29/09: This song don't need no video
So I got to thinking about a few things after fishing through a couple of videos for Waits’ Big in Japan back in that last post… Turns out, there was no professionally done, official one… And a few well-meaning amateurs had taken their own stabs…
Now, I should preface all of this by saying: look, I’m a shameless dilettante myself. I’ll try any medium for a giggle, on no more motivation than that I’m given to these odd—even random—obsessions, and now and then I lose my mind and think I’m a fucking genius, see? Sure… it would probably be slightly insane even to try doing this on my schedule… but then, it’s not like anyone thinking as much about my sanity is exactly going to be making a novel diagnosis, either…
So this is not to be taken, exactly, as gratuitous abuse of amateurs in over their heads. Hell, considering the subject, here, this would be especially inappropriate. Sir Tom Waits himself has had a few words on the merits of playing and scoring instruments you don’t actually play very well—as a way of breaking yourself out of creative ruts, forcing yourself to do something different. The notion is: you’re not going to lean on your favourite old tropes and motifs if, actually, since you have no idea which end of the theremin is which, you really can’t… So I’m not going to beat up a coupla guys who figure on taking a stab at doing their own videos for Waits just because I found their efforts a bit wanting.
Hell, I kinda admire that, actually. There’s a lot to be said for taking a stab at something and fucking up. I mean, at least you tried…
And hey, I do that a lot myself, after all…
Well, the fucking up part, anyway…
But do let’s talk about the sheer chutzpah of it, at least.
I mean, I got to thinking, watching that stuff: wow, I so wouldn’t even try this, of all things.
Think about it: this is Tom Waits. Man does lyrics that paint pictures all by themselves—it’s kinda what he does, something he does like no one else does. And you figure sticking a video track over it is going to be anything more than gilding the lily at best?
I mean, note even the professionally done stuff he or his label has had done for his stuff is rarely anything more bold than sticking Tom himself, in whichever larger than life character he’s inhabiting for that particular song, up on the screen, mebbe setting the scene around him a bit so his working it works a bit better, mebbe cutting in a few vignette-like bits sketching a bit of the story the lyrics are already telling. The rule the directors they’ve had along have seemed to follow has been: go light. Guy’s on the screen anyway. It’s not like we need to help him much. If we’re smart, rather, we’ll stay the fuck out of his way and let him do his thing.
The other funny thing that struck me here is: both of the pieces I scratched linking to, in their own little way, certainly did seem to try to honour something of the spirit of the song. They didn’t exactly fail for lack of getting it. The one puts up a cheesy, heavy-handed cacophony of images roughly fitting the heavy handed sonic cacophony of the track (rubber monsters and cheesecake photos, mostly), the other tries to pick up a bit of the character of the presumed narrator. Both decent ideas, or at least the germs of them…
But you need more than that, obviously. Lacking any kind of narrative structure, neither one of them can stand in the same room as the lyric, even in its shadow (as the professional stuff officially issued for Waits’ tracks usually does). Both get tedious, repetitive. Both suffer horribly from Lord Privy Seal syndrome (Oh! He said ‘dog’! Let’s have a shot of the dog, now…).
And it’s a funny thing, this being the era it is. Are we now living in the era of dilettantes? And there is no longer any medium a wistful amateur cannot try, and cannot get some measure of distribution for? And will a day maybe even come where organized, collaborating amateurs will be regularly doing stuff like this that actually does rise to the status of solid, enviable art?
Anyway, all that said, I am, remember, just as possessed of stark, raving hubris as anyone. So my other thought on this is: if Anti or Waits did ever take it into their heads that song could use a video, I do think they could borrow an idea from the rubber monster folk of the latter video, at least…
Me, I see a claymation feature telling the story of the career of a claymation sea monster. It arrives in Tokyo, stomps some buildings…
The crowd loves it. We see it on the cover of many Japanese magazines, being interviewed on Japanese television. Frequently, at the end of the interviews, it eats the hosts…
It gets sponsorship deals for endearingly odd Japanese consumer products, lives high on the adulation of the masses a while in that nation… does some fights with a claymation Tyson, also exiled to Japan, for some reason…
And then it tries to go overseas, make a career of it in America, too…
It doesn’t make it. The American audiences aren’t getting it. And then there’s a scandal, involving a claymation Paris Hilton… It becomes a subject of opening monologues on nighttime talk shows, not a guest…
On a downward spiral, he does a bad turn on ‘Dancing With the Stars’. But the old schtick just isn’t selling. When our monster eats his partner (a claymation Whoopi Goldberg), there’s outrage, not adulation. We see a claymation agent ripping up his contract. He’s kicked to the curb…
He hits skid row. We see our sea monster drinking hard from a claymation bottle…
But then a beautiful, doe-eyed fan who’d been following him on and off from his roots, and watching this whole thing sadly from the wings, steps into the centre of the stage, finally… She shakes him out of it, slaps him in the face a few times, dries him out…
We close in a smoky little club in Chinatown in New York City. It’s a small crowd, but it’s his crowd, and they love him… He eats the drummer… The crowd cheers… His doe-eyed manager smiles at him from the wings… Roll credits…
(/I’m tellin’ ya, babe… Put a claymation Waits and band in there, popping up to sing and play, now and then, mebbe have ‘em back up the monster in the final scene, and it’s gold… Have yer answering machine call my answering machine, Tom… They can do lunch.)
