DirecTV has a series of commercials dating back to 2006 that include clips from films integrated with the actors shilling their satellite TV service. The commercials are said to “break the fourth wall” in that actors turn and speak directly to the viewer during a scene. (I’m not trying to be a smarty pants and found that term on Wikipedia’s entry for DirecTV.)

Here are videos of some of the ads:
Back To the Future featuring Christopher Lloyd
Aliens with Sigourney Weaver
Star Trek with William Shatner
Austin Powers with Mini-Me Verne Troyer
Shannon Elizabeth in American Pie
Pamela Anderson in Baywatch
Kathy Bates in Misery

The second most controversial DirecTV ad is probably a recent one in which David Spade reprises his role in the 1995 film Tommy Boy with the late Chris Farley. Spade sits on a couch in character and talks smack about Farley’s goofy character, saying he’d rather watch DirecTV.

Spade has responded to criticism that the ad is not appropriate and that he’s cashing in on the late Farley’s memory. He says it never occurred to him that the ad was disrespectful and that Farley would have loved it:

When he agreed to do a DirecTV commercial featuring a scene from Tommy Boy with the late Chris Farley, actor David Spade never dreamed anybody would be offended.

“Slight shock,” Spade told PEOPLE on Wednesday night of the fallout from the ad, which some commentators saw as tasteless. “These commercials are cool. They’re well done. They’re clever. And that they would include Tommy Boy in that company, I thought was very flattering.”

The 30-second spot, airing during the World Series, appears to have been taken directly from the 1995 movie, except that while Farley does his famous “Fat Boy in a Little Coat” routine, Spade, with technological wizardry, promotes DirecTV.

Spade says featuring Tommy Boy in a commercial series that also has scenes from Back to the Future and Aliens “is so cool” since “we made this thing and people still talk about it.”

“Oh, my God if [Farley] was here, I guarantee he’d be stoked that this little movie is included,” says Spade. (Farley died in 1997 of heart failure linked to an overdose.) “The movie is important to me, and I would hate to offend [anyone] because that’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. So I would apologize to someone who took it that way.”

Still, he says, if he had to do it over again, he probably wouldn’t have made the commercial. “I wouldn’t want anyone to get a whiff that I’m trying to get something off Chris,” he says.

[From People]

That’s fair enough, and maybe Spade assumed that it would help remind people what a comic genius Farley was. The video does seem a little disrespectful to me, especially since he’s making fun of Farley, but maybe it makes sense in context of the film. If anything blame should be placed on DirecTV’s ad producers, not Spade.

Dead celebrities have been popping up in ads lately, with Frank Sinatra dancing with a vacuum cleaner and Audrey Hepburn selling Gap. Sometimes advertisers have gone too far and sometimes they’re able to skirt a fine line and make it seem as if they’re paying tribute to a celebrity’s memory. In this case the result is debatable.

The thing is, DirecTV made a much more offensive video featuring a departed star. They did a version of Poltergeist featuring the late child actress Heather O’Rourke. They even make it look as if O’Rourke appears in the ad by including another actress who looks like her. This ad came out last year in October from what I can tell. You can see it below, and it’s all sorts of wrong. You think they would have learned not to touch that subject in future ads.