Human traffiicking, illegal immigration from Mexico, showgirls, Hot Hot Heat and Burt Young aka Paulie from Rocky. Somehow all these elements come together in a hallucinogenic, grotesque, ambitious and engaging short film that ups the ante signifigantly from the Edmonton slacker opus that director Michael Maxxis delivered for the band's last video, "21@12."
Steve Bays, Hot Hot Heat: ""Goddess On The Prairie" is, by far, the best looking video we've ever been a part of. Similar to our other video that we did with Mike (21@12), it looks like a snippet from a classic film you've never seen. In 21@12 we were going for an early 80's documentary look and he nailed it; and then in Goddess we were going for a classic, dirty, raw 70's cinematic look — almost like Easy Rider — mixed with the hand cranked (Chaplin-esque) footage which, whenever the video started to look TOO pretty, gave it a boost of the patented frantic, freak show energy that originally lured me to wanting to work with Mike in the first place."
Paul Bock, producer: "Our first move was finding a known, recognizable actor, which ended up being the amazing Burt Young, AKA Pauly from the Rocky movies (Maxxis and I both being HUGE Rocky fans). The next step was we had to shoot on 35mm (21@12 was shot on 16). Cale Finot our DP was a big part in helping the cause. Cale has a great rapport with Panavision Woodland Hills and their legendary lens guru Dan Sasaki. Cale actually talked Dan into crafting a custom made lens just for this video. The shots you see in the desert with the distorted edges were on that "Saki" lens. The Saki lens worked on our B camera, a hand cranked Arri 2c which we exposed Fuji DI Print stock (which is the film that's used to project feature film prints through a film projector in theaters and not typically ever loaded in a camera mag). On our A camera we shot four different neg stocks from Kodak, including the newest Vision 3 200T stock. All that being said, we had a tight budget, and really had no business shooting it with such high standards, but it was all way too easy to fight hard to make this video considering we all felt the great passion and music of Hot Hot Heat."
Michael Maxxis, dir: "As far as the video goes, I'd say that more than anything the illegal mexican stuff in the video is a tongue in cheek portrayal of the issue. It's basically portraying mexicans as alien commodities, much like how they are portrayed by mainstream media. In the news it just seems like these people are dismissed as aliens and who gives a shit about them, so that's how I portrayed them in the video. The video is ridiculous, much like the portrayal of Mexicans in the media."
--> watch "Goddess On The Prarie" (long version) plus a Making-Of
Hot Hot Heat "Goddess On The Prarie" (Dine Alone)Michael Maxxis, director | Paul Bock + Tracy Wu, producer | Vision Ent, production co | Cale Finot, DP | Paul Forte, editor | Shane Reed, colorist | Geoff McLean, executive producer (note: Maxxis is repped in the U.S. by DNA; Hot Hot Heat is signed to Dangerbird Records for U.S.)
note: Vision Ent is a sponsor of Videostatic.com
