I Want My MTV (32 page)

 

PERRI LISTER:
On “Flesh for Fantasy,” Billy and I had a terrible fight. We were screaming at each in one of the dressing rooms, and I stormed out. When I slammed the door, it made the door of the next room open, and all the dancers were peeking through a hole in the wall, trying to see what we were fighting about. Between the drugs and the drama, it's amazing that video ever got finished.

 

JOHN DIAZ:
“Flesh for Fantasy” was the most difficult video I ever produced. Jeff Stein didn't direct that—Howie Deutch did—but Jeff's the reason it was a disaster. My whole crew was working for Jeff on another video that went way over deadline. I had to push our shoot back and charter a LearJet to fly the crew back. On the day he was supposed to light the set, my DP, Tony Mitchell, arrived at 4 P.M., totally wasted because he hadn't slept in five days. Our first day ended up going thirty-six hours. The second day went about twenty-four hours. The final setup was a long dolly shot, and Tony said to me, “Johnny, you gotta do this shot.” I said, “
What?!
” He goes, “I'm blind.” He couldn't see anymore. The pace of the last six days had wrecked his vision.

 

HOWIE DEUTCH, director:
I don't know if I was qualified to direct that video. But Billy liked that I'd worked on the
Apocalypse Now
trailer. I wasn't used to staying up for days. I wore contact lenses, and I was awake for so long directing the video that when it was done and I fell asleep, my lenses stuck in my eyes. I couldn't get them out. That's my biggest memory.

ROBIN SLOANE:
I found Jeff Stein for the Cars. He'd done “Rebel Yell,” one of the best live videos ever made. He showed me footage from a company called Charlex that he really wanted to work with. They'd been doing
National Enquirer
commercials with weird cut-and-paste animation. So I hired Jeff and Charlex to work together on “You Might Think.” Then it got complicated.

 

JEFF STEIN:
After “Rebel Yell,” Robin Sloane wanted me to do a video for the Cars. They had a reputation for being completely boring live, and I said, “I'm not interested.” I had worked with the Who, the greatest live act
ever
. I'd done it. I was going to turn in my badge. Charlex was doing a campaign for the
National Enquirer
that had animated cutouts and photographs of celebrities, big heads on bodies that moved a little. I heard the Cars' “You Might Think” and thought I could make the first cartoon with real people, which I think we did.

One of the worst parts of the video process was pitching ideas to the band. I met the Cars and told them, “The band's in the medicine chest, and then on a bar of soap, and Ric's a fly,” and one of them said, “Why don't we all just play on a turd in the toilet bowl?” That was the prevailing attitude.

I wanted them to make fun of themselves and be self-effacing. I put together all this pop-culture imagery, from Ric as King Kong on the Empire State Building through B- and Z-movies:
Incredible Shrinking Man
and
Glen or Glenda
, the Ed Wood film, because Ric changes from a dude to a lady in it. It was the first music video put in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

 

ROBIN SLOANE:
Charlie Levy and Alex Wild, who owned Charlex, shut down their company to do the video, so they had no income coming in, and it took months to make. Animation takes a long time and no one had ever done anything like this. Everyone was up all night, every night, for months. Jeff was difficult to deal with, and he ended up in a huge fight with Charlex: Whose name is going to go first? Is it Jeff Stein and Charlex, or Charlex and Jeff Stein?

We had to finish the video without Jeff there day to day. When Charlex finished, they came up to Elektra and wouldn't let us have the video. They wanted more money. One of the guys who worked for Charlex had the video in an attaché case handcuffed to his wrist. I kid you not.

Ric hated “You Might Think.” He thought it made fun of the way he looked. The original version ran on MTV without the fly part, because the video wasn't finished when it was scheduled to world premiere, so we had to give them an unfinished version, then replace it. But that video completely changed their image. It took a band that was not visually dynamic and made them incredibly visually dynamic. “You Might Think” won the Video of the Year award at the first VMAs.

 

JEFF STEIN:
“You Might Think” was nominated for so many awards, eight or nine, and we'd lost all of them. So I was asleep in the audience at Radio City Music Hall when Eddie Murphy announced the Cars for Best Video of the Year.

