Music Videos

Music Videos are an amazing form of art that combines two things I am extremely passionate about: Music and Film. I’ve directed a hand full of music videos in my day, and still will consider it if something mind-blowing should present itself. Sadly, I haven’t seen a good treatment attached to a good song in a while.

I feel like a lot of people have given up on music videos. They used to be an awesome outlet for CD promotion, and overall band recognition, but it seems is if they are falling off the face by the day. MTV figured out that they could make more money off of hooking an audience to a series of bullshit reality shows than to play actual music videos at any time.

It’s true though; Music Videos are a hard sell. Not many people are willing to sit and watch hours of music vids. They can’t hold interest because of the need to appeal to several genres at once. If a particular viewer isn’t into rap, they are going to flip around while the Soulja Boi video is playing. That wouldn’t be so horrible if MTV could guarantee that the viewer would come right back to see the next video, but they cant.

I remember a day when people would watch MTV all day long just for the chance to catch the Michael Jackson – “Thriller” video from the beginning. I wish it would go back to that: Fans sitting around waiting to see their favorite band’s video. It’s cheaper than a movie, you can talk to your friends while you wait, and you get to listen to good music videos in the mean time. Sounds like a win win…win.

If it weren’t for Youtube, I would never see current music videos. This does of course eliminate the waiting process, but for what sacrifice? I have to watch it in a little 3-inch box on my computer screen instead of on my new Panasonic 103-inch plasma. (If you have 70K to spare, I recommend the hell out of this TV.)



Since MTV wont play em, I’m going to pay homage to some music videos in an art form that never seizes to put a smile on my face: Artist who learn their entire song in reverse. This always makes for an interesting playback in the right direction, and leaves everyone else wondering how the hell they were able to match up their mouth movement with the lyrics. Sorry, I just gave away the secret. Enjoy.

Coldplay - "The Scientist"


Jack Johnson - "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing"


Mute Math - "Typical"


AJ

Round 1

So I went to the Mayweather Hatton fight in Vegas this weekend. I just got back from Vegas today. The fight was beautiful with Floyd “Money” Mayweather knocking out Ricky Hatton in the tenth round. It seemed like everyone wanted Hatton to win because he was the underdog. I’ve never really been into these underdog stories.

People want the underdog to win because as humans we crave equity. The assumption exists in our minds that life is supposed to be fair, and I’ve got bad news for you…it’s not. Floyd Mayweather is the best pound for pound fighter in the world, and he will be the first to tell you. He talked so much shit before the fight about how he was going to kill Hatton and he did.

What’s greater and more difficult? To be a little underdog and land a lucky punch to take down the great one or to be consistently good all the time. That’s the harder thing to do in life and it takes much more work. That’s what we pride our studio on and our careers.

In listening to Steve Martin’s audiobook Born Standing Up, he made a quote that I have modeled my life around. I don’t remember the exact words but involved something like, “Everyone has a great night, but the only ones that are remembered are the ones that are consistently good every night.” And he went on to explain that’s why he shot for being good every night instead of being great.

It’s time that this society embraced the motto that only the strong survive and that winners keep on winning. It’s time that we quit searching for equity and start paving our own way. It’s time that we embrace the fact that those who have tons of money and talent worked for every bit of it. There’s an opportunity cost for everything so lets quit rooting for the underdog.

LD

Hollywood Hook-ups.

When I was just a growing pup in the industry, I always loved listening to stories from people that had been in the game longer than me. There were always new aspects of this whole thing that I couldn’t get enough of. I was a PA living vicariously through the people higher up. Even if it was an Industry Related person telling a Non-Industry story, it still seemed “industry” to me. Tom Hanks could talk about his antique typewriter collection for 2 hours, I still listened.

Now that I have been around for a while, and am in a position of power, I have accumulated a pretty decent amount of stories. However I don’t assume that everyone wants to hear them. I usually wait until someone asks me a related question before I just openly break out into story time.

Someone recently asked me if because I’m a bachelor and the head of a major studio, have I ever slept around with any famous women. Even if I did, I wouldn’t openly write about it in my blog. I wouldn’t have to. Us Weekly would write about it for me. It has happened before, and it’s just something you have to get used to out here.

People are always searching for celebrity gossip, and if none exist, they will just make it up. I have several friends that are actresses. If I take one of them out to eat to discuss a role, or to a Premiere as a friend, then the next morning all the tabloids say we’re dating. I just think it’s funny. Not many people outside of the industry know what I look like anyways.

There was this one time I hooked up with one of the girls off that show “The Hills.” (I don’t really care to discuss which one) But as non-famous as I considered the people on that show at the time, they were always in the news about something. It was weird how it happened, she just yanked me into the girl’s bathroom by my collar and started making out with me. My pants ended up around my ankles, and before I could even figure out how she did that trick, the door swung wide open. I saw three camera flashes go off before it closed shut.

I thought about going to the owner, who was a good friend of mine, and asking him to make everyone exit through the door with the metal detectors….where I would be standing on the other side like airport security ready to buy every shitty consumer digital camera that set the alarm off. I didn’t end up doing that though. I figured with the other girl who opened the bathroom door blocking most of the shot, mixed with the bad angle and short amount of time the door was actually open… any picture that was taken, probably didn’t capture anything worth publishing.

I was right. The next day, no photos were seen of me…. or her. I saw a publication that used another picture of her and the caption said “_______ _______ from ‘The Hills’ was caught making out with some no-named loser in the bathroom of a Beverly Hills hot spot last night.” Hilarious. She is a shitty scripted reality TV star, and that makes me a no-named loser studio CEO. At least that’s anonymous. I would rather be the only who knows who that loser is than for people to actually think I associate with that bitch and her pant removing voodoo.

AJ