Comedy can be an unforgiving creature. With no reliable formula for ensuring hilarity, it must be nerve-racking for a director to continually helm comedy spots and not eventually feel like the only one in the room laughing. Luckily for Randy Krallman, the director's hit his stride. His spots can extract humor from the everyday, as witnessed in his eBay short film "Force 1", an ode of sorts to sneakerheads and miniature horses, which screened at this year's Sundance Film Festival. And he also seems to be able to resuscitate shticks long thought dead. Raise your hand if you thought you'd never be able to laugh at another CG baby post-Ally McBeal until Krallman's "Baby Banking" and "Baby Trading" spots for e*Trade.

With a confident grasp on comedy, the only thing that seems to be grinding away at Krallman's self-esteem these days is Smuggler EP Patrick Milling Smith. "Patrick keeps my self-esteem really low so I didn't know that [I was chosen as a 'director in demand']," jokes Krallman. "He crushes it and then you guys throw me a little kibble."

He shows no signs of slowing down with upcoming work for Starbucks and Honda, which can only add to an impressive body of work for Steinlager, Comcast and the seven-minute webfilm for Axe, "Naughty 2 Nice". It's a Scared Straight! parody that just may have entered the line, "I'll ride that mustache off your damn face!" into the lexicon of classic commercial comedy.

Your signature is comedy. But have you ever ventured into other genres?
The very first thing I did about four years ago was this psychological short about a guy who committed suicide. It was based on this French illustration that my girlfriend at the time had in her house. I thought it was genius. I had this lofty ambition to make this really creepy thing and that surprised me in retrospect considering how many things I've blown since. I was lucky to have pulled it off, not that it was brilliant, but it actually worked. The net result was everyone was all depressed. I was like, "I did all that work and this is the takeaway? It just bums you out?" So I think I'm naturally drawn to comedy, as long as it's got heart and it's not just a guy getting hit in the balls.

Were your friends surprised that you pulled off something so dark?
At that point, everybody was surprised that I did anything besides surf. People were probably expecting, "When does the funny thing happen? Oh, he kills himself. Great."

When trying to flush out the comedy in a spot, what's the most important element?
On a job-to-job basis some are more important than others. Casting is obviously massive. The more you cast someone who brings nuance and understands it, then that lightens your load on the shoot day. That to me is huge because I love working with people, not necessarily actors, just people who get it. I love just sitting and watching in admiration as they bring the spot to life as opposed to fine-tuning constantly. You have to have a quality to the performance that draws people in. I think silly acting had its place more in the late '90s, and that stuff, to me, has to have a reason to exist.

Axe "Naughty 2 Nice" is full of great performances, such as the female convict threatening to ride the mustache off the reporter's face. As a director, is this an example of you just sitting back and letting an inspired moment happen?
Those scripts were written ingeniously and when they're written that well, a good actor understands exactly what you're going for. I tend to just add things and put the actors in a place with blocking, dialogue or reactions that make it feel more like a real interaction - that always gets the performances to a better place. I loved that project; it was a treat to work on. My only regret is I feel like we peaked about 15 seconds in [with that line]. That woman is fucking phenomenal. She was a force of nature, and I definitely want to get her in a feature. In the whole acting pool in LA, you have these sleepers who get completely looked over, I guess since she's overweight. But she's genius.

When the actor [for the reporter's role] came in I was like, "He's perfect", but I Photoshopped the mustache on him because the mustache is the power of that fucking asshole reporter position. It lets them hide behind it and look scornful.

"Force 1" follows three friends, one blind and guided by a seeing-eye horse, that seek to buy a coveted pair of sneakers. What inspired you to tell this story?
This friend of mine always sends me these emails of cute animals. There was one with this little furry horse wearing puffy white Reeboks and that image was so powerful. She sent me the link and it was for seeing-eye ponies... With that idea I thought that it would make a lot of sense for the brand. In the end, we tried to do too much. I should have known that, using three 17-year-old city kids with massive ADD and a miniature horse and shooting on the streets of New York City, in a car no less. We didn't have permits for the city, streets or the highway footage. It was throwing so many elements in that could go wrong, I think we were really lucky to get away with what we got!

INFORMATION
PRODUCTION AFFILIATION: Repped by Smuggler and by Stink for the UK/Europe.

Hidden Gem: "Did you notice in 'Naughty 2 Nice', the flute embedded in the anus in the X-Ray photo in the court room?" laughs Krallman. "It was one of those things where we pump our fists thinking we're geniuses but of course no one else notices. It helped build the mood for everybody, so it was worth the $200."

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