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SMC Pod #219: The Music Video Movie Director Generation · Secret Movie Club Podcast

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Hello, Secret Movie Clubbers, and welcome to Secret Movie Club Podcast 219,
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The Music Video Director Generation.
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It is, I say this at the head of every pod, but I mean it. It's wonderful to
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have you. I'm grateful for whoever's listening.
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Today, I wanted to talk about the generation of filmmakers that cut their teeth
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directing music videos when MTV was at its height, really in the 80s and the early to mid 90s.
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These are directors like David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola,
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Michelle Gondry, and even some directors, it might have been obvious to you
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or not, but like Michael Bay, Zack Snyder.
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There are so many that came out of music video directing, but we're only going
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to talk about a slice, a cross section.
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And I always find it fascinating to think about these things because you can
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see how the aesthetic of where they came from, how that then informs their feature film work.
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And I think about it especially now because we are on the precipice of a movie
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coming from A24 called Backrooms,
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directed by a 20-year-old who did a really popular viral found footage type series when he was 16.
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And we're now fully, I think, in the TikTok, YouTube generation of filmmakers
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who are going to take over the medium and going to go places with it.
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And so that's what I wanted to talk about today.
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Secret Movie Club Podcast 220 will be out in two weeks. We always record three
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or I do about three and then I take a week off, kind of refresh and then do
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three more. So next week is a week off.
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Please, if you like what you're hearing, listen to our back catalog and Secret Movie Club podcast 220.
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I'm going to call for now Gemini Films. And what I mean by that,
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maybe I'll come up with a better title by the time I record it.
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But I was, I recently saw Charles Vidor's Gilda from 1946 starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford.
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And it's a great movie. And as I was watching it,
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Every scene felt like an inversion of Casablanca.
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Michael Curtiz's 1941 Casablanca, or 42, so much so to the point that I had to look it up.
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I was like, what's going on here? This feels like Casablanca if they inverted everything.
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And sure enough, that's what they did. They actually took Casablanca and they
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turned it on its head. So I thought, you know, that's so fascinating because
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so many movies were made that way.
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Everything from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood.
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He has admitted that that really was a rejiggering in a way of The Treasure
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of the Sierra Madre, as well as an adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel.
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And then his The Master was based partially on another John Huston project,
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John Huston's documentaries.
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David Lynch would do this all the time. Blue Velvet is a Gemini or Gemini meaning
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twin of Rear Window, Mulholland Drive of Vertigo, Lost Highway as well of Vertigo.
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He almost kind of went back to that.
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And Mulholland Drive of Sunset Boulevard, probably more to the point,
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Lost Highway of Vertigo.
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And then there are the Indiana Jones films, which we're going to be showing on June 21st.
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The original Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is partially inspired
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by a now kind of forgotten Charlton Heston movie from the 1950s called,
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I think, Secret of the Incas.
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And mostly I think what they got from that was Heston's wardrobe for Indiana
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Jones and the opener in South America.
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But Temple of Doom is very much a inversion or a Gemini film of a George Stevens
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movie from 1939 called Gunga Din, which is a classic. And I love Gunga Din.
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And then Last Crusade is a bit of a rejiggering of the James Bond movie from Russia with Love.
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We will talk about all those things. That'll be in two weeks.
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In about a month now, a little less than a month on Father's Day,
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we are showing the first three Indiana Jones movies on 35 millimeter film.
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We are getting 35 millimeter archive prints.
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If you want to come, we'd love to have you. We are going to be in L.A.'s first
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movie palace, the Million Dollar Theater.
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And on Sunday, June 21st at 11 a.m., we are doing Raiders of the Lost Ark on 35.
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At 2 p.m., Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on 35.
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And then at 5 p.m., Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on 35 millimeter.
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And Last Crusade is a father son story between Indy and his dad,
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played by James Bond, Sean Connery. As always, you can email us at community
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at secretmovieclub.com.
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Just go to the website, secretmovieclub.com, and create a free account.
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We are going to be having our very first after party after the Indiana Jones
5:08
movies. Our social's at Secret Movie Club.
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And if you go to our website and scroll to the bottom or even just wait a few
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seconds, a box pops up. Get on our newsletter.
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We send that newsletter out every Monday. And that newsletter really,
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we try to put in the most nutrition we can.
