i want my music-video auteur: the director's label roundtable
by amanda petrusicn

12.05 - 01.06

anyone who came of age in the early-to-mid 90’s understands the psychic heft of the music video. we huddled in basements and family rooms, barely awake at 1 a.m. on sunday nights, volume as low as we could stand it, chewing fistfuls of cereal straight from the box, waiting, eagerly, for mtv’s 120 minutes to roll out it’s detritus: all the videos the networks producers deemed unfit for less-alienating timeslots. it was the peak of alternative music, and 120 minutes became our portal; onscreen, a handful of directors laid down the sonic iconography of an entire generation.

fiona apple looked sinister, blank-faced and too-thin, sidestepping plastic cups of beer, tugging at her camisole, eyes vacant. nirvana wobbled through a field of blood-red poppies, while a crow mouthed the lyrics to ‘heart shaped box’ and plastic fetuses swung from trees. then it disappeared in a flash of white light. bjork wiggled about on a flatbed truck wheeling through downtown manhattan, twitching and blinking in grainy monochrome. radiohead appeared hopelessly enigmatic; thom yorke perched in the red backseat of a giant car, careening down an empty road, slowly pursuing a man who’d presumably thwarted the karma police. by the millenniums close, music had a brand new parlance, and a revolutionary look to go with it.

in late 2003, palm pictures launched the directors label, with dvd releases from pioneering video directors spike jonze, michel gondry and chris cunningham. the series encouraged viewers to reconsider the music video as more than a promotional tool or a vehicle for the acceleration of youth culture, and to instead examine these tiny films as independent works of art. the next round of releases features a quarter of equally influential filmmakers: mark romanek (one hour photo), jonathan glazer(sexy beast and birth), stéphane sednaoui and anton corbjin. paste recently enjoyed the good fortune of moderating a roundtable discussion between all four artists.

paste: it’s exciting to have all you here at once.
mark romanek: it’s hard, too, because we don’t really like each other personally

paste: sure, the animosity is palpable! [laughter] can you each talk about how you got started?
anton corbijn: well, there was no competition when i started.

anton, you began by working as a photographer for the new musical express?
ac: i started way before that – in the early 70’s in holland. when i moved england in 79’, i started with nme. it was always a side project.
stéphane sednaoui: this was before mtv, right?
ac: yeah, before mtv. they all learned form me. [laughter]
mr: actually, anton’s depeche mode videos were a big influence on me. they were beautiful. you know what i thought was cool about them? … it was the first time that you sensed that the band had adopted a band filmmaker who was going to do all their videos. so, in some ways, you were almost a part of the band as the visual documenter. that was kind of new.
jonathan glazer: the band didn’t have an idea of how they should come across visually, did they?
ac: no, they didn’t at all. i could experiment and make mistakes.
mr: tim pope did that with the cure, too. he was the band’s video-maker.
jg: how many videos did you do for depeche mode?
ac: sixteen

do you feel expectations have changed for videos since you all began? certainly the way they’re perceived and the way they’re played has changed quite a bit, or, i should say, not played.
mr: expectations are low now. at a peak point, during the mid-to-late 90’s expectations were very high. now they’re been lowered systematically, so no one expects anything.
ss: when mtv moved from music videos to reality shows and games, that’s when all attention dropped down. then they created mtv2, but it didn’t catch up.
it’s obviously made your job more difficult, but i would think in some ways it’s maybe easier because now there’s less pressure to be commercial?
ss: i think we liked the pressure, though. of making something as good as possible that everyone was going to see. the challenge was interesting because of the fact so many people would see it – that was very exciting.
mr: music goes in cycles, and the music hasn’t been particularly great for the last three, four, five years. when the music fertile and exciting, it attracts interesting filmmakers and the record labels get excited and they want to spend a little more money on the videos, and people care.
ss: there was a moment where i was fighting for directors to have rights over their work, and i was talking with lawyers from the record labels. a few were very nice and agreed with me, but they said that it’s not going to change because labels are in complete power. and i was saying that there’s a value to the music video that comes from the talent of the director. and they told me the labels cannot calculate how much a video helps to sell a record. so in the end, if a record sold four-million albums, there’s no way to know how much of that was of the because of the music video. and now, with mp3’s and the internet becoming so strong, the video is even less important to record labels.

which limits the sorts of opportunities you have. but do you think there will be a renaissance?
ss: i think possibly for the next generation of directors. because of new systems like ipods - maybe somebody will come up with a fantastic tool to watch videos on a little machine. [ed: steve jobs announced apple’s video ipod just days after our roundtable]
jg: but it’ll never be the same way. there won’t be a need for videos. they’re going to be different. at that point, none of us would choose to make them.
ac: it’s like when there was the change from album cover to cd, the format got smaller.
mr: although you can watch videos now on itunes on your computer. if you have a big computer screen, it’s about as big as a small television. people maybe won’t watch them exclusively on their handheld devices. i think until the music gets better, then nothing…it all starts with better music.
ss: but there is good music! i remember dj shadow before could have a buget of like $100,000. now i bet he has a $20,000 budget.
mr: i guess there’s always good music. i’m talking about the periods where even the mainstream music is good. like, nirvana comes along, sells 10-million records and it’s actually great.

