Creative Director, Copywriter, and all around awesome dude Michael Buss talks about fun with Land Rover, Matthew McConaughey, and other career highlights here:
Michael Buss
So, what do you do again?
I’m a creative director, a copywriter, a student, a cook, a singer, and a halfway decent poker player.
What inspires you?
Learning new things. I like to call it “feeding my brain,” and whenever I’m not trying to write, I’m almost always trying to expand my knowledge. I always want to be smarter tomorrow than I am today.
How lucky are you and why?
Tremendously. I’m lucky I was raised by supportive parents who encouraged my creative side, I’m lucky that learning new things comes easily to me, I’m lucky that the woman assigned to be my traffic manager 13 years ago agreed to be my wife, and I’m lucky that I can still do what I’m doing.
What do you love about Austin?
Everything except the heat. I love the hippie-dippiness of it. I love that dressing up means putting on the good flip flops. And I love the food most of all. I will never tire of the tortilla queso catfish at Shady Grove.
What were the major turning points that got you where you are?
The biggest turning point was when I somehow got a copywriting job in Chicago almost right out of college.It turned out to be the worst job at the worst agency in the city. And my work wasn’t good enough to get me a better job anywhere else. A very shitty life flashed before my eyes. So I decided to quit and go back to ad school. I packed all my stuff into a U-Haul, drove down to the Miami Ad School, and moved into a sublet apartment on New Year’s Eve. It was definitely the hardest and smartest thing I ever did.
What helps you access your creativity?
I have honestly no idea. I think there are a lot of people out there who are much more creative than I am. All I try to do is take two things that are not connected, and find a way to connect them in a way no one else has before.
What are a couple of your most memorable projects?
Helping GSD&M win the Land Rover business is probably one of the most memorable things I’ve ever done. We did a lot of great stuff for them in a very short period of time. And working with Matthew McConaughey on Reliant Energy was a great experience. He was super cool, and he refused to mail it in. Even if I was happy with a take, he’d insist he could do it better—and then he would. Also, I worked with him long enough that he noticed when I had lost a bunch of weight. That was pretty sweet.
What’s the most fun part of your job?
Definitely watching something you and your partner hatched in a small room come to life at the hands of a hundred skilled people a thousand miles away.
What do you think Austin needs most to help its production community succeed nationally, internationally?
Austin seems to have a little cottage industry when it comes to movies, but it’s really hard to compete with LA in the commercial space. The biggest hurdle is the acting talent pool. They’re all in LA and NY, and most productions would rather shoot where they live than travel a cast to Austin.
Best Austin experience?
Besides getting married and the birth of my first daughter? Making a group of lifelong friends when I was a youngster at GSD&M. It’s been 15 years since I first started working there, and I’m still very close with many of them.
What’s your toughest demon?
Divided attention. Remember how I love to learn new things? Sometimes I find it hard to put that down and pick up a pen.
If you could shadow anyone for a day, who would it be?
President Clinton. By all accounts he has the most uncanny way of making anyone he talks to feel like they have his complete and undivided attention. It sounds like an easy thing to do, but if it were, everyone could do it.
Favorite place to hear live music in Austin?
This is hilariously lame, but I’m going to say the house band at Donn’s Depot. I love watching those old folks dance to “Amarillo by Morning.”
What do you wish someone had told you 10 or 20 years ago?
“You’re leaving Austin? What are you, fucking stupid?!”