Bird Watching

by Larry Bird

  So after that, whenever a company called about endorsing a product, Jill would explain to them my four-hour rule. In the beginning, Jill said most of them were horrified at even considering such a time limit, but somehow she was able to convince them I would arrive on time (early, actually), ready to work. She would always send me the script and the storyboard ahead of time, so I always knew what was going to be expected of me. What it did was cut out a lot of the schmoozing and eating and chit-chat that can go on during the filming, which I never liked anyway. My way of doing business is go in, be organized, move quickly, and get it done. After a while these companies realized it was going to save them a lot of money to do it this way. What it meant for the agency handling the commercial was that they had to settle on a final script for the shoot, rather than shooting it one way, then deciding whether they liked it or not and trying it a different way.

  Some commercials just seem to drag on forever. But some of them are a piece of cake. Remember that Gatorade ad that ran during the 1997–98 season with everyone singing how they wanted to be like Mike? There was no way I was going to sing anything, especially about wanting to be like Michael Jordan, not when I was hoping my team would be going up against him in the playoffs. Gatorade really wanted me in the ad, because of my connection with Michael, so we reached a compromise. I’d do the commercial, but I wouldn’t sing. I ended up having to say one line: “I’m not gonna sing.” It took all of a half hour to shoot it. I had on a suit and tie and I was sitting in a Learjet, and we shot it at an airport hangar in Indianapolis. Easiest one ever.

  There were some offers we got that I just wasn’t going to do, no matter how little time it took. One of them, back in the eighties, was for a financial services company. In the first place, I had my doubts, because I didn’t like the idea of advising people on how to invest their money. They were going to pay me around $250,000, but they wanted me to dress up like a ballerina. I told Jill to forget it. All the money in the world wouldn’t convince me to dress up in a tutu! I noticed they ended up getting a pro football player to do it. Good for him.

  There is one guy who is great to be around when you’re making commercials. His name is Joe Pytka, and he’s one of the top television commercial, video, and feature film directors in the world. He organizes all the shoots, and he treats everyone like crap, and both me and Michael Jordan love him.

  Pytka is a big guy, and he loves to play basketball. He could care less that we’re Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, we’re just two guys who will shoot baskets with him on the breaks. He’ll grab two or three guys on their down time so he can get a game together.

  One day when Michael and I were doing a McDonald’s commercial together, we were standing there all ready to go, but we couldn’t get started because Pytka hadn’t finished his basketball game yet. People were all ticked off because this director was keeping Michael Jordan and Larry Bird waiting, but it’s why I absolutely loved the guy. To him we were all the same.

  Joe is also very, very creative. He was the director for that Nothin’ But Net McDonald’s commercial that Michael and I did where the ball went off the rim, off the backboard, off the roof … I guess the McDonald’s people had a lot riding on the ad, because it was going to run during the Super Bowl, which is when television time costs you the most money. At that time, 1993, I had never done an ad with Michael Jordan before. We shot the commercial in a gym in Chicago, and I got there early like I always do. Michael was nowhere to be found. So here’s this director, Joe Pytka, who I’ve just met, and we’re waiting around for Michael, and Joe starts shooting baskets. He grabs a couple of other guys, and they all start playing. I’m not sure, but I think he was doing it to loosen me up. It worked, because let me tell you, Joe Pytka is a good director, but he’s a lousy basketball player! Before I knew it, I was talking trash to this guy, telling him, “You’ve got the worst game I’ve ever seen.” Michael was about two hours late that day, which normally would have really ticked me off, but I was having fun with Pytka.

