Posted on 07/20/2010 5:55:44 AM PDT by Utah Binger
Look at my grades, look at yours, now back to mine. If you want to get A’s like these, study at the library and not in the shower or a cave.
That’s the message of a BYU video promo that has gone viral on the Internet, focusing an unexpected national spotlight on the school’s multimedia lab that produced the ad, as well as its comedy troupe, Humor U.
The “New Spice” video, starring psychology major Stephen Jones, spoofs the Old Spice “smell like a man, man” ad campaign that pitched a virile line of body wash.
“I’ve always loved entertaining, but I’ve never considered putting all my eggs in that basket,” Jones said in a phone interview from his hometown of Talahassee, Fla. “But I wouldn’t reject an offer to do that.”
No agents have come calling yet, but that could change. The “New Spice” video has logged more than 1 million hits on YouTube, a website that BYU servers blocked until a policy change last year.
Students Mike Hill and Christopher Garcia hatched the idea for the minute-long video last May to promote the Harold B. Lee Library. The source material is racy stuff for a campus run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the students cleaned it up for their theme, “study like a scholar, scholar.”
Jones, a BYU senior and stand-up comic, was recruited to play the lead because he has a vague resemblance to Isaiah Mustafa, the sculpted African-American actor who flaunts his fragrant manliness in the Old Spice ads as he passes through a quick succession of surreal scenes.
Jones is also the talented and funny president of Humor U. Launched four years ago, the group purports to be the world’s cleanest comedy club — although Jones’ most recent stage performance riffs on childhood bed-wetting. The club’s next shows are July 30 and 31.
The students collaborated on the New Spice script and shot the promo in a single day on June 12.
Like Mustafa, Jones undergoes a string of instant clothing changes, but his shirt never leaves his muscular frame while Mustafa’s torso is never covered.
In the final shot, Jones’s laptop morphs into a “celestial sandwich” from the library’s snack zone as he is whisked past a portrait of Lee, the library’s namesake and LDS Church’s 11th president, sitting on a library cart and yelling “Yah!”
I saw the clip on Morning Joe. It is an absolute riot and one of the best parodies I’ve ever seen.
LOL, that’s great.
Good message. And the dude Stephen is way more handsome than Isaiah.
Cute, but I bet it wasn’t done in one take.
Hahahaha!! “Eight out of five dentists....”
Awesome!
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