I would venture to say most of us remember the “Get a Mac” series of commercials with Justin Long as the cool and casual Mac and John Hodgman’s uptight PC. (If you don’t remember them, take my advices and watch the compilation below.)
As funny as those ads were, Long says many of the ads he and Hodgman filmes never made it to television, as late Apple CEO Steve Jobs though the spots were too funny.
Long recently appeared on an episode of PeopleTV’s “Couch Surfing” and shared that while there were over 300 commercials that were shot (of which only 66 aired), he noticed “that some of the funniest ones would never air.”
“One in particular, I remember, Zach Galifianakis played, like, a drunken Santa Claus,” Long recalls. “And [Apple] said, basically, that Steve Jobs preferred when they weren’t super funny….because he thought it would detract from the point of the commercial. He thought if people were too focused on the humor in it, they would lose sight of the product.”
Host Lola Ogunnaike remarked that while the commercials made Long “a household face,” they failed to earn him free Macs for life. However, there were other benefits for Long. “How much money did you make off of those?” Ogunnaike asked. “Enough that I don’t have to be here, Lola,” Long replied.