  One thing about Joe Pytka, though. If you didn’t take the work seriously, he got really steamed. The year after the first commercial Michael and I did, which was a real big hit, they wanted to do a sequel. This time they added Charles Barkley to the script, and made it like we were in outer space. We were all dressed up in space suits, and somebody was laughing on the set, or goofing off, so Pytka says to all of us, “If you guys think this is such a big joke, I’m leaving.” And he walked out. Everyone got really quiet. Nobody seemed sure what to do, so I had to follow Pytka out into the hallway in that stupid space suit and tell him, “Joe, I’ve only got two hours left, and then I gotta leave. So get back in here and finish this commercial.” What I remember about that filming session is that Charles was having trouble saying his lines. He was supposed to open this door, which was one of those facades you see on movie sets, and I was going to be standing there. It took Charles about eight or ten takes before he finally said the right thing. We were all thinking, “Phew, we can finally get out of here,” when one of the assistant directors came over and said, “Cut. We gotta do it again. Charles isn’t holding the Big Mac bag right.” I’m thinking to myself, “You’ve got to be kidding.” I looked over at Pytka and we both rolled our eyes.

  Joe was one of the directors for the movie Space Jam. I think every little kid in America saw it. I think kids know me more from Space Jam than anything else. I had no idea how popular it would be.

  I got a call from Jill one day telling me that Warner Bros. wanted me to be in this movie with Michael. I didn’t want to have to go all the way out to Los Angeles, and I told Jill I wouldn’t do it, but then she called back and said Michael would really appreciate it if I’d change my mind.

  In the end it was really worth it. We had a lot of fun. Most of my scenes were on the golf course with Michael and Bill Murray, who kept every day interesting. They flew me into the Los Angeles airport and then they took me by helicopter to some place in the middle of nowhere. I still can’t tell you where it was, except it was beautiful, and it had a great golf course.

  The movie people really took care of us. They had this big room in the hotel filled with food, drinks, anything you wanted. One cooler had beer, another had soda, another had sandwiches. And then there was this big cooler marked MICHAEL ONLY. You weren’t supposed to touch that one, because it was all Michael Jordan’s special stuff they flew in just for him. So one day Bill Murray and I are sitting in there, and I go over to Michael’s cooler and lift up the lid. There was this girl there, and her only job was to make sure everything was just right for Michael Jordan, and she starts yelling at me, “Larry, you can’t go in there!” I said, “What are you talking about? That’s bull. Everyone here is family.” She was getting all red and nervous and said, “No, no. Those are all the things Michael told me he wanted, and if you take something out of there, Michael won’t be able to have it, and we just can’t let that happen!”

  Bill Murray is laughing the whole time listening to this, because whenever Michael walked into the room he always went to one of the other coolers and pulled something out, just like the rest of us. He hardly ever opened his own cooler.

  Anyhow, I waited until the girl left, then I reached in and started grabbing stuff out of Michael’s cooler and throwing it out to the crew, all over the set. I threw it everywhere! Gatorade bottles, some special drink he liked, candy bars … She was so mad at me.

  For the rest of our stay, every time I went by that cooler I took something out. And if I didn’t drink or eat it, I’d just toss it to somebody on the set. That’s what Hollywood is like. Candy bars by the handful, and you just toss ’em around.

  We spent most of our time during the filming of Space Jam trying to get on the golf course. Every time there was a break, me, Michael, and Bill Murray would run out and play two or three holes. Most of our scenes revolved around the golf course, where, according to the story line of the movie, Bugs Bunny and the other Looney Tunes guys come to steal Jordan
away. It was one of those times when everything clicked out there, and everybody delivered their lines perfectly. We were all having so much fun, and we were all so relaxed, we didn’t miss a beat.

  In fact, everyone agreed our golf course scene had gone so well that Bill suggested that he and I do one more scene together after Jordan gets snatched away by Bugs Bunny. Even though it wasn’t originally in the script, everyone started nodding their heads and saying, “Yeah, yeah. Bill and Larry. Another scene.” Next thing I knew, the writers, Pytka, and Bill sat down and knocked out this script in about half an hour. It’s the scene where Bill and I are driving off in the golf cart, wondering what happened to Michael (the Looney Tunes needed him to play on their basketball team, and they sucked him down the golf course hole). Bill makes a crack about how he’s going to give us a “2” in the previous hole, because we weren’t in any kind of emotional state to putt. We’re in the golf cart, and we’re driving off, and he starts talking about how the NBA would need new role models now that Michael Jordan was gone, and he would love to play in the league, and was I still tight with David Stern? It was very funny, and he was making most of it up as he went along.

