by David Carducci
Record-Courier staff writer
If someone had asked me a few weeks ago to guess the actress cast opposite Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James in his newest commercial, I probably would have come up with names like Halle Berry or Charlize Theron.
I never would have thought of my 73-year-old mother.
So, you can imagine my shock when my mom called while I was in Omaha for the NCAA Tournament to tell me she had been cast in a prominent role in LeBron's new VitaminWater commercial.
For those of you who don't already know, my mom, Judith Carducci who lives in Hudson, is an artist with an international reputation, and obviously I am incredibly proud of her.
She was a prodigy as a child growing up near Boston, but ended up earning a master's degree from Columbia University in social work.
Not long after earning that degree, she was preparing to re-dedicate her life to art by studying at the Fontainebleau near Paris when she met my father and decided to change her plans. After they were married, she thought it made more sense to help the family income by getting a job as a social worker.
When she finally retired after several decades working in the alcoholism treatment program at the VA hospital in Brecksville, my mom returned to her art.
Her talent came springing back.
Within a few years, she was recognized as a master in pastels and portraiture, and she was traveling the world painting, lecturing and starring in workshops to help other artists.
Her story can be an inspiration to anyone who has been forced to postpone a dream.
You can see some my mother's work on her Web site at www.judithcarducci.com, including a still life of Kent State football memorabilia she donated to the university's athletic department last year.
That Web site is where MJZ productions out of Los Angeles discovered my mother.
The company was preparing to film the latest in a popular series of commercials for Glaceau's VitaminWater and needed to cast the role of a courtroom artist to both act and sketch in an ad featuring LeBron James as a lawyer.
VitaminWater's commercials are famous for taking superstar athletes and musicians and placing them in shocking new roles.
By now most of you have seen Shaquille O'Neal stretch for the finish line as a jockey in a horse race, or football star Brian Urlacher and baseball star David Ortiz teaming up in an unusually violent game of international badminton.
This new ad featuring LeBron James follows right along those same lines, and it should be just as funny.
Ironically, the director of the series of commercials, Rocky Morton, also directed music videos starring former Beatle George Harrison, who wrote one of my parents' favorite songs (the beautiful "Something"), as well as Miles Davis.
On my parent's very first date in 1960, my dad took my mom to see Miles Davis live at the Village Vanguard in New York City.
Miles may be responsible for "the birth of the cool," but he also played a big role in the birth of my family.
Morton and MJZ had tried to cast the role of the courtroom artist by auditioning actors in Los Angeles, but couldn't quite find the right fit until they decided to look for a "real" artist and found my mother on the Internet.
While the idea of my mother acting next to one of today's greatest icons was shocking, the fact that my mother was excited to take on the challenge came as no surprise.
At her age, she is amazingly game for anything.
I'm convinced if someone called her tomorrow and asked her to climb K2 and do a painting from its summit, she'd be packed and ready to go within 24 hours.
I only hope I have that kind of energy at her age.
Heck, I hope I have that kind of energy next year.
She never tired during back-to-back 12-to-14 hour days of rehearsing and filming last week on a spectacular courtroom set built by local craftsmen inside a large hall in the Cleveland Convention Center.
When she returned, she was just as excited to tell stories of her experience as she was when she came back from walking with penguins in Antarctica, or from trips to China, Turkey or the Soviet Union back before the fall of communism.
This had been another great adventure in what has already been a pretty full life.
She talked about being blown away by the set, which had flourishes you would expect more for a major motion picture than a 30-second commercial. It had carved caryatids on the pilasters, similar to those she saw just last summer on the Porch of the Maidens at the Acropolis.
Of course, she talked about the food they served, cooked by an on-site chef. Several extras told her, "that's why most of us do this type of work."
She talked about the hard work, the professionalism and the kindness demonstrated by everyone involved in the production, including LeBron.
"He was extremely charismatic," she said. "Before he arrived, we were all told not to approach him, not to ask for an autograph or to engage him in conversation. He was there to work, and they didn't want him to have any distractions.
"So, when he appeared, there was dead silence on the set," my mother said. "They started working with LeBron, getting him involved with the part. And as soon as he got the first phrase down to where he felt comfortable, he turned around and greeted everyone. He walked around and shook hands with everyone."
After a while, LeBron noticed my mom sketching away in the front row of the courtroom. He had assumed she was an actress, and had no idea she was actually doing portraits of him at work.
"You are really doing that," LeBron said, stopping the filming. He picked up some of the finished drawings, looked at them, then turned to the extras in the room and asked them to give her a round of applause.
She probably didn't get the exact feeling a young actress gets from an ovation after her first night on Broadway, but part of me wonders if it was enough to get her to put aside her art for another career.
I hear Universal is about to cast Jack Nicholson's love interest in his upcoming movie.
I'm sure it's more likely that this will be my mother's one and only brush with fame as an actress.
It still makes for a great story, and I can't wait to see the finished commercial when it airs all over the country in the very near future.
If they stick to the original storyboards, my mother's sketch of LeBron may be the very last shot in the commercial. I know I'm a proud son and so I'm a little biased, but I'm sure it will be a masterpiece.