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It’s been a busy winter for legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese. His recent film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is up for Best Picture and Best Director, among eight other nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, and he’s starring in a new Super Bowl ad for web company Squarespace that he also directed.
The spot, entitled “Hello Down There,” lasts a little longer than 90 seconds and is inspired by the cheesy alien invasion B-movies that Scorsese, a known cinephile, likely watched growing up. It’s also inspired by recent congressional hearings concerning the government’s knowledge of UFOs. The commercial begins with a little boy in the 1950s — perhaps young Marty Scorsese himself — watching one of those black-and-white, mid-century sci-fi B-movies before transitioning to actual reports on flying saucers, including archive footage of crop circles and famed news anchor Walter Cronkite.
The ad then transitions to footage of everyday folks watching these alien reports on their phones and computers, looking down at their screens and completely oblivious to the actual flying saucers hovering in the skies above them. The extraterrestrials (CGI-created classic “grey” aliens) try in vain to get the Earthlings’ attention, but everyone is too focused on their devices. Finally, they resort to creating a website — on Squarespace, of course — prompting everybody to look up and see the UFOs.
The ad ends with Scorsese sitting in a car in traffic, watching the same B-movie on his tablet as the little boy. When he finally notices the fleet of alien ships, he chastises his driver, remarking, “I told you to take Broadway. This always happens!” This is followed by Squarespace’s slogan: “A website makes it real.”
Scorsese’s daughter, Francesca, is also helping to promote Squarespace
Squarespace launched two decades ago, and it’s still got its eyes set on growth. Last year, the website-building platform acquired assets from Alphabet’s Google Domains business after it was shut down. By getting one of — if not the – biggest names in moviemaking to direct and star in a commercial for the biggest television audience of the year, Squarespace is making it clear that it doesn’t plan to slow down its momentum.
The company is also doubling down on its partnership with Scorsese. In addition to the “Hello Down There” spot, Squarespace also produced a longer video featuring the director and his daughter, Francesca, who has previously posted viral TikToks with her dad. In this “behind-the-scenes” video, “Marty & Francesca Make a Website,” Scorsese goes over the storyboards for his sci-fi Squarespace ad and tells Francesca that he’s struggling with the project because the main character “is a website.”
His Gen-Z daughter proceeds to help him out by using Squarespace to design a website — the one the aliens use in the Super Bowl spot. Perfectionist as he is, Scorsese keeps wanting to make tweaks and changes, which the platform makes easy to do. Once they finish, Scorsese is satisfied, saying (in reference to one of the pair’s viral TikToks), “This website slaps, kid, doesn’t it? Is that slapping or what?”
The Scorsese-directed “Hello Down There” commercial for Squarespace will air during Super Bowl LVIII, which kicks off live from Las Vegas on Sunday, February 11.
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