I Want My MTV (74 page)

 

ANNE-MARIE MACKAY:
There was a tremendous meeting of the minds between Madonna and David Fincher. She's very well read, and she came to the table with a lot of references and ideas. It was Madonna who came up with the
Metropolis
motif for “Express Yourself,” then the set designer, Vance Lorenzini, ran with that and built the incredible sets.

 

RANDY SKINNER:
“Express Yourself” was a four-day shoot. If my memory serves me, it cost $1.7 million.

 

PAULA ABDUL:
I was saving money from my choreography to make demos. Janet Jackson was the one who kept saying, “You can do this.” And I'd say, “Eh, I'd better stick to my day job.” But she encouraged me. The bottom line—and I've always known this—is that I may not be the best dancer and I'm not the best singer, but I do know how to be a brilliant performer.

 

DANIEL KLEINMAN:
Paula choreographed a few videos I'd done, and she wanted me to direct her first video, “Knocked Out.” We were quite good mates—we'd gone on a few dinner dates—but frankly, I didn't like the song. Paula wanted the video to focus on the choreography, so I tried to film the dancing in an interesting way, which I don't think I did. Quite rightly, Jeff Ayeroff hired David Fincher to do her next video.

 

PAULA ABDUL:
I loved making videos. Loved, loved, loved it. MTV and music videos were a huge reason I got signed, and why I became so popular. My videos were everything. Even when I was collecting demos, I was putting together the videos in my head.

 

JEFF AYEROFF:
When I left Warners to become co-president of Virgin Records, I hired David Fincher to do Paula's videos. The first one, “The Way That You Love Me,” was only okay. For the next one, I said, “Make it black-and-white. Highly graphic, stylized, and make her look fucking great. Have Arsenio Hall do a cameo in it. Figure out something.” That's where “Straight Up” came from. It became the biggest video of the year.

 

PAULA ABDUL:
Jeff had already signed me to Virgin Records, so the deal was that I'd choreograph a video for David Fincher, and David would direct “Straight Up” right after that. At first I was so bummed that David wanted to do “Straight Up” in black-and-white Super 8. I was like,
This is my big chance! I do color videos!
I think the main reason he shot in black-and-white is that it doesn't cost as much as color, and he wanted to bank the difference. But of course, it ended up being a brilliant move. “Straight Up” was career-defining, it was style-defining—everything about it helped define me as an artist. And obviously, David turned out to be a genius.

 

JONI SIGHVATSSON:
We all thought Paula Abdul sucked. Ayeroff had been good to Fincher, and David's a very loyal person.

 

PETER BARON:
I played David Fincher the Aerosmith song “Janie's Got a Gun,” which no one outside the offices had heard yet. I said, “David, I want you to do this video.” I pressed play again and he listened for a couple of minutes and said, “Okay, this is what we're going to do. The first shot's going to have yellow police tape, rippling in the wind . . .” He already had a visual of how to start the video.

JOHN TAYLOR:
To me, David Fincher was not a video pioneer. By this point, video had gone corporate. I would guess that the budget for “Janie's Got a Gun” was the total of our first eight videos.

 

PETER BARON:
I walked into David Geffen's office and said, “I need $400,000 for ‘Janie's Got a Gun.'” He said, “You have a director?” I said, “I've got David Fincher.” He said, “Go make the video.”

 

JULIANA ROBERTS:
“Janie's Got a Gun” was the first video I worked on that seemed like a movie.

 

GARY GERSH:
Around '89, we really got on a roll at Geffen, from every angle in our company. Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Cher: We didn't spare any expense when we were trying to get it done.

 

JOHN KALODNER:
Marty Callner directed Aerosmith's “Love in an Elevator” and Cher's “If I Could Turn Back Time.” He was incredibly expensive. When Marty wanted a $10,000 light, and there was only one in all of Hollywood, he got it.

