholas Cage.

"He'd gotten my first film as a Christmas gift," recalls Mehrige. "He'd seen it and thought it was the most amazing thing." They met and hit it off. A couple of days later a script arrived. It would become his acclaimed next film, Shadow of the Vampire, starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe.

Mehrige considers himself a visualist, but has a theatre background and loves actors. "The thing that's really most important to me as a director whether it's features or commercials, is really casting," he insists. "You want the right faces." This was exactly how he approached "Bucket Brigade", from Fallon. Shot in the foothills of Chile near a small village, it was all about creating a contained world. In terms of casting, this presented an interesting challenge. "This village had a population of like 28 or 29 people. We used all of them," says Mehrige, who is repped in LA by Independent Media.

Although he has only one spot to his credit, he's just finished an Ad Council piece from the Mullin Agency and is eager to do more. "It's not really a medium to fuck around with. I take it seriously and like it when something makes me feel like I have to do it - or just need to get on the phone with the creatives."

Independent Media> http://www.independentmediainc.com