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— by Rodrigo Perez
For years critics and TV viewers have wondered, who — or what — are we really celebrating during the annual Video Music Awards? Are Moonmen handed out in praise of the artist? The song? The director? The answer, of course, is all of the above. It takes a great song, a charismatic artist and indelible imagery to create an enduring music video.
And let's face it: Groundbreaking videos have helped to transform more than a few solo artists and bands into bona fide superstars. Lenny Kravitz's career, for example, was on track, but after Mark Romanek shot the electrifying video for "Are You Gonna Go My Way?," there was no looking back. ("Up until that point, things were growing nicely," Kravitz has said. "But after that song and video hit, my life changed. It blew up.") Palm Pictures' "Directors Label" DVD series, meanwhile, has been doing its part to showcase the distinctive auteurs behind the camera who have immortalized musicians and songs with unique, unforgettable accompanying imagery.
Volume 1 in the Directors Label series, released in November, 2004, featured genre-defying directors Spike Jonze (Beastie Boys, Weezer), Michel Gondry (White Stripes, Björk) and Chris Cunningham (Madonna, Aphex Twin). This time around, in Volume 2, the franchise highlights the work of four hugely influential video- and filmmakers — Anton Corbijn, Stéphane Sednaoui, Jonathan Glazer and Mark Romanek — in a four-disc box set.
Here's a preview.
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MARK ROMANEK: The Angry Perfectionist |
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 Number of VMAs: A whopping 20 Moonmen, plus the only Video Vanguard Award given to a director independent of any specific artist. Romanek is music videos, with more than 50 nominations to his credit. Not even heavyweights like David Fincher or Paul Hunter can boast similar stats.
Signature Look: With his unforgettable eye candy, Romanek has made some of the most iconic videos of all time. If Fincher pioneered the music video as a purely artistic vehicle, Romanek followed that trail and then blazed utterly new trails of his own. His aesthetics quote myriad visual styles, from Michael Bay-like blockbuster films to the paintings of Francis Bacon to chic, fashion-forward photography, and his approach is unabashedly psychological. "I'm always looking for images that have Freudian or Jungian resonance," he said. "I'm always trying to understand how meaning is communicated in imagery."
What He's Famous For: Appropriating and referencing past aesthetics: Erwim Yüm's oddball sculptures (the Chili Peppers' "Don't Stop"), Edward Gorey's witty, macabre drawings (NIN's "The Perfect Drug"), Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" (k.d. lang's "Constant Craving"), Fellini's "Satyricon" ("Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz), and so on. He obscured Linkin Park in silhouette for two-thirds of a song ("Faint"), filmed Johnny Cash's epitaph and almost brought Trent Reznor and Rick Rubin to tears with the clip. "When I saw the ["Hurt"] video it was … goose bumps up the spine," Reznor said. "It's an unbelievably powerful piece of work."
What He's Infamous for: Transgressive imagery: Killing Jay-Z ("99 Problems"), handcuffing Trent Reznor as a visceral S&M subject ("Closer"), a pre-Britney jailbait-fetish piece (a then-17-year-old Fiona Apple in 1997's "Criminal"), the most expensive video ever made, according to the Guinness Book of World Records (Michael Jackson's $7 million "Scream"), and enraging Weezer's Rivers Cuomo on the "El Scorcho" video with too many distracting lights and a sign that was innocently spelled, "Weerez." Romanek — who eventually left the project, handing over the edit to Cuomo — said, "It didn't go smoothly; it was the most contentious thing I've ever done."
What Might Have Been: Spike Jonze originally sent Weezer an outlandish treatment for "El Scorcho," featuring Flavor Flav blowing up by the end of the first verse.
What He's Known For Behind the Scenes: Meticulous methodology: Five hundred calls to the LAPD re: the monstrous fireworks in Audioslaves's "Cochise" video; clipping Beck with a car with faulty brakes and injuring his knee during a "Midnight Cowboy" take on the "I'm walkin' here!" scene in "Devil's Haircut"; inducing Trent Reznor to puke on the set of the "Closer" video due to the smell of rotten meat and having Reznor spinning upside down for too long; and almost prompting the Red Hot Chili Peppers' sensitive John Frusciante to flee the set because of his obstreperous, forceful orders.
He Puts the Artist Through the Wringer: "I think I really torture people," Romanek said. "It's my job to be the prick that keeps pushing them and they get mad at me sometimes, but this is the only time we're going to capture this moment. You rest later; this is forever on film, and when they see the finished video I think they understand." On torturing Reznor on the dirty and depraved set of "Closer": "He was a willing victim."