 

MARTY CALLNER:
On “Love in an Elevator,” I worked Aerosmith for thirty-five straight hours, and then they had to wait around for three days while we set up the final shot. They were already pissed at me. We set up an outdoor elevator in Santa Monica, and there was a long line of chicks waiting to get in the elevator with Steven Tyler. You know, love in an elevator! The producer had obtained a permit, but instead of writing that we'd finish at 1 A.M., he mistakenly wrote 10 P.M. So at ten, as I'm ready to do the final shot, they shut us down and said, “If you roll a foot of film, we're putting you in jail.” The band didn't talk to me for months.

 

JOHN KALODNER:
Cher was difficult to work with. So lazy and thoughtless. One of the biggest stars ever, and not a pleasure. When I approached her in 1987 to do a record, she said, “I don't want to be a singer again.” I said, “I'll pick the songs, I'll pick the producers, all you have to do is sing.” I did everything for those records except sing them, and she never so much as gave me a thank-you. That was Cher. But “If I Could Turn Back Time”—the song and especially Marty Callner's video—was incredible. It gave her career a whole new life.

CHER, artist:
John Kalodner really did believe in me when no one else did. David Geffen introduced us, and John told me he thought I should be making records, which I hadn't done for many years. He was a fabulous record executive and gave me a lot of confidence. But about his comments: What is he, a fuckin' ventriloquist?

 

MARTY CALLNER:
We were on the USS
Missouri
, making “If I Could Turn Back Time.” Cher asked me, “What should I wear?” I told her, “The last time I looked, you were Cher, so wear something outrageous.” Unbeknownst to me, she'd called her longtime costume designer Bob Mackie and had him design something special. Now we're shooting the video, and my crew tells me, “The lights are ready, let's do rehearsal.” Ever the dutiful director, I go to her Winnebago to escort her to the ship, and I open the door, and I'm in shock. She's standing there in that fishnet body thong. I froze. I didn't know what to say. And as I looked over my right shoulder as she was walking by me, I saw tattoos on her ass. And I said, “How clever. Tattoo underwear.”

 

CHER:
It was my design. Bob Mackie said, “Don't tell anyone I designed
that
for you.” We shot for two or three days. I arrived in the night mist, in a coach and a big cape. I rode in a speedboat and had to climb a ladder in high heels, up the side of the ship, but they didn't use that scene. The Japanese surrendered to the United States on that ship. All the sailors called me “ma'am.”

 

MARTY CALLNER:
So we're rehearsing, and she's straddling the guns, and all the commanding officers are whooping it up. We're getting as phallic as you can possibly get. Our liaison from the USS
Missouri
was a guy named Steve Honda. The take ends, he says, “Marty, can I talk to you a second?” He says, “She can't wear that. If she wears that, I'll end up in the Aleutian Islands.” He was really adamant about it. So finally I said, “Look I'll make you a deal. You go tell her she can't wear it.” And he did not have the nuts to tell her.

 

JOHN CANNELLI:
I had a very good relationship with Cher. She used to pick me up at the office and we'd have ice cream at Serendipity. My dad passed away during the time I was dealing with her, and she talked to my mom on the phone and consoled her. On one of her tours, she actually sent a limousine for my mom to bring her to a concert.

MARTY CALLNER:
Initially, Abbey Konowitch and John Cannelli were over the moon about the video. When MTV aired it, they got tons of flack from the navy. Then they decided they would only play the video after 9 P.M. I took the position that the video with Cher on the battleship was good for the navy's recruiting. They couldn't really argue the point.

 

ABBEY KONOWITCH:
“If I Could Turn Back Time” was hugely controversial. Tom Freston and I decided to play the video only after 9 P.M. Tom said, “We need to have a public statement as to why we're not playing this until after nine.” I said, “Why don't we say, ‘Too much butt for the morning' or ‘No butts about it.'” He goes, “You're onto something. We can't take ourselves too seriously. We're just a music network.” We were under the gun, and I said the Yiddish word
tush
. And Tom, who was the furthest thing from a Jewish guy, says, “That's it! That's our position.” So when I went on Larry King to discuss it, I said, “She's a big star, but it was just too much tush for nine o'clock in the morning.”

 

CHER:
It worked out well, because the controversy—which I didn't plan—made more people want to see the video.

