Fucillo’s Ramble Period

If you live seemingly anywhere in this country, you’ve stumbled across a Billy Fucillo commercial. In my town (near Syracuse, NY), we live and die by these things. Billy manages to buy one commercial every ten minutes on every television and radio station you will ever watch or listen to.

They started out simple enough; a heaveyset man selling cars in an energetic way. Entertaining and informative. Eventually, he accidentially blurted out “it’s gonna be Huge” in his raspy Brooklyn accent and a catch phrase was born.

Quickly, the phrase became a just a word ; thus we have his face and “Huge!” plastered on every bus, billboard and available flat surface within 60 miles of where you presently live. Now, it should be noted that I have nothing against the man or his business. I’ve been to a couple of his dealerships and he definitly knows how to move inventory and people leave happy. He’s a celebrity where ever his commercials run and people love him. Plus, it should be noted that I work in radio and of course my station runs Fucillo ads, so Billy kinda pays my bills.

The point of this is that I believe Billy Fucillo and his sidekick Tom Park have become the most creative force working in media today. They have discovered a creative outlet that is ever changing and morphing to keep people interested. Most recently, the spots have taken an almost post-modern form in which Billy and Tom will ramble about whatever they please, occasionally mention cars and at the end of 60 seconds, Billy will crowbar in a “Huuuuuge.”

That’s it. They don’t even edit them. Whatever they just did, is what gets sent to the media and if we don’t like it, we can go fuck ourselves because Billy writes the checks. I just listened to two new spots where in one, Billy and Tom decide to not talk for 30 seconds. Tom accidentally says “let’s be quiet for 30 minutes” and then corrects himself and it stays in. Of course, there’s only about 4 seconds of dead air because Tom is a consomate professional and bullies forward to get all the information out regardless of Billy’s antics.

My favorite current one, though, is one where they talk for 29 out of 30 seconds about Tom’s 55th birthday. If that isn’t art in it’s finest form, I don’t know what is. He has the money to do whatever he pleases with his commercials and the consumer reponds to it.

Art is about exploring what comes out of you and too many times, we get tied up in marketing and presentation. Not Billy. He has no time for that shit. He’s gonna sell 5,000 Huyndias whether we understand his commercials or not, so Billy Fucillo, we salute you.

If Frank Zappa were alive today, he wouldn’t be making records. He’d be making jumbled car commercials. SEE BILLY IN ACTION!