In 1897, while employed at the Edison Studios, William Heise created one of the earliest filmed commercials, Admiral Cigarette (Fig. I.1). Heise, a director and (mostly) cinematographer of such Edison moving pictures as The Kiss (1896), Serpentine Dance, Annabelle (1897), and McKinley Taking the Oath (1897), shot the thirty-second moving picture, Admiral Cigarette, in one static, wide shot characteristic of the early cinema, but for the contemporary audience, this advertisement proved to be of historical significance: Admiral Cigarette helped inaugurate the ongoing and dynamic relationship between film culture and the advertisement–commercial, to be further exploited by the television medium.

Four men, dressed in costumes humorously suggesting various social and ethnic strata, posed in front of a billboard prominently featuring the name of the tobacco company; they sit and converse. Then, a large box to the left of the frame opens and exposes a woman, who promptly distributes cigarettes and casually tosses them all over the set. Near the end of this commercial, the men unfurl a large banner stating the inclusive ad copy “we all smoke,” even Native Americans and women. All can watch, and all can purchase. The relationship between film and advertising, from an aesthetic and technical perspective, with consumerism and commerce as practiced in commercial advertisements, remains an intact industrial standard.

Appearing at an event held at Queen's University of Belfast in 2007, David Lynch fielded numerous questions from attendees. One of them asked why he had decided to direct television commercials, which he has occasionally done since first making a series of four commercials for Calvin Klein's Obsession in 1988. Smiling, Lynch quickly responded that he accepted the job offer for the large salary it provided, an answer that pleased the audience due to his honesty and good-natured demeanor.

Implicit in the question was a disdain for the TV commercial, not surprising given the fact that many critics view certain kinds of filmmaking as inferior to others, particularly those that are—in the larger sense of the word—“commercial.”