Furious Seasons

February 25, 2008

The Oscars, Brought To You By Cymbalta

I'm sure many of you saw the Oscars last night and I wonder if you were as struck as I was by an ad for Eli Lilly's Cymbalta during the last hour of the program. There amidst expensive ads for perfume and cosmetics and so on was an ad for the anti-depressant that has really arrived now, I guess you could say. Having an ad on during the Oscars is about as big of a deal as having on during the Super Bowl. I couldn't really hear the ad over the party I was at, but it talked about pain and depression and so on, and had happy, contented looking people going about not-so-filmic lives. We live in interesting times.

That wasn't the best part of the Oscars--that would be when the producers of "No Country For Old Men" finally thanked Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel the movie was adapted from. The movie had just won its third major award and I was sitting there gloating over the fact that I first read McCarthy's work and pushed it on others 20 years ago before anyone knew about him and his weird Faulknerian-Hemingway-gothic unvierse. He didn't win an Oscar, but he obviously kind of did. For someone who toughed it out in obscurity for many decades, it must've been cool.

And, it didn't look as if he needed any Cymbalta.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at February 25, 2008 12:01 AM

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Comments

I didn't watch this year. I couldn't get into them.

But good news about McCarthy.

Posted by: susan at February 25, 2008 04:15 AM

Of course, there is the infamous Traci Johnson case where she died in Eli Lilly's hospital/laboratory while testing Cymbalta for metabolism issues. She was a healthy, normal 19 year old college student who dropped out of school to make some big bucks in a clinical trial for Cymbalta. She intended to finish her education with that money. Terrible Crime.

Also, there was a man who murdered his wife who was given probation because of his use of Cymbalta. This article can be viewed at www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=1783.

Enough said.

Posted by: Rosie at February 25, 2008 08:26 AM

I am meeting people from all over the world as I travel here in Mexico. All are astonished that our government would permit these ads. They think it is over the top to have OTC drugs like aspirin ads on TV. Here, it-s all about Pampers, perfume, washing detergent. I feel as if I,ve returned to the fifties. DTC ads remain one more battle yet to be won somehow and until we win, no U.S. TV for me. Netflix.

Posted by: Ellen Liversidge at February 25, 2008 09:12 AM

Here's a link to an article from May 2006 right from this site, discussing Traci Johnson and has many reader stories re: Cymbalta use in the comment section. I applaud Philip for being way ahead of his time here on this blog re/ many topics here.

Cymbalta Furious Seasons May 2006.

Posted by: Stephany at February 25, 2008 09:34 AM

Saturday Night Live takes on DTC ads:

SNL Spoof on DTC ads, includes video/NYTimes.

Posted by: Stephany at February 25, 2008 10:47 AM

I don't know if it varies by region for ad's used, I'm middle of southern east coast. It was the same ad they run late at night with the piano notes and the "depression hurts" & "turning you into a person you don't recognize" spiel. I would have thought they would have went different/new then again to the crowd audience it might be new.

What scares me is that high value ad space is justified to them(cost to reach target customers) instead of picking on the late night easier influenced and suffering from insomnia crowd. Infomercials target these people/time for a reason. What's also even odder is the fact they placed it in something upbeat instead of a show more geared to depressed people. Maybe the logic is they've reached all the depressed people they can, so now they're trying to get sucker their friends and family to suggest/force the drug on to them.

Posted by: T A at February 25, 2008 11:17 AM