It must be the epitome of mixed blessings to spend your career as an actor and only be remembered for one role.
For Brian Baumgartner of The Office fame, that means being bumbling, barely functional accountant Kevin Malone. And being remembered as Kevin means being remembered for one specific thing: spilling your chili.
Kevin's famous chili is most famous for being dropped all over the Dunder Mifflin floor in Season 5, which means Baumgartner's legacy is especially difficult to cash in on, as far as such things go.
He has leveraged it, but really just with a line of apparel benefitting the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation. So could there be more gas in that revenue-generating tank IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN BY GAS?
Bush's Beans knows what's up. They recruited Baumgartner to play a caricature of himself, blurred with a bit of bumbling Kevin, to cook a pot of his supposedly real chili recipe for National Chili Day (apparently a thing, at least for bean brands).
You can almost picture Baumgartner's internal struggle about how thoroughly to embrace this aspect of his career versus just wanting to move on and let his character's clumsiness and ineptitude live in the past.
Would you do it? Would you squeeze every dollar you could out of your pop culture cachet? Or would you live a life of unflappable dignity, depriving the world of your chili and your comedic genius?
Read more: And roll that beautiful bean footage of Baumgartner's chili.
David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
David.Griner@Adweek.com