Curiously Absent From This Collection: Iggy Pop's "Beside You," Lenny Kravitz's "Is There Any Love In Your Heart."
Absent, Not Missed: Macy Gray's "I Try" and "Do Something" and the Wallflowers' "Sleepwalker."
He Gets Upset When Things Go Wrong: "We were literally hiding from Mark at the side of the stage," said Audioslave's Tom Morello. Reznor said that "if he didn't like something you didn't wonder if he didn't like it, you pretty much knew right away. Jay-Z, meanwhile, admitted that "he [can be] a scary dude. I don't want to tell him his business."
Chris Rock Says Lenny Is Lucky: According to Rock, Kravitz owes his career to Romanek's simple, unforgettable, "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" video. "Every time Lenny Kravitz gets laid," joked Rock, "when he [climaxes] he yells, 'Mark Romanek!"
Not the Retiring Type: Despite his retirement from the music video industry to concentrate on developing feature films, Romanek was recently lured back to the medium by Coldplay's "Speed of Sound." In spite of the lukewarm reception to his feature debut, "One Hour Photo," featuring a bleached-blond psychotic played by Robin Williams, and the fact that "A Cold Case" with Tom Hanks fell apart two weeks before shooting was to begin, Romanek is unbowed. He said he's written two scripts: a psychological war movie with a title he couldn't divulge, and another that he vaguely described as similar to "One Hour Photo" in that "it's about a man who's defined by his job."
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STÉPHANE SEDNAOUI: Dynamic Ladies' Man |
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 Number of VMAs: Six career-defining clips for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette, including the Best New Artist award for the aforementioned Canadian's "Ironic." Fourteen nominations, thus far.
Signature Look: Frenetic, playful and full of vibrant color bursts. Sednaoui was so taken with the Chili Peppers' "Give It Away" performance that his jerking, style-making spastic zoom technique was his way of participating in the punk funkers' unbridled vigor. "He's very emotionally dynamic and he has an affect on people like a tidal wave," said Björk. "[The effect] exaggerates the person and he documents that. I think it's a rare talent to have."
What He's Famous for: Painting the Chili Peppers silver and featuring Anthony Kiedis' then-spare tire for a video that launched them into the pop stratosphere; capturing Alanis' misuse of the term "irony" forever from four different perspectives; furthering Björk's reputation as a peculiar iconoclast; providing U2 with a visual means to complement the libidinous dance music they explored on Achtung Baby.
What He's Infamous For: Casting Sofia Coppola as his lead performer in the Black Crowes' "Sometimes Salvation" shortly after she was practically driven into exile by critics outraged by her atrocious acting in daddy's "Godfather III"; somehow making Michael Stipe's chest hair seem sexy ("Lotus"); deep-sixing U2's previously unassailable dominance with the Village People-esque video for "Discotheque," the first single from the much-maligned 1997 album, Pop.
What He's Envied For: His good looks and French accent. Sednaoui has dated Björk and Kylie Minogue and fathered a child with ex-girlfriend and French supermodel, Laetita Casta. Garbage's Shirley Manson even developed a hot and bothered crush during the filming of their breakthrough video, "Queer." "It was a very erotic moment for me," said Manson. "He's a hottie — smart and funny — and I had to straddle him [while he held the camera]. It was at the end of a very long video shoot and I'm sure impure thoughts crossed my mind."
What He's Known For Behind the Scenes: Jump-starting the Chili Peppers' career with "Give It Away," only to be dumped like dead weight after they were displeased with his follow-up clip for "Breaking the Girl." "I do 'Give Eet Away,' zey love eet," Sednaoui said in his thick Gallic accent. "I do [the 'Breaking The Girl' video,] zey 'ate eet. Eet's a fiasco. I don't work wis zem for 10 years."
Alls Well That Ends Well: Sedanoui assisted in resuscitating the Peppers' waning star power with their poetic comeback single, "Scar Tissue," that portrayed the Peppers as bloody, battered survivors. "Zey are a little bit broken by life, but still continuing," he said.
Curiously Absent from this Collection: Garbage's "Milk," Madonna's "Fever," the Smashing Pumpkins' "Today," Fiona Apple's "Sleep to Dream."
Absent, Not Missed Jamiroquai's "Little L," PM Dawn's "Ways Of The Wind," Traci Lords' "Fallen Angel."
Coming Up: While he has made short films — inspired by, for instance, Björk and Lou Reed songs — Sednaoui hasn't tackled a movie yet. But he is in the process of writing his first feature, a story that he says is about "sex, decadence, perversity and debauchery."
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Photos: Palm Pictures
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