NEW RELEASE: The White Stripes "The Denial Twist"

The White Stripes "The Denial Twist"  Third Man/V2
Michel Gondry, director
Julie Fong, producer
Partizan, production co
Ellen Kuras, DP
Description: This playful video celebrates The White Stripes' triumphant one week stand on NBC's Late Night With Conan O'Brien. Most directors and bands would just set up some cameras, document the week and edit it into a rather ordinary video. "The Denial Twist" is not that. First off, director Michel Gondry plays with perspective to such a degree that the viewer is constantly off balance. Sometimes Conan O'Brien and Jack and Meg White look enormous; sometimes they look tiny. The overall image is often squished or stretched, so things look like they're being reflected by fun-house mirrors. Also many objects have a boxlike quality, as if they were made of squares.
    The actual narrative here is circular in nature. The video starts with the band performing on the show and then driving home to watch the broadcast from their apartment. Of course, things aren't that simple. The giant foot that comes crashing down on the performance in the beginning is actually Meg's, as she tries to stomp their old-fashioned  TV into working order, which means that the footage we see in the beginning is actually being filmed off the convex lens of  that TV. I think.
    Pulling off all the visual tricks in the videos called for building a facsimile of Conan's studio, in addition to a miniature car and other rooms of varying proportions. Conan makes a cameo toward the end of the video to add another self-aware layer to the clip, while other times midgets and extremely tall people play his role.
    As you can probably tell from my meandering description, this is not a video that's easily described. So, just watch it by going to the video section of whitestripes.com.