 

TIMOTHY HUTTON, actor:
In 1984, you couldn't have a conversation about a song without someone saying, “Did you see the video?” I was a twenty-three-year-old actor living in New York, and the manager of the Cars played me their new album. I especially liked the song “Drive,” and Ric asked to talk about me directing the video. I wanted to direct—who doesn't?

I called a casting director and said I needed an attractive, exotic woman who has something fierce about her. Paulina Porizkova walked in toward the end of the casting session. It was before she became a supermodel. I rented a hotel suite to rehearse, and asked them to imagine they'd had a fight that was escalating. We rehearsed for a whole day, and neither Ric nor Paula wanted to stop. They said, “Give us another situation to play.” Little did I know they would end up married.

 

DARYL HALL:
Jeff Stein directed “Out of Touch,” which was maybe our most significant video because of its look: the huge bass drum and my costume, which made me look like a Dalmatian. It's visually arresting, for sure. Jeff did psychedelic cartoon versions of songs, that was his trademark. He loved anything connected to the circus. If there's one thing I hate, it's the circus. Later on, Jeff wanted to do a video on Martha's Vineyard in December and have me stand in the surf. He said, “No, it's all right, we'll have towels, we'll have heaters.” I said, “No, Jeff, it ain't gonna happen. I'm not part of the Polar Bear Club.”

 

PAUL FLATTERY:
Jeff Stein did some good stuff, but he bankrupted our production company, Picture Music International. Every video went over budget. The Jacksons' “Torture” video is legendary. The shoot went on so long that band members stopped showing up.

 

JEFF STEIN:
The Jacksons' “Torture” video: an experience that lived up to the song title.

JOHN DIAZ:
Michael Jackson was at the first meeting we had with his brothers for “Torture,” and he said, “I want to do this, I want to do that.” And then, of course, Michael didn't show up to the shoot. I had a feeling he wasn't going to show, so I found a wax museum in Nashville to make a dummy of Michael. And that's what you see in the video. We placed it in different positions: sometimes with its hand up, sometimes with it down at its side.

Perri Lister was the choreographer on “Torture.” She was Billy Idol's girlfriend and choreographed many videos I produced. But Jackie Jackson kept saying, “She's not right for us.” And I had to fire her.

 

PERRI LISTER:
I love Jeff Stein. He's a great director and a sweetheart. “Torture”—so aptly named. Jeff wanted me on board as choreographer, but I had to get approved by the Jacksons first. It was like I was joining the CIA. I've never been through more security checks in my life, to get to the inner sanctum of the Jacksons sitting in their hotel room. I finally get there, and they're all there but Michael, and they each had their own lawyer. And manager. Anyway, they liked my reel and they hired me.

A few days later, Jeff says, “Listen, I've got a slight problem. Jackie's girlfriend wants to be in the video. He says she's a dancer.” I'm like, “Let her come to the audition, and if she's okay, we'll put her in the video, and if she's not, I'm sorry, I'm not putting her in.” She comes to the audition, and she's a little shorter and a little plumper than most, but I figured if I hired some other girls that were the same size, she wouldn't stand out. The first day of rehearsal comes and she doesn't show up. So I thought,
Never mind her, I'll keep the other short girls
. So we rehearsed for a week, and the day comes to show the routine to Jackie Jackson. I see this girl come in and stand with Jackie. I'm like, “Oh my god, it's the girlfriend.” Afterwards, Jeff Stein said, “I'm sorry, Perri, but, um, Jackie's girlfriend has decided that she wants to choreograph the video.” I said, “Well, as long as you give me my check, Jeff, I'm fine with that.” So they gave me my check and I left. And the girlfriend was Paula Abdul.

 

JEFF STEIN:
I'll take the blame for many things, but not for that video. We were constantly waiting around for everybody to be ready. It was endless. I don't even know if there was a budget. I mean, it was not my company, I was not the producer, I did not make the deal. I have no idea what it ended up costing. For certain videos, I remember the cost only in terms of human lives. One of our crew members lost control of her bodily functions while we were making the video. The crew motto used to be “Death or victory.” I think that was the only time we ever prayed for death.

