Tacoma film crew found all your favorite Rainier ads and made a movie. Now you can see it
Isaac Olsen can’t help himself: He’s a sucker for a rabbit hole. He can’t stop until he gets to the bottom.
For the better part of five years, Olsen has been consumed by a massive one, digging into the origins of Rainier Beer’s local legacy.
More specifically, the Tacoma-based independent filmmaker and his production partners, Justin and Robby Peterson, the brotherly force behind Hilltop’s 1111, have been waist-deep in the brilliantly bizarre 1970s and ‘80s ad campaign that made Vitamin R iconic in the Pacific Northwest.
Olsen has run with wild Rainiers, fought in the trenches with R-Bo and gone on the hunt with late-career Mickey Rooney during this time, most recently from a small, nondescript office on Pacific Avenue downtown.
Lately, that’s where Olsen has spent most his days, watching, rewatching and splicing together what the filmmaking team finally has to show for its efforts.
“Rainier: A Beer Odyssey” — premiering Monday, May 13 at the Seattle International Film Festival — is the local documentary team’s 4.6% ABV passion project.
The two-hour film serves as a nostalgia-rich ode to a mountain fresh beer, an unmistakable brand and a rain-soaked region’s way of life.
At its best, “A Beer Odyssey” captures a magical time before Amazon and new money vanquished Seattle’s soul.
“If I’m into a subject — whether it’s a record, a movie or anything else — I want to pick it apart. I want to know what else is there,” Olsen explained over lunch last week.
“So this was the ultimate pick-apart exercise,” he said. “I’ve thought about nothing else for years.”
Rainier Beer archive
The last time I spoke with Olsen and Justin Peterson about the project was in late 2022. The longtime collaborators were looking to raise $75,000 to help make their vision a reality, energized by the discovery of a stockpile of old Rainier Beer advertising footage housed in the Washington State Historical Society’s archives. In short order, the Tacoma documentary team brought in roughly $10,000 more than that.
The filmmakers were granted full access to the Washington State Historical Society’s collection, accounting for roughly 90% of the Rainier marketing footage recorded from 1957 to 1987, including the beer’s 1970s and ‘80s Pacific Northwest reign as Washington’s best-selling beer, according to Olsen. In exchange, they agreed to digitize the old reels for future museum use.
The film clocks in at 124 minutes; Olsen estimates 75% is material straight from the Rainier Beer archive.
Among the greatest hits, viewers are treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the iconic raaaaaa-neaaaaaar-beeeeeeeer motorcycle ad and the pitch-perfect “Get it yourself, Bob!” spot, 30 seconds of subversive brilliance that made fed-up Marlene a feminist hero in 1970s Seattle.
Outtakes from Rooney’s run as Rainier’s cartoonish spokesperson provide some of the documentary’s best moments, and some of Olsen’s personal favorites, he said.
Married eight times, the former child star was paid $500 and a Ford station wagon for his first Rainier spot, largely to avoid alimony payments, Olsen confirmed during the course of production.
According to Peterson, whose Hilltop bar has long featured a back booth adorned with a small museum’s worth of Rainier swag, the support “A Beer Odyssey” garnered from the public speaks to the thirst for local nostalgia — and people’s soft spot for an iconic beer that became part of the region’s strange cultural fabric.
For example, John Keister, the Seattle comedian and beloved host of “Almost Live,” caught word of the project and reached out, Peterson told The News Tribune.
Keister was subsequently interviewed by the filmmakers and appears throughout “A Beer Odyssey.”
“I would say the majority of donors were between here and Seattle,” Peterson said.
“I think people who knew about (the ads) already were probably stoked, but maybe more stoked that other people would see them,” he added. “They’ve probably been telling people — their kids or whoever — about the commercials for years.”
Inside Heckler Associates
If you’re from here — and old enough to remember — the iconic Rainier Beer TV spots from the 1970s and ‘80s feel like old friends.