  The last day, when our part in the filming of Space Jam was finally over, the production crew and Michael and everyone went back to L.A. Suddenly the whole hotel was empty. So me and Murray grabbed a beer, grabbed our clubs, and went out on the course. We played until dark, and when we got back to the hotel, it was deserted—just like a ghost town. I didn’t care, because Bill Murray is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever been around. I loved spending time with him.

  I felt the same way about Pytka. He got to be friendly with both Michael and me. Whenever the two of us did a commercial, he’d always shoot my scenes first. One day Michael said, “How come Larry always gets to go first?” and Pytka answered, “Because he’s always here first.” My sentiments exactly.

  Pytka was working in Paris in the spring of 1998, when the Pacers and the Bulls were playing each other in the Eastern Conference Finals. Joe really wanted to see the game, so he called all over the city trying to find a place that was carrying the game on satellite television. He finally found a really expensive hotel that said they could get the game, so he booked a suite and went up to watch my team and Michael’s team go at it. He stayed up until 3 A.M. looking for our game, but he never could find it.

  That is the one good thing about doing commercials. You end up hanging out with someone you might not otherwise spend any time with in your life, and you can really get to know them. That happened to me when I did an ad for Frito-Lay with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Up until that point, the only connection I had with Kareem was that he was a Laker, and he was the enemy. I had always respected his game, but I didn’t know him at all. Anyhow, the whole point of this ad was their slogan about their potato chips, which was, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Kareem, who is bald, bets me I can’t eat just one of these Lay chips. I take the bet, and the next thing you know I’ve lost the bet and I’m eating a bag of chips, and I’m bald. The way they did it was they hired the people who did the makeup for the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live. They fitted me with this special cap. I felt bad for the guy who fitted me,because he had to stand on a ladder to put it on my head, because that was when I was still playing and my back was really bad, and I couldn’t sit down. I remember when Kareem and I walked out there with me wearing this thing, everybody started laughing. They were trying not to, I could tell that, but I guess I looked pretty funny.

  I enjoyed my time with Kareem more than I expected. I have a whole new respect for him, actually. I was near the end of my career, and he was telling me to really step back and enjoy it. He said he didn’t realize or appreciate how much the fans liked and respected what we do until after he was done playing, and he wished he could go back and do it differently. In retrospect, I don’t think he had the kind of relationship with the fans that he would have liked. He told me to play as long as I possibly could, and to savor the moments. It was good advice, and I took it.

  One of the first companies that contacted me when I retired was Miller Lite. There’s a federal law that says no active athlete can work for an alcohol company, so they waited until October of 1992, two months after my career officially ended, to call me. They wanted me to be a spokesman for their responsible drinking campaign, which sounded worthwhile to me. I wanted to make sure it was done properly, so I went to a number of their sales meetings and talked with their distributors. Dick Strup, the senior vice president, international, of Miller Brewing Co., is the one who dealt with me, and I liked him right away. The first commercial I shot for them was in 1993. They had me playing basketball with a bunch of guys, and the slogan was, “Sometimes you’ve got to know when to shoot, and sometimes you’ve got to know when to pass. Don’t drink and drive.” I had a few problems with that shoot, because I hadn’t had the fusion surgery yet, and my back tended to be a problem. One thing I remember was just before we were going to do the ad, I was stretching on the sideline, and I bet Dick Strup twenty dollars I could sink a shot from half court. He didn’t know me that well then, and he took the bet. I swished it, then put my hand out and said, “Okay, boss. Pay up.”

  The second one I did for Miller was in 1995. I drove up in a truck with some buddies, and we all piled out and went into a bar, only I wasn’t drinking because I was the designated driver. At the end of the commercial, we all piled back into the truck and I drove away, with a bumper sticker on the back of the truck that read FRENCH LICK LIMO.

