Sorry, Montell Jordan (dated reference, eh?), but this is how you do it: get put on camera at the World Cup and parlay that into a modeling contract with L’Oreal. It happened for Axelle Despiegelaere of Belgium, even though Belgium lost in the final eight to Argentina. Here’s one of the first times she appeared on camera:
Clearly cute. This is all tied back to “the honey shot.” That’s where TV directors/producers look for attractive women in between the action, or in/out of commercials. The most famous examples of this in the United States typically involve a lecherous Brent Musburger:
Interestingly, the “honey shot” is thought to be popularized by Andy Sidaris, who is perhaps most famous to generations of teenage boys as creating a ton of softcore movies later in life, generally featuring buxom Playboy models being put in exotic locales with ridiculous storylines. Here’s his IMDB. Before he got into that, though, he was considered one of the better sports TV directors of all-time. He helmed Wide World of Sports, Monday Night Football, and tons of college broadcasts; there are rumors he helped choreograph the football scene in MASH (the movie). He once told a website, four years before his eventual death, that he was “the best television director that ever lived.” Nice. Then there’s this:
He was also obsessed with pointing his cameras at beautiful women. In 1983, theNew York Times’ Neil Amdur wrote the following in a piece critiquing college football telecasts: “Andy Sidaris is one of ABC’s better football directors. But at the Sugar Bowl, he seemed preoccupied with cheerleaders, in a game that contained dimensions of much more importance. Sideline shots of cheerleaders and majorettes are only worthwhile if they are spontaneous and fit into a larger picture; Sidaris made them boring and finally offensive.”
There’s an interesting clip of him telling his cameramen to “get some front shots of those broads” (cheerleaders). It’s on that Sidaris link above.
And here are some standard clips for a Sidaris film:
Broader lesson here? Sometimes you may contextually view someone as akin to a smut peddler (I viewed Sidaris that way as a teenager, although I wasn’t complaining) when in reality they’re a revolutionary in a different field. People navigate to what they want to be doing and are generally good at, I guess (or hope).