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We also shout out other events around Southern California. If people offer us
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discounts or freebies or whatever, we pass them on to you on the newsletter.
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Okay, let's get to the pod.
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So, the music video director generation.
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So, nowadays in 2026, music videos are still being made all the time.
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And they're premiering on YouTube and Vivo, the streaming channel.
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And many of you probably already know this, so I'm going to do this history really, really quick.
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But back in the day, in the very beginning of the 1980s, MTV,
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music television, came out and it was a 24-hour channel with DJs and music videos and it was a hit.
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And teenagers...
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Watched MTV. Adults watched MTV. And it was a cultural juggernaut for at least
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15 years, 15 odd years from, I'd say, the early 80s to the mid to the late 90s,
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right really at the dawn of the internet, like so many things.
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And as MTV went along, it got into other programming. Beavis and Butthead comes
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out of MTV, among other things.
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But at the beginning, it was mostly VJs, they They called them video jockeys
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who were personalities and the music videos.
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And this became a training ground for talented young movie makers to cut their teeth on two to five.
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And if it was really indulgent, 10 minute music videos that then would showcase
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the artist, showcase the song.
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And if it was a great music video and it became really, really popular,
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sort of the equivalent in the 80s of going viral, then that director would get a lot of heat.
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And could potentially transition into feature films.
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The most famous probably being David Fincher, I would argue.
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We now know as the director of Fight Club and Seven and Zodiac and Gone Girl,
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and he's about to come out with The Adventures of Cliff Booth.
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Spike Jonze, we know as the director of Adaptation and being John Malkovich,
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and her got his start with skate videos and music videos.
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Sofia Coppola, although I think Sofia Coppola is a bit of a special case because
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she was born into a filmmaking family.
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But Sofia Coppola directed music videos, including The White Stripes,
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and then went on to do Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette.
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Michelle Gondry directed...
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Daft punks around the world and then went on and did a movie I love,
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
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And it's interesting because Charlie Kaufman wrote for both Michelle Gondry and Spike Jones.
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And I think there's something being said there about that serendipity with the music video aesthetic.
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And then we're going to talk briefly about Michael Bay Zack Snyder,
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who also directed a number of music videos, but they also directed a lot of commercials.
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They're slightly different, but i think they deserve
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to be in this conversation so let's get
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to it so mtv is
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on and these the very first music video was
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music or video killed the radio star by the buggles which is actually a pretty
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good song very of its time pop song new wave pop song video killed the radio
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star by the buggles and that's a fun video bit by bit i i feel like savvy really
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talented filmmakers realize that a music video,
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as long as it served the purposes of the music video showcasing the song and
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the artist, could be a real playground.
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And it could also be like what avant-garde movie makers were doing in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.
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I mean, no joke, some music videos, when you see them now,
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have the weirdness, and they can, and they can sustain it for two or three minutes
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without weirding out mainstream America of a Stan Brakhage film,
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Maya Darin, or Bruce Conner.
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Avant-garde movie makers whose work or style or approach was perfectly adapted
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to what a music video could be.
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And when you go back to the beginning of cinema...
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It is fascinating to see how every period has some kind of launch board,
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springboard training ground that is a bit looked down on by whatever the elitist
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filmmakers or elitist artists of the time would be.
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And yet that's the place where the next crop of masters comes out of.
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So going back to the very beginning, I think silent film comedy that like the
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Buster Keatons, the Harold Lloyds, the Charlie Chaplains, they all cut their teeth on one reelers.
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Even Frank Capra working for Harry Langdon doing these 10 minute,
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20 minute silent film gag comedies for Max Sennett or whoever. And I think.
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That training ground of just let's get out this comedy, this 10-minute comedy
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to play in the movie theater, really helped specifically Chaplin and Keaton
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and Capra, for sure, launch into masterful feature film careers.
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Theater was always a launch ground. We can thank theater for everybody from
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Orson Welles to Rainer Werner Fassbender to Aaliyah Kazan, Sidney Lumet.
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But after the theater directors and theater directors still coming into feature
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films to this day, Sam Mendes, who won the Academy Award for American Beauty,
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was at a theater and still does hopscotch between theater and film.
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But after that, it was television by and large, as well as industrial films and commercials.
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Robert Altman comes out of industrial films, partly.
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Stanley Kubrick comes out of industrial films and shorts and things like that.
