If director Michele Civetta's 2006 longform "Friendly Fire" piece for Sean Lennon is essentially a feature film of a music video, but this trio of clips for indie rockers The Randians is like episodic TV series that hits all the right Pulp Fiction buttons with debaucherous glee.
We recently connected with Michele to talk about the videos, the inspirations and the guest stars (including Boardwalk Empire actress Paz De La Huerta)...
Videostatic: Drugs, guns, models, and video cameras. I take it this wasn't a typical video set. Or was it?
Michele Civetta: Yeah. It felt like we were channeling something out of early era Wu-Tang Shaolin video shoot. The impetus for the theme was I moved back stateside after living the last seven years in Europe and wanted to get back to the basics, all the elements of a "greed is good" culture. Guns, chicks and drugs are as wholesome as apple pie in my own private un-sanitized normal Rockwell vision of American life.
VS: How did all the actors get involved, especial Robert Davi and Paz De La Huerta.
MC: The general idea was to gather an ensemble which had a degree of existing referential ability to their mythology. Some of the cast were friends and others hopped on board given the scope of the concept and the motley crew of characters being assembled. Avan Jogia is a Nickelodeon teen idol, star of Victorious and now ABC's Wicked. Was great to see him break out of the box of his usual realm of song and dance work to something less sanitized. Robert Davi crafted his character as a gangster emblematic of the 1980's bad guys you love to hate — the kind of role that he has been renowned for playing: A kidnapper in The Goonies, a strip club owner in the smut film sexploitation of Verhoevens Show Girls, the bad guy in Die Hard and James Bond License To Kill. Paz is an old friend and we've worked together a bunch over the years. i convinced her to channel a bit of an serpentine over the hill chanteuse with a touch of evil era Marlene Dietrich. Brian Butler is an extremely talented visual artist, occultist and filmmaker whose work has been show at museums worldwide. He shares a band with, and is a protégé of legendary filmmaker and provocateur Kenneth Anger.
VS: Something like Pulp Fiction feels like a good reference point, especially in terms of the modular nature. I think someone could watch these videos in almost any order and still get something out of them. What are your thoughts on the structural relationship between the three videos?
MC: I love the elliptical possibilities of cinema, A narrative than can be deciphered in fragments and elucidate different interpretations. Stories that build on each other in short form have always been an obsession, like Soy Cuba, some of Robert Altman's work, or even Kieslowski's Decalogue. Narratives where place and time overlap to create a tapestry approach to story. The real reference points that I was digging into stylistically were Paul Schrader's Hardcore, and Cassavettes' The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie — cloak and dagger neo-noir worlds where style is king and everyone is a suspect.
Watch: "You Are" x "You Got Me" x "Dollar Bill"
