It’s a well-known fact that David Lynch has a penchant for lending his surrealist eye to the medium of television ads. From Clear Blue pregnancy tests and Alka-Seltzer, to Barilla dried pasta and Georgia fairtrade coffee (in which Kyle Maclachlan reprises his role as Agent Cooper – come on, what else were you expecting?), the legendary director stepped behind the camera on multiple occasions throughout the 80s, 90s, and 00s.
One of the best, though, is the 1993 TV ad adidas enlisted him to create. Entitled The Wall, the short was the first British advert created by adidas in nine years, and reportedly bagged the director a v cool $1million – no big deal.
The concept is simple: a man runs towards a literal wall, which (no prizes for guessing here) represents the physical ‘wall’ many runners experience as they train.
Things take a Lynchian twist (surprise!) when the camera zooms towards the runner’s ear and hones in on the blood flowing through his veins, as electricity sparks around his brain, his heart palpitates wildly, and flames appear in his eyes (fire run with me?), as all the while the wall gets further and further away.
So far, so anxiety-inducing. Add to all that a random scorpion and it’s safe to say that yeah, things get pretty wild.
The advert ends as the runner’s head seemingly explodes, which presumably means he has smashed through the pain barrier – all thanks to adidas’s innovative Tubular sneakers, which were inspired by the inner tube found inside tyres, obvs – to become a prime athletic specimen. Or who knows? Given this was directed by Lynch, maybe his head did just actually explode for real.