are there any artists working now that you’d like to shoot?
mr: i’ve never worked with tom waits. i’ve never worked with bjork or bob dylan or leonard cohen or belle and sebastian or the acrade fire…
ac: tom waits for no one [laughter]
mr: he doesn’t seem to be waiting for me. he’d be my first choice. or radiohead! jonathan got radiohead. all the guys here have worked with all the people i want to work with.
ac: but you worked with jay-z. he let you do your thing. and johnny cash, of course.
mr: i’m not saying i haven’t been lucky. but the woman asked a question. i’m greedy

is there pressure to make sure that the artists are pretty? do the record labels pressure you to compromise?
ss: in the 60’s, 70’s and before that, it didn’t matter what the artist looked like. now, you have artists who already look like models, and then we cheat in post-production to make them even more sleek.
mr: but in the 50’s and 60’s there were pop idols and they were popular in large part because they were handsome or beautiful…
ss: there were also a lot of people who just had good voices, though, now, i feel like they all look pretty.
mr: we’ve all established a body of work now so that no record label is going to come to us and tell we should do a video like this.
jg: but the industry has changed. there are so many compromises. by the time it gets to us…
mr: when’s the last time you ever did a video?
jg: four or five years ago.
mr: do you have a desire to do more?
jg: absolutely, but the timing hasn’t been right.
mr: who do you want to be working with.
jg: well, i’d love to do a white stripes video.
ss: personally, i don’t really want to do more music videos. when i work, it’s my work. it’s my negative. i own the picture. in music videos, it’s work for hire. at the moment, i have a few art projects i’d like to do, and i’d rather spend my time with them.
you work for free when you work with music videos. at this point, i’d rather do my own project. maybe after doing a movie, i would go back to music videos to entertain myself.
jg: i’m into the pogues. i’ve always wanted to film shane macgowan. but if somebody’s going to offer me $20,000 to do a band i have no interest in, if that’s the budget. i’d prefer to do it for nothing for someone like macgowen. it’s never going to get seen, but i know i’m going to do a better job for someone who makes art i care about.

so making a video now is really about a labor of love. have any of you had to work with a song you didn’t like?
mr: just to get my career going, i would sometimes take jobs that were, in retrospect, a mistake. not in the last seven, eight, nine years.
jg: richard ashcroft. i loved the verve, but then he became a solo artist and sent me his single. to be frank, the song wasn’t good. i did it because i wanted to work with him.

in the process of filming, do you ever feel any resistance from the artist? maybe fear that the visual aspect will potentially upstage them, or that the images plastered to their song will be inappropriate?
mr: i have not had that resistance beforehand, but afterwards, when the video became successful and got seen a lot, and they would play the song in concert and everyone knew all the words to it, there was a retrospective resentment that maybe the video had upstaged the music. in fiona apple’s case, i think she retrospectively went “oh, gee, now people think of me as this girl in her underwear,” even though we discussed it at length beforehand. you could argue that credibility could have been illustrated in a way that was less prudent…she certainly would have had credibility either way because she’s an intelligent, interesting artist.
jg: i think any artist takes risks. not taking a risk is taking a risk.

on some level, you’ve all had to deal with censorship. how do handle that?
ss: when i hear censorship, i hear mtv.
ac: that’s the only censorship you get.
ss: some censorship i understand.
mr: well, mtv is seen by children, so it’s ok for them to say what’s appropriate, but it’s very subjective and very random. it changes from week to week or month to month, depending on who the person in a room for viacom is. whether she’s an old biddy or a more liberal person. the thing that i think is worse is directors who pre-censor their own ideas because they’re trying to make something that will fit into the narrow, user friendly sensibility. then you get bad art. somewhere along the line, i was emboldened, i think, mainly, by trent reznor, to say, “lets just film what we want. we’ll worry about getting it on mtv later. let’s not make something that fits into their narrow set of criteria, because that will just be junk.” i credit him for that. worry about the other stuff later. that way, at least it exists somewhere and can be seen. luckily, now we have these dvd’s and can see them without mtv’s hand involved.

could you talk me through the process of first hearing a song to making the translation into the visual?
mr: i call stéphane and say, “what would you do?”
ss: and i call anton or jonathan. basically, all ideas come from these guys. [laughter]
jg: there’s no formula to it.
ag: if i get inside the thing, if that makes any sense, then i can see it. you’re like a character. and you can see anything. that’s when i know i’m going to make something…
ss: then you’re inside and the artist says, “yeah, i like it, but…it’s so painful”

so the process is always collaborative? does that change as you establish yourself?
mr: it’s more collaborative in the beginning, but when you make a reputation for yourself as a director that helps sell cd’s for the labels, they treat you with more respect and it becomes less collaborative. they actually say, “what do you see, oh great, wise video director?” and then you say, “i see that it’s all upside down and purple,” and they say, “oh that’s great.” they leave you alone more.

what was the process of compiling these dvd’s like? was it evident to you right away what you wanted to include?
mr: in order to keep the quality of the dvd high…we only had so much time to work with. i just sort of made subjective choices based on the ones i was most proud of, really. it’s only half of what i’ve done, but hopefully the better half.

was it strange to go back and look at your older work?
mr: well, i didn’t go back too far. i wouldn’t do the really old stuff. anton had attitude of showing everything, but i have stuff i’d rather not show. i started with a k.d. lang video 1992. so it wasn’t hard, because i didn’t look.
ac: like mark said, i wanted the journey of an artist. whatever level it is, it’s a journey. that way it’s interesting to people who want to learn something about your work.
mr: i didn’t have the courage to do that.
ac: there are lots of videos on mine. more than on mark’s. there are quite a few videos i don’t want to see anymore.
ss: i had to be 90-percent satisfied at the time with the video. i wanted to get videos from different periods. for the past eight years, i did not enjoy watching u2’s “discotheque” because i was missing one simple shot that i wanted to do, but couldn’t at the time. later, i found bono and shot his face exactly the way i wanted it. now, i’m so happy to see it on dvd.



visit the official directors label website


back to press