"Can't get enough, of the Stuff!"  From the mid-1920s whereupon the eventual Oscar winning film Wings featured a Hershey Chocolate Bar prominently in the story right on up to the use of M&Ms Reese's Pieces in Steven Spielberg's E.T. and beyond to the modern James Bond films or Castaway (FedEx) or The Great Yokai War (Kirin Beer) or perhaps the worst offender ever:  I, Robot, product placement is simply a large part of big expensive movies.  And many filmmakers have either parodied product placement (ahem, sorry:  Brand Integration) or even invented their own fictional consumer goods that only appear in their movies.  Unlike television, which (in large part) relies on advertising to fund the creation of shows, there are rarely full commercials used explicitly in a film (before the screening of the film is another story, unfortunately!).  But filmmakers love to offer ads for fake products or services or a look a how current products may be advertised in the future.  Sometimes they drive the plot in terms of having subliminal clues affecting a character, or even the main character making a commercial within the film.  Still other times fake adverts are a handy way of getting a lot of exposition in a clever (and familiar - most movie-goers will see tens of thousands of commercials in our lifetimes) way, this is most common in science-fiction films where the time and place are perhaps a bit alien.  Still other times, a product or service in the story is pushed out into teaser trailer form to give a flavour for the world that the movie will take place in.  It may or may not have anything to do with story or character, but that service or product is key to the film.

This weeks twitch-o-meter is a bit of a laundry list of great, gonzo or interesting commercials made specifically to exist within the world of the film.  Links will follow to many of these.

Marketing

In Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both partners is a crumbling relationship go to Lacuna, Inc. for memory erasure.  One of the earliest teaser trailers, directed by Gondry (ironic considering that is directing commercials was his entry point for making feature films) for the film was simply a TV infomercial style ad for the memory blanking process.  In David O. Russel's I Heart Huckabees, an early teaser for the film featured scantily clad Naomi Watts in a bubbly commercial for the titular Walmart/Target store in the film, at one point in the movie you see this commercial being made.  In the second Resident Evil was teased by featuring a skin cream commercial (remarkably similar to a certain real AVON commercial) made by the Umbrella Corporation, the company within that mythology that is responsible for all zombies and the like.  Warning, users of the anti-aging cream may experience side effects.

Plot

Paul Verhoeven is one of the masters of using commercials and media within his film for a variety of purposes.  In Total Recall, to remind construction worker Douglas Quaid to visit the offices of Rekall, a virtual tourism agency, there is a handy commercial on the light rail transit as he is on his commute home (note a trivial detail that in the future that phone numbers get even longer, as Rekall's office has 12 digits).  There is a lot of love around these parts for Larry Cohen's The Stuff, and I am sure a small part of it was this excellent commercial within the film to indicate the popularity of the alien food-stuff.  The commercial was spoofing other commercials while accomplishing its own goal.  In Idiocracy, it seems the American government in 2505 is poisoning their own soil by using Brawndo as fertilizer.  Because it has electrolytes!  Brawndo was so effective in Mike Judge's barely released film that it eventually morphed into a real product from Omni Consumer Products.  Would Dana Barrett have visited Dr. Venkman and staff in Ghostbusters if not for the "We're Ready to Believe You" ad on her TV just prior to Zuul invading her icebox?  And speaking of Bill Murray, his reason for being in Japan, which leads to him experiencing ennui with a young Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation is to shoot a Whiskey commercial (a practice common for big stars to do since the 1970s).  In Joss Whedon's Serenity, a culturally diverse ad for Fruity Oaty Bars sets off River Tam on a martial arts rampage due to its subliminal trigger.  Ditto the commercial and eventual TV signal for Silver Shamrock masks in Halloween III.  Lastly, what does Anaconda Malt Liquor have to do with a plot by The Man in Michael Jai White's Black Dynamite? 

Mythology and Atmosphere

Perhaps the most iconic image of TV commercials in cinema is the Coca-Cola and some sort of candy advert projected outward from the side of a sky-scraper in futuristic Los Angeles as Rick Dekkard travels to the Tyrell Corporate headquarters in Blade Runner (see 0:52).  In Tokyo Gore Police, there are numerous cutaways to commercials which give the flavour of that universe, the best of which is an ad for 'cute wrist cutters.'  Paul Verhoeven peppered Robocop with news items to help with the anti-Regan Era exposition.  He included some quite satirical  and interesting near-future products, including Brand name heart replacement, a holographic war boardgame and a gas guzzling car (a poke on the Chrysler 6000) which features later on in the film.  Even the people who made Robocop 2 got into the act. While on the subject of car commercials, Richard Kelly's much panned Southland Tales had one featuring an environmentally friendly SUV having sex with a Jeep advertising the Fluid Karma powered Saltair.  n The Running Man, TV ads for games shows such as 'Climbing for Dollars' were interspersed to (accurately) predict that people will indeed watch anything if it is a reality game show.  In Children of Men, the future is grim enough, with humanities last generation winding down, that the government issues suicide kits for those who wish to meet their maker, but there was a tonne of other ads and commercials from everything from a Jamaican Produce company to a Gap-type store for pets called Ruf.  And in a bit of a nod to Blade Runner and envisioning the very-near-future in Minority Report commercials are projected personally towards John Anderton for various products and services while he walks through the underground transit and mall.  The bombardment with personal information loaded is more frightening than the Orwellian future crime unit in the film and probably (ironically) netted the film several hundred thousand dollars in product placement fees.  The strange universe anthology Survive Style 5+ has an ad exec that 'dreams in tv commercials' an the best of the bunch is this farcical 'race' for High-Speed Internet.  Or the film that plays like channel hopping, Amazon Women on the Moon has a gag ad for an organization Blacks without Soul.  In a rare ad for a pair of film that are not experimental or science fiction and the commercials are used to flesh out colourful supporting characters, Martin Scorcese dropped this  commercial into Goodfellas, while P.T. Anderson had Phillip Seymour Hoffman hawk mattresses for his front business in Punch Drunk Love.  While this sort-of commercial was not actually used in the film, it was a handy and amusing DVD extra that gives a nice little extra touch with that character. 

Thanks to the various contributors of Twitch, Where The Long Tail Ends, Row Three and J-FilmPowWow for their suggestions (and MovieMoxie for hunting down the Halloween III Silver Shamrock ad).  Any more favourites out there?  Drop them in the comments section.