Does JK Simmons really throw the football in the Farmers commercial?

Answer 1

Q. The current Farmers Insurance "Smarter" campaign has a spot that pays off when the spokesperson sees a guy stealing from a car, then tosses a strike with a football that knocks the thief into some garbage cans.

My question is this: Did a real person throw the football. If so, who? Or was the action electronically patched in?

A. The commercial in question, dear reader, for the Farmers Insurance Group, is created by RPA in Santa Monica, Calif., and is part of the campaign that features the actor J. K. Simmons as the spokesman; he plays a professor named Nathaniel Burke who is on the faculty of the University of Farmers.

According to Sara Morgan, a spokeswoman at RPA, Mr. Simmons threw the football in the commercial. In an e-mail, she writes that two RPA employees who worked on the spot - Pat Mendelson, group creative director, and Selena Pizarro, senior producer - told her that on the first take Mr. Simmons "actually hit the roller skater all in camera." (The thief was on roller skates.)

"He has quite an arm," Ms. Morgan says, adding: "But then there was a wardrobe change on the skater. So there were a few more takes, all with J. K. Simmons throwing the football."

The final version of the commercial "is a combination of in-camera and CGI on the football toss," she says, using the abbreviation for computer-generated imagery, with the throw from Mr. Simmons on camera and "the arc of the football and the hit on the skater" created through CGI.