I had a gut feeling Michael wasn't going to show up. So I had the foresight to get a wax figure from Madame Tussauds to double for Michael, and that proved to be a good decision. That wax figure was put through the ringer. Its head ended up in the salad bowl at lunch one day.

 

PAULA ABDUL, choreographer; artist:
Michael couldn't make it, so they ended up using a wax dummy stand-in. I was so young and naive, I just figured this is what they normally do on music videos.

 

JEFF STEIN:
The Jacksons were Jehovah's Witnesses, I believe, and I was told there could be no drugs or alcohol on the set. So I gathered the crew and told them I expected everybody to adhere to those instructions carefully. We were ready to shoot a sequence, and I couldn't find two key members of my crew. I was frantic. I turned around and behind the cyclorama I saw two silhouettes of my missing crew guys, the size of Godzilla and Rodan, shoveling something into their nostrils. The silhouette was thirty feet high. I ran the length of two football fields, kicked out the lights, and nobody ever saw it but me.

 

JON LANDAU:
When it came time to announce the release of Springsteen's
Born in the U.S.A.
in 1984, we gave MTV a spectacular live version of “Rosalita” we'd shot in 1980 to warm things up. Then Bruce bit the bullet. He said, “Well, I guess we've got to.” He understood we had to do a video for “Dancing in the Dark.”

We both loved Jeff Stein and went to him first for “Dancing in the Dark.” Jeff had a particular idea, a no-frills way he wanted to shoot Bruce, and we were all for it. We had a couple of days' shooting planned, and after the first day, we knew it wasn't working. It was just a misfire.

 

DANIEL PEARL:
Jeff Stein's idea for “Dancing in the Dark” was to get a Louma crane, the original remote-controlled crane with a camera on the end of it, put Springsteen in an all-black stage—black floor, black walls, no set—and fly the camera around Springsteen as he performed. This would be the first real Bruce Springsteen music video, and he was concerned about everything. When he arrives at the Kaufman Astoria studio in New York, he looks like a '50s rock n' roller: He's got sideburns, a day's stubble, a wife-beater T-shirt, and tight sharkskin pants. And he's ripped. He's been working out.

He starts telling me how to light him. “I want a big silk over the camera. Throw a big light through it and front light me all flat.” I go, “No way, man.” He goes, “What?” I go, “That's how we light Stevie Nicks. That's for lighting women. I want to light you hard, I want to show the ripples of your muscles.” So I lit him much harder than he wanted. I figured we'd do one take and then talk about it. He performed one time, we cut the camera, and he walked off the fucking set and didn't come back. No explanation. We stood around for half an hour, people scoured the building looking for him, and we finally realized,
Oh my god, he's gone
. Jeff had no real idea for the video, anyway. Black and dark? That's a concept?

 

JEFF STEIN:
Bruce and I were friends; my brother and I played on his softball team, the E Street Kings. But I did not want to do a video with him, because, due to scheduling, it couldn't be done as a performance video. And Bruce comes alive onstage—along with Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend, he's one of the greatest rock n' roll showmen of all time. It was definitely the video everybody wanted to do, and I got talked into it.

We came up with one epic concept, which was a spoof of “Thriller” with elements of
The Wizard of Oz
,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, and
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. Then I came up with the idea—which hadn't been done at the time—to shoot Bruce doing the song in one take. And Daniel Pearl took forever and ever to light the set. It took way too long. And I think Bruce got restless. If you knew Bruce, you knew when he was into something or he wasn't into it. It was probably the worst experience in my music-video career. It was traumatic. But it was not my fault. I'd take the blame if I should, but Daniel should take the bullet for it. I know there are copies of our camera rehearsals on YouTube.

It didn't ruin the friendship, thank God. Bruce gave me a muscle car, a 1969 Ford XL convertible that his mechanic rebuilt for him. We were driving around, he wanted to play me the
Born in the U.S.A.
album in the car. “Rock n' roll always sounds better in the car.” We got back to his house and there was a car in the driveway with one flat tire. He said, “I've got to get rid of that.” I said, “I'll take it.” I was joking. He said, “Okay.” And he went in his kitchen and got the keys.