Every year, over 500 million monarch butterflies in the Eastern U.S. and Canada head south for the winter. Only half survive the nearly 3,000 mile journey, but those that do spend the next five months in the mountains of Central Mexico. Filmmaker Dennis Fitzgerald had wanted to shoot a music video featuring the black and orange butterflies in their temporary Mexican home ever since he read about their migration in National Geographic, but he wasn't about to squander such a magical sight on anything less than the perfect song. Ten years later, he was still waiting for it when he heard The Shins' "Saint Simon." Fitzgerald immediately knew it was a match. "Both capture the experience of somebody showing you something beautiful for the first time," he says, "and that can be anything ... the first time somebody loves you, or the first time you see something in nature that forever changes you."
The video, produced by Your Mom Films, was shot last February at El Rosario de las Mariposas, a privately-owned reserve in Michoacan, Mexico. It features the Portland-based band wandering in wonder as butterflies fill the air like confetti from a surreal and endless party. Monarchs carpet the ground and cover the same Oyamel fir trees their ancestors have been returning to each fall for over 40,000 years.
Although the vast majority of bands only pretend to play in their videos, The Shins pretended extra quietly in order to be sensitive to their environment. "We didn't want to disturb them," singer James Mercer says. "It's kind of like being at the Grand Canyon or something — I mean, who throws a cup into the Grand Canyon?" Perhaps the thrill of leaning over the Grand Canyon comes close to being surrounded by many hundreds of thousands of butterflies. It was even a little, well, unnerving for keyboardist Marty Crandall, who kept saying, "What if these fuckers turned on us?"
Amazingly, the band and production team were granted access to parts of the privately owned park that no one besides scientists and researchers had ever been allowed. When Fitzgerald' s Mexican production company went on their scouting trip they had a long conversation with the park' s boss. This conversation revealed the fact that El Jefe' s brother was incarcerated in Mexico City and offered an easy solution. "Our Mexican producer bailed this guys brother out of jail, so he owed us a favor," says Fitzgerald.
Supervised by scientists, they were allowed to bring cranes and equipment into extremely pristine areas. "We were very, very careful and very respectful," says Mercer, whose sensitive demeanor might well encourage one to entrust him with a firstborn child. Mercer and Fitzgerald hope the gorgeous video will allow people to hear "Saint Simon" differently, as the song was released nearly two years ago. "On top of that, I want to show them a really beautiful place," says Fitzgerald. "It's definitely something you should see before you die."
-- Erin Ergenbright
author Erin Ergenbright is the co-author of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, and her work has appeared in The Believer Magazine, Tin House, Colorado Review, The Oregonian, Portland Monthly and elsewhere. She is a co-director of the Loggernaut Reading Series and teaches writing workshops in Portland public schools.
