One of the most talked-about Super Bowl ads in Canada was a Budweiser ad in which they crashed a beer league with a few thousands fans, a jumbotron and announcers. It was, as you can imagine, an exciting moment for the players – the closest they’ll get to the NHL.
Putting aside the awefulness of Bud, it was a pretty cool ad, and many of the players wound up being interveiwed for days afterwards. They were all pretty stoked.
So, a nice little story, isn’t it? Apparently, no, it’s not.
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (an actors union) is howling mad that the players were not compensated and that the extras did not receive a union wage (the casting call noted it was a non-union job). Putting aside how ridiculous it would be to “hire” the players for their role in this flash mob (or how ridiculous it is for the union to assume that adults can’t make their own decisions), the height of folly comes with this:
ACTRA also noted that had the union been notified, the players would “have had the protection of a qualified professional stunt co-ordinator.”
Umm, yeah, words fail.
