Perhaps worried about Lexus poaching the literary crowd, BMW released an ad where Kerouac’s On the Road is the star.
Feels a little Moulin Rouge-ish. You know, with the fast-paced prose and the music, the random intrusions of hitchhiking bands and too many cars and, at some point, a horse. (The pressie calls it “vibrating and action-packed.” Which sounds a lot like an ad for a very expensive sex toy, actually.) I didn’t like it at first, but after five or six watches I found it almost breathtaking.
The spot went live on Barcelona-based Agosto.tv and will also run on television. It’s supposedly the first ad to be broadcast in HD to the Spanish market.
Voice-over text from On the Road is below.
And so I shambled after, as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me,
because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop
and everybody goes ‘Awww!’
Thank you, Kerouac.