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So that was that. Then TV, we've talked about this, produced Spielberg and Altman
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and numerous other filmmakers that cut their teeth in television and then came into feature films.
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And then after TV, there were music videos.
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And then after music videos, there became YouTube and the Internet and TikTok.
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And that's where we're at today.
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And I'm sure I'm skipping other launching pads that I should think of.
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Oftentimes, if something is financially successful or leads to increased revenues,
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it becomes no mystery why more eyeballs are on it, more money is spent on it.
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It becomes when something just becomes the cultural zeitgeist thing and people
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who are going to want to promote everything from music to fashion to products
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are going to want to find a way to use that zeitgeist thing to get eyeballs. And.
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Certainly, music videos were that in the 1980s and the 1990s.
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David Fincher is a fascinating case study.
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One, because while he's totally a music video director, he's also like his own
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thing. That's so often the case, but he's also sui generis.
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There's nobody like David Fincher, even among other music video directors.
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David Fincher came up in Marin County.
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He actually got his start working for George Lucas at ILM doing special effects
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and process work for Return of the Jedi.
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He knew his technical craft inside and out.
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If you're working at ILM in the 80s, you were at the forefront of where special
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effects and practical effects were.
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And when David Fincher directed music videos, some of his famous music videos,
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and you should just YouTube them and watch them.
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Our Aerosmith's Janie Got a Gun, which is almost like a proto seven.
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It's a murder mystery.
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Then he did two videos for Madonna, very famous, Vogue and Express Yourself.
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One of them where he just openly references Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
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Fincher definitely had a style. He had a look. His music videos were more somber,
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more serious than other folks' music videos.
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They were more cinematic, for sure. I would argue that David Fincher was one
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of the first music video directors to really want to basically make a mini-movie
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with the music video that he was making.
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And when you see those, especially I remember Janie Got a Gun.
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I remember when I saw the music video for Janie Got a Gun. You know, decent song, good song.
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And in fact, the song too, if you just listen to it on the radio,
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you're sort of like, what is this about? And it lends itself to Fincher's somber,
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noir detective narrative.
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But I remember watching the video and being like, what does this have to do with the song?
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You barely saw the band, if you saw the band.
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It was all this detective and flashlights and going into the forest and someone's getting killed.
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And then it happened to be an Aerosmith song that went along with it.
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And I remember feeling with not with Madonna.
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And I think this is an interesting thing to discuss, too.
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We would have to talk to David Fincher with the Madonna videos.
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Madonna, you can feel her influence in the video as much as you can feel David
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Fincher's. And now maybe that's wrong.
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I could be wrong on that. But you Madonna was.
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A pretty good shock artist, but I mean that as a compliment.
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I don't mean that in the crass way.
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You know, she was putting out pop music. I'm not necessarily the biggest Madonna
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fan, but I do feel like David Bowie, like Bob Dylan.
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Madonna was always reinventing herself. She was always a new album,
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a new song was like, what's she going to do now?
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And she would shock. She was always pushing music videos to their limit,
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often in terms of sexuality and LGBTQ themes and eroticism.
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And you can see that in the music videos in a way that you can't see in David
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Fincher movies divorced from Madonna music videos.
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So I would love to ask David Fincher if and what he learned from his collaborations
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with Madonna, but they're great videos to watch.
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When you watch them, you know you're watching a talent.
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You watch those videos and they're different than other music videos.
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And you do ask yourself, who directed this.
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And back in the day, they would actually say who the director was.
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This little box would, not box, but text block would appear at the bottom of
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the screen of a music video. And it would say, you know, the name,
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the band, the record company, and then often the director.
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And so, you know, you'd see David Fincher and...
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Good marketing, I'm sure studio heads were like, ah, let's get this kid in.
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Spike Jones, probably a really nice guy, maybe a very sensitive guy,
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maybe even a kind of shy guy. I could be wrong about that.
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Now, David Fincher is some of those things. And I've heard, you know,
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very good things about him personally and his integrity.
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But I do think that Fincher developed a hard shell, if you would,
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and has a reputation for really driving people crazy with his perfectionism,
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but the proof is in the pudding.
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His movies are amazing. He's one of my favorite living directors.
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Spike Jonze, I feel, if you let Spike Jonze make a Spike Jonze movie,
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I think you get a great movie.
