When Pepsi still had some balls they booked Snoop Dog to do a Pepsi Max commercial. Chiat was the agency and that’s probably where the idea came from. I had never met Snoop and didn’t know what to expect and we didn’t have any kind of a meeting beforehand.
The idea was to have Snoop rapping atop a stack of Pepsi cases that have appeared magically. I added a couple of dancers and there were pyrotechnics as well. That was almost a mistake.
Pepsi was going through a cheapskate time and we only had a budget for a one day shoot including all the lead up to Snoop’s appearance. The idea was that a Pepsi driver and a Coke driver were having a display competition. There wasn’t enough money in the meager budget to build sets so we had to do a lot of green screen stuff to compensate. That’s life.
The addition of the girls was great as they were choreographed brilliantly by Beyonce’s choreographer. Of course, the lady client wanted to do the thing without them as well, as she felt they were maybe too suggestive. I ignored the request. After all, they did book Snoop.
One thing that we hadn’t planned was Snoop going back to his motor home between takes. It took a while to clear the smoke from the pyrotechnics. Snoop took more time in his motor home. Randy and I went to see him at one point and there was Snoop with his entourage, the place full of smoke. Randy whispered to me,
‘We gotta get outta here. I’m getting loaded.’