James Franco directs Lindsay Lohan in new R.E.M. music video

A forbidding mixture of droning guitars and sub-Beat poetry about the ocean and Walt Whitman, R.E.M.’s “Blue” didn’t seem like a song in need of additional artiness when it closed the veteran alt-rock band’s 2011 swan song, “Collapse Into Now.”

A year and a half later, though, that’s precisely what “Blue” has received in the form of an impenetrable new music video directed by James Franco. Part of R.E.M.’s Collapse Into Now Film Project, in which the album’s 12 tracks were entrusted to directors including Franco, Lance Bangs and Albert Maysles, the “Blue” clip stars Lindsay Lohan as ... well, Lindsay Lohan, basically: Between shaky hand-held shots of such L.A. landmarks as the Chateau Marmont and the Griffith Observatory, we see the “Liz & Dick” actress posing for celebrity photographer Terry Richardson, something the real-life Lohan has done plenty of herself. (Watch the video below.)

What it all means, of course, is anyone’s guess. One thing we can safely assume: Franco really dug “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey.

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