name: Charles Mehling
company: Streetgang Films job/title: director
First Video: "Whatever Happened To My Rock'N'Roll (Punk Song)" for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Not the elegantly lit and highly stylized version that the English director WIZ did. Rather, the "sloppy American version shot on DV and edited by my next door neighbor who had just gotten Final Cut Pro the day before" version.
Strangest Video: That’s kind of a tough one because I seem to intentionally create disastrous and chaotic situations to distract myself from my own somewhat chaotic and emotionally painful personal life that is in fact a world that I have subliminally created as well. Oh, I’m only joking. Sort of. The one that comes to mind is a video I did for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, "When Jokers Attack." Despite the fact that I played in the band for a couple of years, I agreed to do this impossibly low budget video for a band that really didn’t want one. The basic premise was to capture a classically hedonistic late night Silverlake party in all of its realistically hedonistic glory. With a small crew I shot a scant story line and a cool band performance all at the "Manson-like" home of Anton Newcombe, the bands maniacal singer. We shot through the night and stumbled out of there at dawn as the band piled into a van for a lengthy North American tour. In the morning I got a call from the DP/PA who informed me that in his inebriated state he decided to leave his red hatchback Toyota Corolla, spilling-over with all of our camera equipment, on a desolate street somewhere near Highland Blvd. Needless to say, it got broken into and all of the equipment, as well as the film, was gone. That call was immediately followed by the A&R guy from the band's small label who was wondering how the shoot went and to tell me that they needed to move the deadline for the video forward. I truly felt sick, scared and hung-over. I took to driving the Los Angeles freeways for no apparent reason. I had no band, no equipment and no money. All I had left of the BJM was that house. I went there and repeatedly rang the doorbell until some cool looking but really out of it girl answered. After much persuading it was agreed that she would be in my video for a $60 bag of cocaine. I still don’t know why, but an acquaintance and rising young DP, Max Goldman, agreed to come over right away with a Panasonic and a couple of lights. Again we shot through the night as this really cool and charismatic girl perched atop a barstool sang all of Anton’s parts perfectly. I never saw that girl again, but I can’t thank her enough for baring her soul and truly saving my ass. I don’t know if the video is any good but I do think that it suited the bands irreverent style and fucked up folklore perfectly. Max wouldn’t work with me for a few years and the band to this day doesn’t believe that the original film was stolen, but in the end I delivered the video on time. [watch "When Jokers Attack"]
What's Next: Bed.