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What I think is interesting about Spike Jonze is he was always getting these great ideas,
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always doing these great music videos, and he needed a great script and a script
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that, and this is true of any director, but a script, I think,
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that played to his lo-fi story.
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High concept sensibility. Spike Jones directed so many great music videos,
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most famously the Beastie Boys video Sabotage, which is a 70s pastiche of cop show credits on TV.
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He also directed Weezer's Buddy Holly, where he inserted Weezer into an episode of Happy Days.
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Spike Jones directed a very famous Fat Boy Slim video, Weapon of Choice,
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where Christopher Walken dances and starts to float around an incredible hotel
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lobby. Those were Spike Jonze ideas.
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And so it makes sense that screenwriter like Charlie Kaufman,
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who had equally, especially when Kaufman first burst onto the scene,
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really crazy, idiosyncratic, you can't film this kind of scripts that someone
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like Spike Jonze would be like, I must film it.
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And the lo-fi, high concept aesthetic of a Spike Jones would fit perfectly with
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the sort of crazy lo-fi high concept, this can't be filmed.
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Aesthetic of Charlie Kaufman.
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Now, I say all that, but Spike Jonze wrote the script for one of his most recent
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films, I think may even be his last feature film,
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The Joaquin Phoenix Starring Her, where sort of retiring nebbish man falls in
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love with the operating system on his phone.
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What's fascinating about these
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music video directors is can what made their music videos so captivating at
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three minutes work across 90 or 120 minutes and i would short answer get to
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the point no i don't think i don't think you can do that they're two different
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mediums they're two different forms.
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I definitely think that aspects of and elements of idea generation to make music
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videos did push cinema and the cinema form forward. And I want to talk about some of that.
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I hope I am already, and I will in a moment. David Fincher's.
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Really intense german expressionist
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music video noir style is
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so palpable it can hold and it does hold
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in his best films i i would argue and also david fincher and all of these cats
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would use these they'd always be experimenting or trying the newest discoveries
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on cinema or editing and or in the commercial world and that was interesting
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too to see them bring those ideas and that cross-pollination.
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So you can see that, for instance, I feel in Fight Club when Edward Norton's
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narrating at the beginning and he's talking about his apartment and it becomes
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kind of like a live action Ikea catalog.
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That's something that you could imagine somebody who directs commercials and
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somebody who directs music videos and probably did do a version of that was
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like, well, let's introduce that language here.
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And it works perfectly for the story we're trying to tell about an anonymous
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drone who is feeling spiritually bankrupt in a materialist world.
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You would see Fincher do that in Zodiac. He does that with text and journalism
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all over the screen and kind of a neo-montage route.
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Spike Jonze, I think you can see his lo-fi approach probably most.
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It's funny, what is the best Spike Jonze movie oddly I might argue that some
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of them are the ones he produced and helped to direct the Jackass movies which
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are very much I think like his skate videos.
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And I believe maybe even he met Johnny Knoxville on Skate Videos and some of those guys.
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I don't know. And they all started to do the jackass thing, which also started as an MTV TV show.
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I love jackass. And the final jackass is coming out in a month or two, I think.
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They're all in their 50s and 60s. And they're having to cast younger people
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to do the really dangerous stunts.
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But I would say that it's okay to be lo-fi. In fact, sometimes it's even preferable,
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artistically better to be lo-fi, as long as the idea is really captivating.
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I feel like Spike Jonze really spearheaded that and represents the best of that aesthetic.
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And I definitely think in his two Kaufman adaptations, being John Malkovich
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and adaptation, you can see that marriage really, really well.
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And there's a there's a organicness to Spike Jonze's approach that.
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Really is singular. Now, Sofia Coppola, interestingly, you know,
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she is of the Coppola family.
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Her father, Francis Ford Coppola, needs no introduction.
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Her mother, Eleanor Coppola, who recently passed, my condolences to the entire
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family. I really get the feeling that Eleanor was the glue in a lot of ways,
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was a documentarian and an artist.
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I once stood 10 inches from Eleanor Coppola and about 15 feet from Francis Ford
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Coppola when he came to do a Q&A for his movie Youth Without Youth,
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which I'm a big fan of and you should see, starring Tim Roth.
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And it doesn't fully work, but it's still a fascinating film, beautiful film.
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And I do really, really like it, Youth Without Youth.