 

JOHN KALODNER:
Nobody was ever allowed to make a video on a United States naval ship after “Turn Back Time.”

 

MARTY CALLNER:
People always ask me, why'd you make the Cher video on a ship? I was looking for an interesting location. It was the same reason Bon Jovi went to the top of a mountain for “Blaze of Glory.” Because it was there.

 

WAYNE ISHAM:
People always want to know how much Bon Jovi's “Blaze of Glory” cost. I'll be honest, I don't know. We came up with the idea of creating the last drive-in on earth, on top of a butte in Utah. So we helicoptered in our own drive-in screen, all the old cars and trucks you see, everything. Just getting all that shit up there was expensive. We even brought blenders with us, for margaritas. There's a shot of Jon sitting and playing his guitar on the edge of a cliff. Doc McGhee was freaking out, going, “You're gonna kill my artist.”

 

DOC McGHEE:
There was a thunderstorm on top of this butte, and Wayne tells Johnny to hang over a rock while he's playing guitar. If he falls fifteen hundred feet and dies, then I lose my commission and have to walk home! So what do you think I'm going to say? Johnny's hair was standing on end because of the electricity. He looked like Buckwheat.

 

WAYNE ISHAM:
If you look closely, underneath the ledge right next to Jon is a bottle of Cuervo. We spent the night on the cliffs of Moab in sleeping bags, woke up at sunrise, rode motorcycles, shot the video, made margaritas. That's shit that you did. That was the life.

 

CURT MARVIS:
The Rolling Stones wanted to do a video to promote their Steel Wheels tour, and they brought on Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein as consultants. That's how our relationship with the Stones started. Wayne Isham and I were in DC one week, getting ready for a video, and we got pretty wasted. We staggered back to our hotel at one-thirty in the morning and Peter said, “Keith wants to talk to you.” We walked into the hotel bar, which was closed to everyone but us.

Keith starts, “You fucking bastards!” He found out we were charging $300,000 for this video, and he's convinced that it's way too much money. He said, “I'm gonna slit your throat, sonny!” and he took out his knife and brought it across his throat. Peter Mensch said, “Does anybody need a drink?” Keith said, “I want two Long Island iced teas.” Mensch goes, “
Two?
Why do you want
two
?” Keith said, “Get me two fucking Long Island iced teas!”

So Mensch brings over the drinks, and Keith keeps yelling at us. He's screaming, waving his arms around, and while he's swinging his arms he hits one of the Long Island iced teas and knocks it to the floor. The glass shatters. He looks at Mensch and goes, “Now you know why I ordered
two
!”

 

TONY DiSANTO:
When Guns N' Roses started getting some fame, we shot interviews with them at the Chelsea Hotel, and their energy was so I-don't-give-a-fuck, so punk rock. When
Use Your Illusion
came out, the next set of interviews was with Kurt Loder in Axl's beautiful LA backyard. His hair was blow-dried, his teeth were all perfect, and he looked like an angel. I was like, “Wow, they've sure changed.”

 

ANDY MORAHAN:
Two of Axl's favorite artists were Elton John and George Michael. Which was bizarre. As a matter of fact, he hated most other rock bands. If you spoke to him about Van Halen or Nirvana, he'd be spitting feathers, but when it came time to talk about Elton John, he'd go all misty-eyed. One of his favorite videos was George Michael's “Father Figure,” and he wanted to make some big, epic narrative-driven videos.

 

DOUG GOLDSTEIN:
After Axl fired Alan Niven, I walked into Eddie Rosenblatt's office and said, “We're gonna make an expensive video.” And he said, “Doug, we're out of the video business with you. You pay for your own videos. We'll front the money, but we'll take it back, and then you guys own the rights to your videos.”

 

ALAN NIVEN:
The videos that were done under my watch totaled something like $500,000, of which half went into “Paradise City.” I was told it cost $1.25 million to shoot “November Rain,” which to me is a preposterous waste of money.

 

STEVEN ADLER:
I think that video would have been better if I was a part of it. But I'd been kicked out of the band for partying—and the biggest irony is, I was partying
with
the guys in the band.