it's hard to see how doing commercials really furthers their career, though. i mean yeah, i obviously don't know their situation or why they chose to do it, but doing commercials is generally a SELLOUT sort of thing to do and not really the kind of thing creative people should really feel inspired to do if they can avoid it. it's using their creativity for a genuinely lame or unproductive cause. kinda makes them look like they don't really take a significant amount of pride in what they do and are a bit more concerned with the money end of it then any sort of artistic integrity they might have.
i don't think anybody really makes(or is making) a supremely big deal about this, since it isn't that big of a deal, it just generally reflects somewhat poorly on them. they don't appear to be starving at the moment and are having fairly successful careers, so this isn't exactly like orson welles not finding any decent work at all and kinda needing to do commercial work to stay afloat, especially considering how visibly halfheartedly welles took the responsibilities of doing commercials. for a long while i've kinda regarded tim and eric as not too serious about what they do, and them doing commercials kinda fortifies that notion. i'm pretty sure everybody in the creative business is at least peripherally aware that doing commercials is regarded as a crappy thing to do either willingly or by choice, so their choosing to do it amidst a strong point in their career probably shows that they don't really have much desire to be taken seriously, or perhaps have sufficient disrespect for the intelligence of their audience to think that they wouldn't really care. i find it kinda hard to side with a creative person that eagerly allies itself with some mega corporation's advertising campaign.
I was going to respond to this by pointing out that the Absolut commercials were pretty clearly mocking the product which I think is kind of respectable in its subversiveness but I am GREATLY DISAPPOINTED to learn that they actually directed those Old Spice commercials. I remember seeing those on TV and thinking they were just weak attempts at Tim & Eric style humor but to learn that it IS Tim & Eric style humor just breaks. my. heart. not necessarily because they're making commercials (although that's part of it) but because they really aren't very funny. Hopefully they are doing it to pour the money back into their own projects like earl suggested in which case I don't have any issues with them doing this because it's not like HI I'M TIM HEIDECKER AND THIS IS MY OLD SPICE COMMERCIAL. like they don't really seem to be trying to bank on their image to sell the product, although they are using a recognizable form of their humor so maybe that's not the best point to make? I guess my point is that sometimes in order to finance the work you WANT to do you have to work on something you wouldn't normally do (david lynch, for example, has done a number of commercials that have helped him finance other projects, and he did dune so that he could do blue velvet I believe), and I'm HOPING that's the case here, but obviously I don't know for sure. It's kind of a shame either way but that's the business I guess.
at the same time I don't want to give off the impression that I'm TOTALLY OK! with the idea of doing commercials. because I'm not. but I think it's kind of this unfortunate reality and as long as the motivation behind it is in the right place then it shouldn't reflect too poorly on the director.