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And she was there supporting Francis and, you know, 50 years on.
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And I really remember looking at her and going like, wow, what a wife,
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what a woman, what a person, what a partner.
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Sophia, her brother Roman, you know, she came out of cinema.
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She was born into cinema and she starred in her dad's movies and helped write New York stories.
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She was starred in Godfather three.
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And then in the nineties was directing commercials and music videos,
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and then made an audacious debut with an adaptation of the Eugenides,
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I believe his name is Jeffrey Eugenides, I could be wrong about that,
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novel Virgin Suicides, which is a dynamite dreamy film and very unsettling, but a dynamite film.
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I've seen Virgin Suicides a few times and it's like drinking,
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liquid clouds. I think in Sofia Coppola's style, it's interesting.
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Sofia Coppola and Spike Jones shared the same cinematographer for a while,
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credible cinematographer Lance Accord, who shot, being John Malkovich,
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Lost in Translation, among other movies.
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What I would say about Sofia Coppola, my favorite Coppolas are Lost in Translation,
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Marie Antoinette, which may, weirdly, if you put a gun to my head, be my favorite one.
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And although I really love Lost in Translation too, it's a toss up.
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And then I'm also a really big fan of Somewhere.
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I love those movies, all three of them.
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But what I would say with Sofia Coppola is she, to me, is a master of atmosphere, a master of the vibe.
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Her movies are music. Her movies are a vibe, a feel that you just get lost in.
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And so few filmmakers, I want to get lost in those worlds.
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Sophia Coppola is one of those where, especially Lost in Translation,
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but even Marie Antoinette, I'd love to wander around in those worlds.
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But it's more than that because she creates those worlds and those vibes and
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those atmospheres, and they become their own emotional message,
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which is really hard to do, and she does it really well.
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Nocturnal Tokyo becomes this message of...
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Very vital, vibrant people seeking out some kind of joy and contact.
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Marie Antoinette's Versailles and 18th century royalty becomes sort of being
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adrift in worlds that are intoxicating, but also toxic.
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It's probably where that word probably means the same thing.
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She's great at that. And there you go.
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Moving on, I'll talk briefly about a few other music video directors.
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Michel Gondry, who is very feed to Daft Punk's around the world,
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he has directed a number of movies, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
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Mind and Be Kind, Rewind.
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I am a big fan of Eternal Sunshine,
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and I would actually single out Eternal Sunshine maybe as the music video director
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movie, because it is one of the one times where sort of crazy,
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everything against the wall,
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wildly inventive, but intense, concentrated, you know, it's almost like the
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most pure forms of certain narcotics can kill you.
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So you're supposed to have them diluted. This is probably a horrible metaphor.
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I feel that's also true if you have too much of a music video thing.
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It's just not too much for a movie. But the one exception to the rule to that
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for me is Michelle Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
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which is guided the entire time by a music video aesthetic.
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Based on a Charlie Kaufman script, again, probably my favorite Charlie Kaufman
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script, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet played Joel and Clementine.
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And I remember Clementine, Kate Winslet, dyeing her hair before it became a
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whole thing in the 21st century.
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I mean, people dye in their hair forever, but the way she dyes her hair in Eternal
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Sunshine is very much the way people dye their hair now all the time.
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But I remember that vividly in Eternal Sunshine.
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But Joel and Clementine are in love. They have a relationship. It doesn't work out.
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They break up. And then Clementine first goes to get her memory erased.
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And Joel is so hurt when he goes to talk to her and she doesn't know him at
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all that he goes to have his memory erased.
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And then that's the movie goes from there. It's a beautiful film,
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a beautiful script and a beautiful ending, which I will not spoil here.
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But half the not but and half the movie takes place in Joel's subconscious.
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And this is where for 30 minutes, 40 minutes of the movie, it feels like a music video.
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But we crosscut between the team, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst.
27:01
What a stacked cast that was, Tom Wilkinson, as they are erasing Joel's memories.
27:07
In real life, the cinematography and the cinema language is more naturalistic, organic, loose.
27:16
And that cross-cutting really does then buy you every time you go into Joel's
27:20
head, the ability to do crazy wild stuff, which Michel Gondry does.
27:25
And a lot of it practical, which is great too, lo-fi and practical, but mind-blowing.