On big, boxy television sets across the state, the long-running series of irreverent commercials provided a welcome respite from prime-time monotony and the latest Boeing layoffs, peppered with less-than-subtle nods to the Pacific Northwest’s peculiarities.
The ad campaign was produced by a mysterious local agency staffed by wild-eyed outsiders, Heckler Associates, with two men, Terry Heckler and Gordon Bowker, calling the shots.
According to Olsen, the rise of Heckler’s and Bowker’s local ad agency from the ashes of the original Seattle magazine — and the fact that former Rainier marketing director Jim Foster allowed Heckler Associates free rein — epitomizes the region’s rapid evolution from overlooked backwater to 1990s cultural epicenter, the birthplace of Grunge, Microsoft and Starbucks.
The “Beer Odyssey” team tracked down a host of former Heckler Associates staffers, including Bowker, a writer turned entrepreneur who — oh, by the way — was a co-founder of Starbucks and Redhook.
Bowker, who sold his ownership stake in Starbucks to Howard Schultz in 1987, features prominently in “A Beer Odyssey,” cast as the ad agency’s catalyst.
Frank Denman, the photographer responsible for shooting dozens of classic Rainier Beer print campaigns, offers his unique perspective, as does Ed Leimbacher, who crafted much of the writing.
Dan Rowland, the actor who played R-Bo, was flown in from Chicago for a sit-down interview.
Heckler, a brilliant and eccentric recluse, is described throughout the film as the essential visionary.
Notoriously camera shy, Heckler’s voice is heard sparingly in the film, taken from audio from a rare 2014 interview the filmmakers obtained.
Olsen was granted full access to Heckler’s vast archive of photographs and other materials, and his daughter, Talese Heckler, is credited as an executive producer of the film.
“Terry is very private. He always has been. And so we allowed him to maintain his mysterious status while making him a major part of the story,” Olsen told The News Tribune.
Olsen said he maintained full editorial control while working with the Hecklers on the film.
A moment in time
“Rainier: A Beer Odyssey” is the story of old Seattle, told through the rule-breaking advertising geniuses who emerged from an economically depressed but creatively fertile era in the Pacific Northwest.
The only place croaking Rainier frogs and those herds of Wild Rainiers could have been created was Seattle in the 1970s and ‘80s, Olsen suggested.
That’s what “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey” is really about, Olsen and Peterson said: a moment in time and the place where it happened.
Those grainy television commercials might be niche local nostalgia, but the filmmakers believe there’s a larger audience to be had.
Following the debut of “A Beer Odyssey” at SIFF, the team plans to explore screening events and digital streaming options, Olsen and Peterson said.
“These commercials gave people something else besides how depressing Seattle was, and now we’re giving people something to take their minds off all the (expletive) that’s going on now. It’s absolutely a perfect time,” Peterson told me.
It’s no surprise that the big-time beer makers eventually stole many of Heckler Associates’ creative ideas, Olsen said.
Those Super Bowl Bud-Weis-Er frogs trace back to tadpoles in the Pacific Northwest, he said.
“The funny thing is, I think of the film as a message to the rest of the world, like, ‘You know, Seattle wasn’t always this thing you think of it as.’ But really, that message is going to play more to the people who are there now — because nobody’s left. They’re going to be introduced to their city in a whole new way,” Olsen said.
“I designed it to be nationally consumed, because the danger of projects like this is, even if everybody in town loves it, it’s like, OK, so there are these ads in this one city that everybody loves, but who cares?” he told me.
“So you have to make it bigger than that. ... Working with the old master footage, there’s a weight to it. It felt like history in my hands.”
“Rainier: A Beer Odyssey”
▪ Seattle International Film Festival
▪ May 13 and May 16
▪ SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 805 E. Pine St., Seattle
▪ Tickets online at siff.net/festival/rainier-a-beer-odyssey
This story was originally published May 1, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
