Video Makers Let the Cat Out of the Bag

If you’re an attentive MTV viewer--and really, is there any other kind?--you may have noticed an additional line in the blocks of white copy at the beginning and end of each video, alongside the song and album titles and record company credits: the director’s name.

For champions of the filmic short form, this is a welcome chance to better keep track of which upcoming filmmakers are doing consistently exciting work in this still relatively fresh field. As for the greater number of music-vid auteurs who turn out nothing but hack work, perhaps a few will be simply shamed into innovation now that they have to see their names on the stuff.

MTV’s acknowledgment of filmmakers is also a chance for alert viewers to take note when an already established director ventures into rock video--as with Spike Lee or avant-garde animation masters the Brothers Quay, both of whom have contributions featured in this edition of Sound & Vision, in which recent pop clips are reviewed and graded on a 0-100 scale.

Michael Penn’s “Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In).” Penn’s lyric couldn’t be more characteristically cryptic, and neither could the video’s bizarre visual narrative, but it’s a marvel anyhow.

The Brothers Quay--American-born, London-based siblings whose experimental work in puppet animation has been a smash among film intelligentsia--have concocted a creepy milieu of distorted perspectives, in which a silver, metallic-looking feline faces off against a human dinner guest. Although most of the images remain still, there’s a dreamy, sinister fascinationin the way the Quays animate just one element at a time-- eyeballs rolling, tongues wagging, fork prongs elongating and wiggling.

This distinctive piece--short on story but sky-high on style--is quite unlike anything on MTV, or virtually anything being done in animation, period. Fortunately, although its hazy underwater look might be off-putting to some viewers, the usually safe-playing VH-1 has belatedly picked up on the clip and made “Cat” its five-star video of the month. 85

R.E.M.’s “Man in the Moon.” Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the James Dean of “Giant,” Michael Stipe puts on a white shirt and a cowboy hat and takes a gorgeously photographed black-and-white walk through the desert to a well-populated outpost diner. Along the way he evokes such disparate cultural touchstones as moon landings, Andy Kaufman’s impersonating Elvis, the old board games Twister and Risk, and historical figures Moses, Newton and Darwin. That’s a lot of territory for one song--or video--to cover. But by the time he gets to that truck stop and the locals one by one join him in lip-syncing the enigmatically specific lyrics, the clip, directed by Peter Care, has become a warming celebration of shared experience and all things communal and celestial. 85

Giant Sand with Victoria Williams’ “Wonder.” Giant Sand’s lovely video is likewise a black-and-white desert shoot centered around the concept of community; although this mostly acoustic tune is a lot harder to find on the airwaves than R.E.M.’s, the clip is a neat companion piece. There’s nothing especially original in the band members’ cavorting with grizzled desert folk, dogs, pickups and Joshua trees. But all the jes’-folks affection on display is catching, Victoria Williams makes the most winsome possible duet partner and the juxtaposition of a country line-dancing scene with the group’s Neil Young-style electric guitar break makes perfect/incongruous sense somehow. Fresh talent Laura Levine directed. 83

Guns N’ Roses’ “Garden of Eden.” The Gunners have made some pretentious videos in their day--heck, they’re coming out soon with a long-form video just about the making of that lugubriously silly “November Rain” clip--but this new one is unassumingly simple and fun. It’s just one take, shot with a wide-angle lens, with Axl Rose spewing his delicate philosophy close up in your face, and the band members making mayhem farther back.

The trick of it is that Axl seems to be operating at a more inhumanly hyperactive speed than everyone else. From the evidence, it appears the video, directed by Andy Morahan, was shot with the lads lip-syncing to a slowed-down version of the song with the footage subsequently sped up--not a new trick by any means, but one pulled off with subtle effectiveness in this little piece of ornery rock overdrive. 70

Ministry’s “Just One Fix.” Vomit scenes have become a staple of the movies in recent years, but this marks the first time we’ve seen a graphic one in a music video. Two clean-cut teen-age boys check into a small-town motel to go cold turkey, suffering terrifying visions of William Burroughs’ poetic heroin lectures amid the barfing. Apparently cleaned up, at the end the kids thumb a ride out of town in a car driven by minister Al Jourgensen himself, who, presumably, will be heading the young (w)retches straight to the nearest methadone clinic. Director: Peter Christopherson. 60

Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish.” This is a performance piece set in hell, with Trent Reznor and guest Nails furiously carrying on with the industrial-dance-metal- Angst thing, surrounded on all sides by--and barely protected with steel bars from--a crowd of tortured fans seemingly eager to rip their chosen entertainers apart limb from limb. Unnerving underworld stuff, or just another wanna-be punkers’ night out at the Palladium? Director: Peter Christopherson. 58

Naughty by Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray.” This rap clip was directed by Spike Lee, which can only mean one thing . . . gratuitous Spike Lee cameos. Actually, Spike deigns to include himself only twice here; after introducing the group, he’s seen later being passed over the hands of a crowd, like a returning hometown hero. Otherwise, the clip, full of mellow good will and massive arm-waving, is benign and not particularly noteworthy . . . except for the gratuitous shots of a woman removing her panties and wringing them out in the sink, a stab at racy sex appeal that seems to have wandered in from another video. 40

Madonna’s “Deeper and Deeper.” The throbbing dance beat in Madonna’s latest single affords her the opportunity to revisit the disco era and to make her trendily ‘70s-themed video look like a Redd Kross show. Her hair done up in the most unattractive blond bob possible, our curious-yellow heroine visits the Hollywood equivalent of Studio 54, heading past the boogy-oogy-oogying, wide-lapeled nerds down into the disco’s basement, where a bunch of flair-wearing hipsters are hanging out with a clear-eyed, hypnotically sinister Kenneth Anger type. The oddball mixture of corny nostalgic kitsch and druggy malevolence in “Deeper and Deeper” is intriguing on the surface but, at its core, nothing but deep, deep doo-doo. Director: Bobby Woods. 32

Wreckx-N-Effect’s “Rump Shaker.” Well, the revolution in bodily ideals that women were hoping for after last year’s “Baby’s Got Back” has obviously failed to materialize--hence the relative backlessness on view here. Wreckx-N-Effect, no progressives they, have populated their salute to the female rear with tiny rumps attached to the usual skinny-little-thing models. Not that there isn’t room for all tastes, but isn’t it about time for a “Point/Counterpoint” debate--Wreckx-N-Effect vs. Sir Mix-a-Lot--on this burning controversy? Director: Dorinda Bagwell. 19

Prince’s “7.” A catchy little tune this minor hit is, true, but what are we to make of obscurant lyrics like “All seven and we will watch them fall / They stand in the way of love and we will smoke them all. . ./ Someday all seven will die”? Who or what does he mean? The seven deadly sins? Snow White’s retinue of little people? The Jackson Five plus Janet and LaToya?

Unfortunately, this clip provides some of the answers: Mayte, the belly-dancer princess character in Prince’s puerile ongoing fantasy, reveals herself in a whispering confession as “the sole heir to a $10-million estate that her father left behind” who’s escaped the seven evil guardians who assassinated dad. Prince is in his superhero mode, wearing a goofy checkered mask, promising protection from the seven suit-clad evildoers and lustily groping the lovely heir (in front of a group of small children, no less). That makes things a little clearer, but to get the full gist of Prince’s entire self-aggrandizing rock opera, we’ll have to buy the forthcoming long-form video. Not. Director: Sotera Tschetter. 7