27:30
Some of it very CGI. And that, to me, was a movie where I was like,
27:35
whoa, this is new film language. This is new cinema language. And it is incredible.
27:42
And this director has sustained it for an hour and a half plus.
27:47
And so that, to me, I would almost hold that really.
27:51
And look, my favorite Fincher movie is Zodiac, which I think is one of the greatest
27:55
movies ever made. I actually...
27:59
Would say that in many ways, it is the most cinematic in the Fincher Zodiac in a 70s, 60s way.
28:07
So I wonder if maybe Fincher's strength was channeling his favorite filmmakers
28:14
of his youth, which he stated are people like Alan J.
28:17
Pakula and George Roy Hill and Bob Fosse and the cinematographers like Gordon Willis.
28:23
And I think that Zodiac, you feel him embrace that fully.
28:27
Michel Gondry, whoever his influences were, I feel like the best example of
28:34
a music video aesthetic at its best is Eternal Sun.
28:44
I talked about this. Michael Bay and Zack Snyder are really interesting directors
28:49
to me. They became huge directors.
28:51
Their style is so over the top that it definitely comes out of music videos and commercials.
28:58
And I think, weirdly, their place is hybrid directors.
29:02
I think they directed as many commercials as they did music videos.
29:05
And they weren't primarily known as music video directors. But Michael Bay directed
29:09
a meatloaf music video called I Would Do Anything for Love, But I Won't Do That,
29:13
which was like a 10 minute opus.
29:16
And I remember when I saw the music video when I was a kid, I remember being
29:20
like, this is ridiculous.
29:23
But it looks incredible. And I've kind of felt that way about Michael Bay movies
29:27
ever since. But it's maximalist for sure.
29:32
Maximalist color, maximalist film language, maximalist everything.
29:37
And I think you could see Michael Bay take that into his feature film work.
29:40
Zack Snyder to me is a more complicated case.
29:43
I am a big early zach
29:46
snyder fan like i i'll still go to the mat for
29:49
him with the 300 his remake
29:52
of dawn of the dead which is incredible had no right
29:55
i mean i agree with tarantino there's some things i disagree with tarantino
29:59
on but there are other things i i i when i hear him say it i'm tarantino's such
30:03
a smart guy i'm one of the smartest guys in the business and when he said that
30:08
the you know the first 10 minutes of dawn of the dead had no right being as
30:11
good as they were I knew what he meant.
30:13
Who would be foolish enough to remake George Romero's Dawn of the Dead?
30:17
One of my favorite films, one of lots of people's favorite films.
30:21
And yet Zack Snyder took that challenge and made the first 10 minutes of Dawn
30:27
of the Dead are the best part of the movie.
30:29
But the other 90, 100 minutes are really good.
30:32
I mean, so much so that so many people have cheated or used as a cheat sheet
30:37
scenes from Dawn of the Dead.
30:39
I remember at the end, Zack Snyder did this very clever thing where they try
30:43
to escape on a boat and there's like a video and they're filming themselves
30:47
at the end in a kind of video journal.
30:50
And we see what was on the video because they're recording over prerecorded video.
30:56
And then it cuts to we see what's happening to them on the boat.
30:59
I thought that was a really great idea. Really clever idea.
31:02
And but Zack Snyder, Dawn of the Dead, 300, The Watchmen. I'm actually a fan
31:07
of his adaptation of The Watchmen. Now.
31:10
I think they blew it in the script. I think they should have kept with the Alan Moore novel.
31:14
I don't know why they made the changes they did. I really don't.
31:18
I think they neutered the film a little bit with the changes.
31:22
That being said, on a visual level, you're wanting to get lost in a world on a vibe level.
31:28
I think The Watchmen is incredible, and I really want to show it, and I will show it.
31:33
And I am a fan. I stand by that. I stand by those films. I have to admit,
31:39
I've not seen any of the Zack Snyder DCs.
31:42
They just didn't grab me, nor have I seen the Zack Snyder's Netflix.
31:47
And what I will say is that I think Zack Snyder, at least early on,
31:51
maybe later to his detriment for sure.
31:53
But early on was unafraid of fully embracing CGI and digital and green screen
32:05
and techniques that are going to be more and more and more the way that movies
32:09
get made. And he was a visionary.
32:10
He was doing this stuff on 300 20 years before people are now doing it.
