The Kansas City Star
October 25, 2005
By Jennifer Mann

If its trailer is an indicator, a sure-to-be controversial movie skewering retailer Wal-Mart is coming soon to a home, church, even union hall near you and everyone else in America.

“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” takes on the world’s largest retailer on several fronts, including allegations that it has caused the shuttering of small-town Main streets, and the way it treats its workers. The plan is to show 7,000 grassroots screenings of the film in early November.

To get the word out, independent film maker Robert Greenwald called on his friend and Los Angles-based producer Laurie Levit. She has produced a dozen ads parodying Wal-Mart’s real ads, including some produced by Kansas City based Bernstein-Rein Advertising. Among others, BR produces Wal-Mart’s smiley-face spots.

The parody ads, which can be viewed on the movie’s Web site at www.walmartmovie.com under Press Materials, have the look and feel of Wal-Mart’s campaign.

“I watched 62 Wal-Mart commercials and they’re just beautiful,” Levit said. “I have nothing but the highest regard for the (agencies) that produced these spots –– they were heartwarming, folksy with down-home good feelings and because I have a production background, know they cost a fortune.”

But Levit didn’t have a fortune –– all she had was a small budget.

Actors James Cromwell and Frances Fisher play Bob and Wendy Whitebread in spots titled the Front Porch series.

In one spoof, called “Bob and Wendy on Way of Life,” they talk about their friends, a couple they haven’t seen in awhile, in fact since their friends started working at Wal-Mart.

Noting that she hadn’t seen them in church recently, Wendy Whitebread asks her husband if he thinks they still pray.

“Only for their shifts to end,” he says.

Another set of ads features “Betty,” a Wal-Mart employee.

In one titled “Betty’s Diet Plan” she talks about her success at staying thin, thanks to Wal-Mart.

“I love working at Wal-Mart. I love that they pay me less than men because that means I can’t afford to eat as much and I get to keep my figure!”

The spot cuts to Betty and two female co-workers in a lunchroom.

“I love it down here with the ladies,” Betty says to her colleagues. “Upper management is all men –– I don’t know if they even have a women’s bathroom up there!”

As of Monday, that parody ad had been viewed more than 91,000 times on www.ifilm.com.

Presently, the spots can be seen on the movie’s Web site and sites of anti-Wal-Mart groups, including www.wakeupwalmart.com and www.walmartwatch.com.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Gail Lavielle said she hadn’t seen the spots, but said as for the movie itself, “it’s unabashed propaganda.”

“The whole thing hasn’t come out yet, but the parts we’ve seen don’t seem very credible to us,” Lavielle said. “Clearly, this is from the folks who have been complaining for a long time, which are interested in raising the hackles among our associates –– it just seems awfully more a propaganda initiative than an independent perspective.”

Levit said the writers were careful to not make fun of customers, but to make fun of Wal-Mart’s policies.

Meanwhile, producing the ads with virtually no budget was challenging, she said.

Both Cromwell and Fisher, who contacted Levit after hearing about the campaign, worked for scale. Levit bought a Wal-Mart vest off eBay and her baby sitter sewed an extra one. Because no retailer would let them use their store to shoot the spots, they ended up shooting some of them in front of a green screen and adding in Wal-Mart store interiors in post production.

Levit, now a stay-at-home mom, formerly was a studio executive.

“I’m used to working for Columbia Pictures and Disney,” Levit said, “This was completely different from that world, but I have to say it was a hoot.”