  I have enjoyed my relationship with Miller Lite. They’re good people. They’ve used my image in some international campaigns that run in China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Latin America, and the United Kingdom. I can tell you that me and my buddies from French Lick only drink one kind of beer: Miller Lite. If I catch those guys drinking anything else, they know they’re in trouble.

  There are two places I’d rather not go: New York and Los Angeles, because they’re both so congested. That causes problems, since that’s where all the action is when you’re talking about show business. We got a call about a basketball movie called Blue Chips, which was going to star Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway, and they wanted me to fly out to Los Angeles to film a cameo role with one of the other stars of the movie, Nick Nolte. I told Jill I wasn’t flying to L.A. just to be in a movie. I figured that was that, but the producers called back and asked if I would be willing to shoot my scene in French Lick. I said that would be fine, so Nick Nolte came to Indiana, and while they were there they shot a parade scene and used a lot of people from French Lick for their crowd.

  Although I said from the beginning that I would only deal with major companies when it came to endorsements, I did make one exception. My good friend Ed Jukes, who also happens to be my banker, had a house in Terre Haute with a great yard. He liked to keep his place nice, so he used a tractor to mow his lawn. People were always coming to him trying to sell him a new mower, but he always told them the same thing: I’m not interested unless it does a better job than my tractor. None of them ever did. So one day I get this call from Ed, and he’s all excited, and he says, “Larry, you’ve got to come down and see this new mower I’ve got.” Turns out some local guys had designed this mower that had a motor on the back that you drove with two sticks, like a bulldozer. It had an awesome turning radius, and Ed couldn’t stop talking about this mower. He knew how much pride I took in my lawn, so he got me down there and I tried one and it was terrific. My house in French Lick had about ten acres of yard that needed to be mowed, and it used to take me, by myself, on a rider mower, about seven or eight hours to get it done. With the new mower it took half the time. I was so intrigued by those things. Mowing your yard can be a pain in the rear sometimes, but this piece of machinery was great. The guys who designed it were just starting out, and they didn’t have a lot of money, so they asked me if they could take some pictures of me riding the mower and use them at parades and fairs, and so on. In exchange they would g
ive me a couple of mowers. It was one of the best business deals I ever made. They hauled this big picture of me riding the mower all over the state, and called themselves Pro Start. Eventually a bigger company bought them out, and those mowers became kind of expensive, but I went out and bought myself a couple of them anyway. If something is that good, you don’t mind paying the price.

  I know companies like to have successful people who are “winners” or “champions” endorse their products, because it portrays a positive image, but just because I like a certain mower, or hamburger, or whatever, what does that matter to the guy on the street? I do my share of commercials, and they pay good money, but I don’t understand how people get caught up in all the glamour of it. I know the world I live in is mind-boggling, but I can go back to sleeping on floors if I have to. It’s just the way I am.

  To be honest? I don’t understand the attraction of celebrities. I always thought the whole idea of being paid to play pro basketball is ridiculous. I mean, think about it. You are taking that ball, running down the court, and you’ve got somebody on you. You’ve got four guys out there on your team, and five from the other team, and some people on the bench, and you look up and the place is packed, and all you are trying to do is make that ball go through the hole. It’s just crazy to me. After all these years, it still doesn’t make sense. Back when I was with the Celtics, I used to sit there and say to my teammate Dennis Johnson, “Can you believe this? Look at all those people. They’re in here watching us play. Isn’t that just amazing?” D. J. would look at me like I was losing it, but it was mystifying to me. Still is. Especially all those fans way up at the top of the arenas. You know they could see the game better if they just went home and watched it on TV, but they’re up there sweating (in Boston Garden, at least—our building never had any air-conditioning!), and they’re loving it. They were the real fans. I always understood that. They’re the ones who had to save for their tickets, who were happy just to be in the building. We’d sell out every night. The fans in the nosebleed seats were always there. I would never have dreamed, when I was a kid, that anyone would pay money to watch me do anything. And no matter how much money I ever have, I’ll never take it for granted.