32:15
So I think they're fascinating, Michael Bay and Zack Snyder,
32:19
for those reasons. And let's wrap this up.
32:23
Okay. Yet again, a foolhardy topic.
32:27
There's so much to talk about with music videos and the feature film.
32:32
I would wrap it up by saying that I
32:35
do think there is always this really intriguing, and we can learn from it,
32:43
study of different mediums and how directors that started in those mediums brought
32:51
elements of those mediums to their feature films. film work.
32:54
And I would say that now that we've moved into the era of.
32:59
Special effects done on computer and CGI and all of that stuff, Adobe and Photoshop.
33:07
And I mean, obviously we're well beyond that, but, you know,
33:09
doing effects on your computer, I feel,
33:13
that aesthetic more than, I think there's something we could learn from the
33:19
music video aesthetic, which was this, a lot of these videos were before CGI.
33:24
And so directors were using.
33:28
Special effects and tricks and editing to play around in a sandbox,
33:33
but because they were sustaining it for just two or three minutes,
33:38
they would do it at such a pitch that they brought a, introduced a new way to
33:44
make at least sequences in feature films.
33:46
And I'm not sure that anybody recently has fully, no, that's not true. That's not true.
33:53
The Daniels, I mean, they came out of music videos for sure.
33:56
They did a great music video.
33:58
Turned down for what? DJ Snake and Little John.
34:01
Turned down for what? And then they won the Academy Award for Everything Everywhere
34:06
All at Once. And there is a movie, actually.
34:08
Now, I am not as big an Everywhere Everything Everywhere All at Once fan as
34:12
I am of the Eternal Sunshine or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
34:15
but I admire Everything Everywhere All at Once tremendously.
34:19
And that is a movie where the music video intends an idea every second aesthetic
34:26
that maximalist that dominates.
34:31
That movie. And so that's a great recent example, I think, of music video aesthetic.
34:35
And I want to take my hat off to the Daniels for that.
34:38
And I would say that they represent in the most recent form people that have
34:44
absorbed the music video approach or aesthetic and then applied it to film.
34:50
For me, I'm a very promiscuous guy when it comes to influence.
34:55
I remember once hearing Lars von Trier say that he was just fine being influenced
35:02
by Bergman and that era of world cinema.
35:05
And he could leave it to other directors to be influenced by others.
35:09
And I got it. And I agreed with him. And I was so grateful that,
35:12
and still am, I can't wait to see his, what may be his last movie after whenever that comes out.
35:18
And, you know, although I know this would infuriate you, Lars, I mean, God bless you.
35:22
And I send you every, every, every good thing I can to finish that film.
35:26
And I can't wait to see it.
35:28
And Lars von Trier has knocked it out of the park, in my opinion,
35:31
even the movies I don't like.
35:32
Like, I'm not a huge Nymphomaniac fan, not a huge Antichrist fan.
35:37
Most of the other ones I either really like to love.
35:41
This is kind of heresy, but I'm even not really a huge Dancer in the Dark fan. But nevertheless...
35:48
I feel that Lars von Truro movies are always, he's always swinging for the fences.
35:53
He's always swinging for the fences. So I'm totally fine with him being like,
35:58
I want to reach for Dreyer and Bergman. And I admire that.
36:02
I tend to be a little more promiscuous in that.
36:05
I like the idea, who knows if it'll ever be a reality.
36:09
I like the idea that I will take inspiration wherever I see it,
36:14
whether that's a silent film.
36:18
I was just watching A Dog's Life, the Charlie Chaplin movie from the 1910s.
36:22
And there was a great, I was just looking at all the gags and how he built a
36:26
whole movie around gags that he was probably figuring out as he went along.
36:30
I will take inspiration from that. And I'd love to think that I'll take inspiration
36:34
from something as recent as The Backrooms or Backrooms and what's going on on
36:39
TikTok and what's going on on YouTube.
36:42
And if I see something and I'm like, wow, I would love to feel,
36:46
I'd love that too. That's sort of me.
36:48
And, but you're different. We're all different. I would say though,
36:52
there is so much you can learn so much inspiration, so many ideas you might
36:57
get from watching music videos.
36:58
I highly recommend that you go back and watch some of the greatest music videos.
37:02
I hope you, you watch and get inspired. All right.
37:05
Secret Movie Club Podcast 220 will come out in two weeks.
37:10
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of june and i love you family.