Consultants and pee-pee-dickie

The recent avalanche of plans to improve Richmond has dumped a lot of words representing proposals onto civic-minded Richmonders. With a number of posts, John Sarvay at Buttermilk & Molasses has done a fine job with his coverage and commentary on the Crupi Report, as well as the new Downtown Plan. Don Harrison at Save […]

December 11, 2007; 10:19 PM • by FTRea

The recent avalanche of plans to improve Richmond has dumped a lot of words representing proposals onto civic-minded Richmonders.

With a number of posts, John Sarvay at Buttermilk & Molasses has done a fine job with his coverage and commentary on the Crupi Report, as well as the new Downtown Plan. Don Harrison at Save Richmond has also offered insight into Crupi Report, which was put together by Dr. Jim Crupi, of Plano, Texas.

The former editor at Brick, Pete Humes, weighed in with his tongue-in-cheek recommendations, “Nine More Ideas to Save Downtown Richmond,” at RVANews.

As for me, I have to admit I have only scanned the Crupi Report, which was crafted by the same expert consultant who made another study of Richmond 15 years ago.

As my eyes glazed over scanning the new report’s highlights, which seemed mostly like old news, it brought to mind a scene from a late ‘60s movie, made by Robert Downey (Sr.). Downey was the bad boy director of several “underground” comedies including “Chafed Elbows” and “Putney Swope.”

In the opening scene of “Putney Swope,” the viewer sees a leather-clad man get off a helicopter. He is escorted directly into the boardroom of a big advertising agency. The viewer learns that he is a superstar consultant, who has been brought in to advise the agency on how to market a client’s product which has been in a sales slump — beer.

In a beautifully droll moment, the consultant tells the roomful of admen that beer is “pee-pee-dickie.”

The baffling remark is met with stunned silence.

Then the scruffy, rather mysterious consultant picks up a suitcase full of money and leaves without further explanation. His job is done.

Of course the admen, hustlers themselves, buy the scam completely and consider the consultant’s expensive words to be the enlightened utterance of a sage. They must be because they were so expensive. So, the admen begin to brainstorm themes for a new ad campaign based on the report.

The half-clever admen stop worrying about the problem that their client’s beer doesn’t taste so good.

– the image is a replica of the original Putney Swope one-sheet