Carlos Veron | Dad & Papa / 2014 [commercial advertisement]

smart and funny fathers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nathan Lennon (copywriter), Carlos Veron (of the Droga5 agency) (director) Dad & Papa / 2014 [1.46 minutes]

 

The same year, 2014, Honey Maid featured a much longer ad of 1 minute and 46 seconds which served almost as a very short documentary about two gay men who had fathered, with a surrogate mother, two sons. The camera catches them together with their children and one another along with photographs as the text reads what I’ve slightly abbreviated.

     Their eldest son, all of 8 or 9, begins the conversation:

 

“My dad would be like the smart one and everything, and then my papa would be….he's the funny one. We all work out time for each other so we'll always have dinner together we'll always share our best and worst of the day. It's usually hard to come up with a worst.”

 

     Together the two men then alternately speak:

 

“We’re kind of traditional guys. Marriage and a family and having kids was always important to us. We met in line at a coffee shop. I knew that week that I was gonna marry him.

 

What's interesting is you said you knew you were gonna marry me but….

     That wasn't even in our thought then. Like having a mortgage together was what marriage used to be for gay people.”

 

      Their son interrupts:

 

“One of my favorite memories with my family is the day we got Wyatt [their baby son]. I really just can't wait until he gets older.”

     The two gay men then rhapsodize briefly on how meaning and overwhelming it is to be parents.

   Throughout, we have seen the family eat s’mores (graham crackers with chocolate and melted marshmallows on top). But the company itself is not named until the end, with a very small logo for Honey Maid.

 

Los Angeles, September 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).