Cloudbusting

Flying between NY and the NW to shoot my video I spent a lot of time watching VH1 Classic in the air.

On my first trip out, spending most of the flight thinking about how exactly we were going to turn my treatment into something we could actually shoot on our budget, I came across a video that hit me in a way videos just don't or can't any longer. I was floored emotionally.

The video for Kate Bush's Cloudbusting.



Which I give you a link to here formatted for iTunes and the new iPod video merely to share with people what I now regard as one of the best 5 videos ever made - I'm putting this at a tie between Mike Mills' All I Need video for Air at a tie for first place. And I do not like videos that are literal. But listen - they looped the song to make it work. It's really a short film set to that song, just as we hoped Directions would give rise to.

What I can say is this: for every over the top color grading so every video looks like Fight Club, or every overblown CGI idea, or every show off camera move and quick edit... Nothing compares to someone like Donald Sutherland and what he can convey in single human gestures. That's something no special effect or gimmick or stylization can come close to.

I did not know until now that Terry Gilliam was involved in conceptualizing the video. Maybe that explains a lot. But ultimately it was directed by Julian Doyle, his effects guy (who I think may have gone to my film school) who I wish now had directed more.

It's a fascinating story about the video and the song, and in some ways I don't know if I should explain this or not so if you'd like to keep the interpreation of the song / video as your own skip ahead; it's based upon a long out of print memoir by Peter Reich called A Book of Dreams about growing up as the son of Wilhelm Reich; a lovable crackpot who was a contemporary of Freud and Einstein but eventually came to believe that life was pervaded by orgasmic life energy called Orgone that could be channeled to affect the weather and destroy invading UFOs. Make no mistake, Reich was crazy, but it didn't help that the US gov't actually did persecute him and destroy all his work; it only fuelled the delusion further. So strange to say that this is actually based upon a true story. This book was also the basis for Patti Smith's Birdland off the legendary Horses album. I just tracked down a copy at great expense and am about to read.

And again it's what the music video as a legitimate form in its own right needs more of these days.

Kate's new album Aerial is considered by myself and Colin Meloy and Chris Walla as one of the absolute best albums of last year. Colin emailed me one day nothing but a few lines of the lyrics; to say merely, how good is this?

Who knows who wrote that song of Summer
That blackbirds sing at dusk
This is a song of colour
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust
Then climb into bed and turn to dust

Kate Bush