• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, June 2, 2010

"Your filthy hair made you a star," Hollywood kingmaker Les Grossman tells teen idol and occasional vampire Robert Pattinson. And smart Hollywood mash-ups and pop culture riffs continue to make MTV relevant and fun. A new series of video spots promoting the June 6 MTV Movie Awards is making the viral rounds, all using the conceit that fictional producer Grossman is running the show.

For those who missed it Les Grossman is the smartest career move Tom Cruise made in recent years. Sporting more prosthetics than most B-list starlets, Cruise portrayed the paunchy, balding and foul-mouthed Hollywood "player" who has all of the tact of a Marine drill sergeant in Tropic Thunder. In one spot, when show host Pattinson proposes that he get a suit and clean up a bit, Cruise/Grossman replies. "I love it." Then he rips "Rpattz" a new one. "In fact, I love it so much I'm going to fly Vidal f***ing Sassoon here to personally give you a Brazillian blowout! And when he is done, I'll give you the number of a good plumber because you just flushed you f***ing career down the toilet."

They just don't write ad copy like that anymore.

But the best spot so far has MTV rewriting history to send-up Cruise and one of his own great film moments. In the iconic "tighty-whitie" "Old-Time Rock and Roll" lip-synch scene from Risky Business, the young Cruise slides into the scene wearing khakis. Grossman interrupts and declares. "Did anyone else see this? Someone just took a dump in my eyes." He rips Cruise's pants off and tells him that in teen movies audiences "love ass."

As brand marketers throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into CGI visual wizardry in order to climb the viral video charts online, the basic lessons of MTV are worth remembering. From the beginning of the "video age" they helped invent this brand knew that pop culture was the currency of the modern media economy. These are ads that will always be more conversational, intimate and effective than piles of dazzling imagery. They speak to memory, audience's shared experiences and the personality of MTV itself. They are conversations in video form.