Over the years, Super Bowl ads have brought us talking frogs, cat roundups, and chimps bouncing around in office cubicles-big-budget productions from top advertising agencies. This year, working on a near-nothing budget, an LAS alum might just crash the Super Bowl with a commercial featuring an eccentric check-out girl and plenty of Doritos.
Kristin Dehnert, a 1991 graduate in speech communication, has made the final cut of five in Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, in which the company invited anyone with a camera to submit their own Doritos commercial. The winner will have their commercial aired on the biggest stage of all-this year's Super Bowl XLI.
"Making it into the top five is mind-blowing," says Dehnert, an aspiring director currently serving as a location manager and scout for commercials in Los Angeles. "But the potential of winning this thing is absolutely over the top."
The five finalists, chosen by Doritos from a pool of more than 1,000 entries, each receive $10,000 plus a trip to Miami for a special Super Bowl XLI viewing party. The winner will be selected by online voting. But Dehnert and the other finalists will not know who won until the commercial is aired during the first quarter of the game.
Dehnert found out about the contest this fall and then quickly began assembling a team-many of them friends in the entertainment business in Los Angeles. After locking herself in her L.A. apartment and going into her "mad scientist" mode, she came up with five or six script ideas-four of which they eventually produced.
But the "Check Out Girl" commercial was the one that seemed to click at every stage. "It felt like all the stars were lining up," Dehnert says, describing how she felt after they filmed in an L.A. grocery store after hours in the middle of the night.
The 30-second commercial features the odd interaction between two complete strangers-a man buying multiple bags of Doritos and a quirky check-out girl, who can't contain her excitement about the many different flavors of chips.
Stephanie Lesh-Farrell, an actress from the improvisational theater world, is the key to the mini comedy. When Lesh-Farrell came in to audition for the part of the check-out girl, Dehnert says that she and her producer, Leann Emmert, "were falling off our chairs we were laughing so hard."
For Dehnert, directing has been a lifelong dream and the Doritos commercial is already beginning to open some doors professionally. Her first taste of directing came at the tender age of six while growing up in the Chicago suburb of Aurora. She and a neighbor would make movies with a Super 8 camera and then watch them in their own screening room-a closet beneath the stairs.
Being from Aurora, Dehnert also happens to be a big-time Bears fan, which makes this year's Super Bowl even sweeter.
"Just being a finalist is beyond huge for me," she says. "But add the fact that the Bears are going to be in the Super Bowl. It doesn't get any bigger than that. Go Bears! Go Check Out Girl!"
Or, as the check-out girl herself would say, "Giddy-up!"
Quick Takes
- Kristin Dehnert has worked on several Hollywood movies, including Contact, Road to Perdition, Calendar Girls, Michael, and Payback.
- Dehnert's writing and directing debut came three years ago with the short political thriller Underground, which was shown at more than 60 film festivals and won more than 11 top awards.
- More recently, Dehnert directed a short documentary on autism, Circle of Friends.
- Dehnert is proud of being the only female director among the five finalists in Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" contest.
