HAL: Apple’s Other Super Bowl Commercial

February 5, 2017 6:44 PM

In 1999, while the world was gripped in fear of the Y2K bug, Apple's advertising firm TBWA/Chiat/Day had an inspiration for the perfect representative to reassure everyone their Macintosh computers would be fine: HAL 9000. With Stanley Kubrick's blessing, Apple aired their third Super Bowl commercial, "It Was a Bug, Dave", 15 years after their most famous one.
posted by Doktor Zed (13 comments total)

Without Douglas Rain, the commercial falls utterly, pathetically flat. It's clear why I remember absolutely nothing of it, even though I'm pretty sure I watched the Super Bowl that year.
posted by tclark at 8:09 PM on February 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

Seconded
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:14 PM on February 5, 2017

What a bad mishmash. Murderous, lying HAL is supposed to make us comfortable with Macs' supposed lack of Y2K bugs? Computers make errors, HAL made errors, therefore great ad!!
posted by benzenedream at 8:21 PM on February 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Produced for Apple, who'd quietly been putting crappy quality capacitors in their machines all through the 90s. If you still have a Mac of that vintage, if the caps haven't killed the computer, a leaking PRAM backup battery likely will.
posted by scruss at 9:36 PM on February 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

The best thing about Apple ads from back then was drunk Jeff Goldblum aka Jeff Goldblum played at 1/2 speed.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:29 PM on February 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

I remember watching this when it ran and thinking it was an odd choice for a spokesperson. But, it was nicely nostalgic.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:08 AM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wow, that voice really is completely wrong.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:30 AM on February 6, 2017

Eh, I can't fault them for the voice. They tried to recruit Douglas Rain and he told them to go get bent.
posted by killdevil at 8:28 AM on February 6, 2017

They tried to recruit Douglas Rain and he told them to go get bent.

"I'm sorry, Steve, I'm afraid I can't do that."
posted by lagomorphius at 9:39 AM on February 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Fun facts: Rain was the fourth actor to play HAL during the development of 2001. Stefanie Powers did the lines in rehearsal, Nigel Davenport spoke them on the set and Martin Balsam recorded all the lines before Rain was finally hired long after production was finished.
posted by octothorpe at 9:56 AM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was very fortunate to hear Douglas Trumbull speaking about his special effects work on 2001: A Space Odyssey. He mentioned that Douglas Rain refused to be interviewed about his work on the film, and refused to participate in any making-of documentaries. I am not surprised that Apple was not able to get him to reprise his role for the commercial.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 1:15 PM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

They tried to recruit Douglas Rain and he told them to go get bent.

"Read. My. Lips."
posted by hal9k at 2:38 PM on February 6, 2017

I haven't thought about that commercial in years!

Re: Macs with bad capacitors... Apple also had a bad batch of caps in the G5 iMacs. I seem to recall at the time it was discovered that the caps were counterfeit or something like that.
posted by luckynerd at 12:07 PM on February 7, 2017