EW.com
Dear DirecTV,
Thanks for destroying my soul a little bit with your recent ad spoofing Poltergeist, which features child star Heather O’Rourke (who passed away in 1988). Just a thought: Next time, perhaps you should avoid using a dead child to hawk your product.
Sincerely,
Kristen Baldwin
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Comments (1-30) of 118 Add your comment
I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING. THIS AD IS IN VERY POOR TASTE.
I totally agree. Everytime this comes on it bothers me!
The ad doesn’t bother me because I am a fan of those films and it just reminds me of how cute she was, but my question is, are the actors just CGI munipulated to say the dialogue or did Craig T Nelson and Sigourney and the rest of them come back and reshoot these scenes?
I can never tell!
Does anyone know?
THANK YOU. I thought I was the only one who thought this was a tad inappropriate… but hey, I did sorta like the Fred Astaire/Dirt Devil commercial.
My thoughts exactly. It’s just….ewwwwwww…..(shudder)
I am glad you wrote about this. Who, ultimately, would have had to give permission to use Heather for this?
Thanks KB – I thought the same thing.
I had the exact same problem! I thought those ads had been clever … until now.
Very poor taste. I think the difference between using Fred Astaire and Heather Rourke is that Fred Astaire lived a happy, full life. While Heather’s was cut tragically short. I can’t believe no one at DirectTV thoought this one through!
Horrible. Always in poor taste to use dead celebrities to hawk products, but this is tainting her most well known role too. She didn’t agree to this
I absolutely agree! This was my reaction when I first saw the ad. I surprised they got the legal okay to use this clip in the first place! They need to pull the ad immediately!
If you double-click the video, you get sent to the youtube sight and someone who claims to be the mother of Heather’s “double” emailed a comment about the commercial.
I agree. I’m a DirecTV subscriber; I think I’ll go send them an e-mail. Can’t hurt. Might help.
100% agree. I LOVE the Poltergeist movies, and oddly enough i was just wandering around the Heather O’Rourke memorial site because she was a year younger than I, and for some reason even as a kid was devastated when she died. These ads had been very clever and kinda fun, but this ad is not right.. I think they should pull it as well.. i understand WHY they chose it (it’s a classic), but.. they should have used a different seen like.. the mother in the pool or.. something.. that’s my two cents.. do with it what you will!
sorry.. different scene.. really..i can spell.. i swear
So the actors do reshoot these scenes?
Thank you Kristen. I KNEW I wasn’t the only person who thought the ad was tacky and in poor taste. RIP Miss. O’Rourke.
Agreed!
The DirectTV spoofs are fine with me, but using a dead child actress is pretty damn tasteless. It’s also odd, considering what DirectTV did with the Back to the Future. If they had the good sense not to use Michael J. Fox for that one (because of Parkinson’s disease), where did it go when using Poltergeist for a commercial?
Wow. Am I the only one that doesn’t have a problem with this? I thought it was in context with the rest of DirecTV’s “hijack the movie” campaign. I think you guys are over-reacting. It’s not like they changed the words coming out of O’Rourke’s mouth. She’s incidental to the scene.
I said the same thing to my husband a few nights ago, very poor taste. I went to Elementary School with Heather and her sister Tammy, for two years, she always seemed sad…that’s all I think about every time that commercial comes on.
My sister and I said the exact same thing when we saw it. Very distasteful
I know right! Did NO one remember that she was dead when they decided to make this?
I was extremely offended when I saw these adds. What was the pitch? “Okay, we are going to parody the scene from Poltergeist where the girl says, “They’re here”. Sounds good, right?” “I thought she was dead.” “She is.” “Oh, okay, super.”
I thought the same exact thing… so what if they thought they found a perfect moment in a film to parody?!?! The main focus of the scene is A DEAD LITTLE GIRL. are they retarded?
Good God, I thought that too. Shame on DirecTV, shame on Craig T. Nelson.
Hmm. Well, count me among the minority who didn’t think anything was wrong with it. They’re not poking fun at her, but at the movie. It’s all in context. Also, she’s been gone now for a loooooong time. As someone else pointed out, they’ve used Fred Astaire, too. Natalie Cole *sang* with her dead father. Frankly I was more offended by Celine and the holographic Elvis, because it was creepy.
Tom and Tina… it’s not that they did something particularly wrong. But if you look at something at your gut reaction is ICK, then they’re not really doing a great job of selling their product. So far this message board shows that viewers have overwhelmingly not felt right about what they saw. Maybe that should have given the company pause.
One of the differences with this v Astaire or Nat King Cole ad (which I also dislike) is that she was 13 when she died, not an adult what had lived a full life. I guess I prefer not to put a statute of limitations on mourning a life lost too young. It’s not like we’re just watching the work she performed while she was alive (e.g. Poltergeist has stood the test of time as a great horror film) but let’s leave it at that.
The fact that “Coach” agreed to this commericial too, shows how far his career has crumbled.
God awful commercial.