Now, I should preface all of this by saying: look, I’m a shameless dilettante myself. I’ll try any medium for a giggle, on no more motivation than that I’m given to these odd—even random—obsessions, and now and then I lose my mind and think I’m a fucking genius, see? Sure… it would probably be slightly insane even to try doing this on my schedule… but then, it’s not like anyone thinking as much about my sanity is exactly going to be making a novel diagnosis, either…
So this is not to be taken, exactly, as gratuitous abuse of amateurs in over their heads. Hell, considering the subject, here, this would be especially inappropriate. Sir Tom Waits himself has had a few words on the merits of playing and scoring instruments you don’t actually play very well—as a way of breaking yourself out of creative ruts, forcing yourself to do something different. The notion is: you’re not going to lean on your favourite old tropes and motifs if, actually, since you have no idea which end of the theremin is which, you really can’t… So I’m not going to beat up a coupla guys who figure on taking a stab at doing their own videos for Waits just because I found their efforts a bit wanting.
Hell, I kinda admire that, actually. There’s a lot to be said for taking a stab at something and fucking up. I mean, at least you tried…
And hey, I do that a lot myself, after all…
Well, the fucking up part, anyway…
But do let’s talk about the sheer chutzpah of it, at least.
I mean, I got to thinking, watching that stuff: wow, I so wouldn’t even try this, of all things.
Think about it: this is Tom Waits. Man does lyrics that paint pictures all by themselves—it’s kinda what he does, something he does like no one else does. And you figure sticking a video track over it is going to be anything more than gilding the lily at best?
I mean, note even the professionally done stuff he or his label has had done for his stuff is rarely anything more bold than sticking Tom himself, in whichever larger than life character he’s inhabiting for that particular song, up on the screen, mebbe setting the scene around him a bit so his working it works a bit better, mebbe cutting in a few vignette-like bits sketching a bit of the story the lyrics are already telling. The rule the directors they’ve had along have seemed to follow has been: go light. Guy’s on the screen anyway. It’s not like we need to help him much. If we’re smart, rather, we’ll stay the fuck out of his way and let him do his thing.
The other funny thing that struck me here is: both of the pieces I scratched linking to, in their own little way, certainly did seem to try to honour something of the spirit of the song. They didn’t exactly fail for lack of getting it. The one puts up a cheesy, heavy-handed cacophony of images roughly fitting the heavy handed sonic cacophony of the track (rubber monsters and cheesecake photos, mostly), the other tries to pick up a bit of the character of the presumed narrator. Both decent ideas, or at least the germs of them…
But you need more than that, obviously. Lacking any kind of narrative structure, neither one of them can stand in the same room as the lyric, even in its shadow (as the professional stuff officially issued for Waits’ tracks usually does). Both get tedious, repetitive. Both suffer horribly from Lord Privy Seal syndrome (Oh! He said ‘dog’! Let’s have a shot of the dog, now…).
And it’s a funny thing, this being the era it is. Are we now living in the era of dilettantes? And there is no longer any medium a wistful amateur cannot try, and cannot get some measure of distribution for? And will a day maybe even come where organized, collaborating amateurs will be regularly doing stuff like this that actually does rise to the status of solid, enviable art?
Anyway, all that said, I am, remember, just as possessed of stark, raving hubris as anyone. So my other thought on this is: if Anti or Waits did ever take it into their heads that song could use a video, I do think they could borrow an idea from the rubber monster folk of the latter video, at least…
Me, I see a claymation feature telling the story of the career of a claymation sea monster. It arrives in Tokyo, stomps some buildings…
The crowd loves it. We see it on the cover of many Japanese magazines, being interviewed on Japanese television. Frequently, at the end of the interviews, it eats the hosts…
It gets sponsorship deals for endearingly odd Japanese consumer products, lives high on the adulation of the masses a while in that nation… does some fights with a claymation Tyson, also exiled to Japan, for some reason…
And then it tries to go overseas, make a career of it in America, too…
It doesn’t make it. The American audiences aren’t getting it. And then there’s a scandal, involving a claymation Paris Hilton… It becomes a subject of opening monologues on nighttime talk shows, not a guest…
On a downward spiral, he does a bad turn on ‘Dancing With the Stars’. But the old schtick just isn’t selling. When our monster eats his partner (a claymation Whoopi Goldberg), there’s outrage, not adulation. We see a claymation agent ripping up his contract. He’s kicked to the curb…
He hits skid row. We see our sea monster drinking hard from a claymation bottle…
But then a beautiful, doe-eyed fan who’d been following him on and off from his roots, and watching this whole thing sadly from the wings, steps into the centre of the stage, finally… She shakes him out of it, slaps him in the face a few times, dries him out…
We close in a smoky little club in Chinatown in New York City. It’s a small crowd, but it’s his crowd, and they love him… He eats the drummer… The crowd cheers… His doe-eyed manager smiles at him from the wings… Roll credits…
(/I’m tellin’ ya, babe… Put a claymation Waits and band in there, popping up to sing and play, now and then, mebbe have ‘em back up the monster in the final scene, and it’s gold… Have yer answering machine call my answering machine, Tom… They can do lunch.)
