Time (September 1, 1997)
THE NEW VIDEO WIZARDS
FOUR HOT YOUNG DIRECTORS ARE BRINGING FRESH VERVE TO MTV. HOLLYWOOD
COULD BE NEXT
BY CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY
Six months ago, Elektra Records decided that Missy "Misdemeanor"
Elliott was a hip-hop star. However, there was one problem. Outside of
the relatively small demographic of people who pay close attention to
the songwriting credits of R.-and-B. albums--Elliott has composed minor
hits for such acts as Aaliyah, Ginuwine and Jodeci--hardly anybody had
ever heard of her. Also, Elliott isn't your typical Top 40 sex siren.
She has a regular, stocky body, the kind most people have unless
they're members of a professional sports team or Keenen Ivory Wayan's
all-woman house band. So the record company turned to music-video
director Hype Williams. Over the past year or so, Williams--his real
first name is Harold--has become the most in-demand music-video
director going; his clips boast a sensuous palette of colors, and, most
important, they tend to get heavy play on MTV.
Williams met with Elliott and outlined his plans: he saw her in a
patent-leather suit pumped full of air. "He told me he wanted to make
me look like the Michelin Man," says Elliott. "I was like, 'Excuse me?'
And he was like, 'Trust me. It's going to be hot.'" Try scorching. The
Williams-directed music video for The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly), the first
single off Elliott's debut album, Supa Dupa Fly, features the singer in
that weird, bulbous leather suit, as well as surreally distorted camera
shots and dancers prancing in shiny yellow raincoats. MTV has been
playing it steadily, propelling the previously little-known Elliott to
the top of the charts.
Last year music videos seemed to be an exhausted form. Shows like MTV's
Beavis and Butt-head (which was recently canceled) made ironic sport of
them; programs like VH-1's sporadically clever Pop-Up Video (which
displays trivia-filled text about videos as they play) seemed to
suggest that they were too tiresome to endure without supplementary
information. Still, last winter MTV, which had begun to tilt toward
Jenny McCarthy-helmed nonmusic programs, announced that it was
recommitting itself to videos and would play 10 to 20 additional hours
of music programming every week.
MTV's ratings are still going down (they slipped 7% in the second
quarter of this year), but thanks to the increased play videos are
receiving, there's a new wave of directors on the way up. The network
has been de-emphasizing alternative rock recently and searching for
other forms to replace it, creating an opportunity for directors with a
strong, clear vision to bring performers from other genres to
widespread attention. The world of videos is high stakes. Gina Harrell,
head of video production at Elektra Records, says her label spends
about $300,000 to $600,000 a video for major acts; and since MTV began
tagging the names of directors on videos four years ago, competition
among filmmakers to produce the most inventive work has heated up.
Several newcomers, most notably Williams (who did Mary J. Blige's lush
clip Everything), Paul Hunter (Erykah Badu, Sean "Puffy" Combs),
Jonathan Glazer (Radiohead, Jamiroquai) and Floria Sigismondi (Marilyn
Manson, Tricky), have risen to the challenge. As a result, the
directors themselves are becoming MTV stars. Williams and Hunter have
almost become brand names; each has a colorful, highly recognizable
style, and hip-hop stars--and even some alternative bands--are rushing
to work with them. All four of these directors are up for multiple
awards at next week's MTV Music Video Awards, and all four are starting
to hear from Hollywood as well.
Interestingly, some of the directors are contemptuous of the field in
which they've risen to the top. "Music videos are largely rubbish,"
says Glazer, whose video Virtual Insanity, for the trippy Euro-dance
group Jamiroquai, is nominated for a record 10 MTV awards. Says
Sigismondi: "I don't watch [MTV]. I'm really not up on what's trendy.
I'm in my own little world."
Williams, 28, who grew up in Queens, New York, wanted to be a painter.
"That's what probably stimulated my interest in color now," he says. "I
wanted to be Basquiat or Keith Haring." Hunter, 31, started his career
as a photographer but decided to study film at California State
University at Northridge after visiting a movie set when his brother,
an aspiring actor, got a part in a small indie film. Hunter later
dropped out, and says now, "I learned that I had to go out and hustle
if I was going to make it, [that] I was going to have to go out and
make films by whatever means I could."
A scrappy intelligence makes the work of all four of these directors
stand out even when the songs they are visualizing aren't all that
strong. Hip-hop king Combs' It's All About the Benjamins is a slight
affair on record, but in Hunter's video it bursts into life. We see
Combs, with his white-suited posse, running through a forest; the scene
shifts to a stone quarry, drenched in floodlights and filled with
revelers; then we see Combs again, in black, rapping onstage as the
film slips and slides in the projector--and that's all in the first 10
seconds.
Glazer's video for Jamiroquai is less flashy but nonetheless eye
catching. The band is mostly unknown in the States; its current album,
Traveling Without Moving, is a mere echo of stronger, tighter, better
American R. and B. from the '70s. Virtual Insanity, a rant against
technology that draws heavily, if not entirely successfully, on Stevie
Wonder for musical inspiration, is the only truly catchy song on the
album. In the video we see Jamiroquai's singer, Jay Kay, standing alone
in a mostly empty room. The floor seems to move as he dances, sings and
poses; furniture appears and vanishes. The clip is somewhat dry, but it
keeps us watching as we try to figure out the physics of this weird
space. "If you're simple, you're effective," says Glazer, 31, who
majored in theater arts at London's Middlesex Polytechnic College.
Sigismondi, 31, who was born in Italy and lives in Canada, says she
never aims to shock, though she usually strikes a nerve: "I try and
look for beauty in darkness, to make some kind of harmony in the
images." In her video for shock-rocker Manson's Tourniquet, we are
treated to the sight of Manson shaving his own armpit; in Sigismondi's
clip for The Beautiful People, we see writhing worms, rows of stomping
fascistic boots and Manson's mouth pushed open by some cruel dental
device. The songs themselves are dumb and brutal, but the videos have a
ghastly playfulness that evokes David Lynch and Federico Fellini.
So, of course, Hollywood is calling. In the past few years other video
directors have made the jump from MTV to feature films; David Fincher,
who created videos for Madonna, went on to direct Seven and the
forthcoming thriller The Game. Sigismondi says movie scripts have been
"flooding in," but that she hasn't chosen a project. Williams is
developing a live-action Fat Albert feature for Bill Cosby. Hunter has
signed to direct a film for HBO, and Glazer is working on the movie
Gangsta Number One. But none of them have yet decided to leave videos
for movies permanently. Says Glazer: "I don't believe you graduate from
one to another." Meeting rock stars, attending awards shows--who would
want to leave a film school like this anyway?
(
geocities.com/hypepaul)