Hooray for Harley Davidson
A while back, you could have bet the ranch that Harvey Kalmenson couldn’t be found holding court and singing the praises of the folks who are part of the Harley Davidson Family. Make no mistake folks, I found out that they do much more for society than any of us give them credit for doing. The two days of work with the Harley Davidson Family has been especially pleasurable for me as a director, and as an everyday man being visited by everyday people. It’s doubtful if most consider motorcyclists as everyday people. Most motorcyclists don’t remotely resemble the average man on the street; whatever that happens to be. The fact of the matter is that they not only don’t visually represent the average man, but that they are also not average when it comes to pride.
Kalmenson & Kalmenson was given the assignment to cast a pair of radio commercials for the “Harley Davidson Company.” We were instructed to only audition authentic Harley owners – people from all walks of life, countries, ethnicities, men and women – all races of human beings able to speak English, albeit with heavy or slight accents. If they drove a Harley they became eligible to come in and read for us.
It was an unusually large call because of the writer and producer’s premise. Their goal was to have a different actor for each line in the commercials. They planned on using a wide cross-section of the voices reading the same copy and then stitch together a line – word – sentence –all individually becoming a wide concert of human instrumentation; a panoply of spirit constituting the theme for the two spots.
These days I rarely enjoy the experience of an audition enough to say, “This was really fun.” This time, it was.
Harley Davidson is an All-American company. Their freedom theme was an inspiration for all of us and should be for you, too.
P.S. I cannot wait for you to hear the spots on the radio.