The Directors Label DVDs

[modage]

i have always loved Romanek.  though one hour photo didn't blow me away, i really look forward to seeing what he does in films in the future.  its also pretty great that he wrote the script for that coming out of music videos.

There's another film I talking about doing really fast. I'm going to find out literally today if I'm going to do that. It's a straight horror film.

that would RULE.  i will have to ask him about that.

[modage]

There's another film I talking about doing really fast. I'm going to find out literally today if I'm going to do that. It's a straight horror film.

that would RULE.  i will have to ask him about that.

for anyone else interested, he's not doing the horror movie.    he said the studio decided they'd rather rush to do it quickly and cheaply than do it with him (he said as is often the case.)  that sucks.

[mutinyco]

You should've asked whether Michael and Janet Jackson are indeed the same person...

[mogwai]

hey, why are you still here? shouldn't you be hibernating with the other bears this time of the year?

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I only read descriptions, so I can't be sure, but it seems like, as far as content goes, you really only get your money's worth by getting Romanek or Glazer... not to say the other two aren't any good, I haven't seen any of them yet, but it seems like Sednaoui's and Corbijn's have as much material as Cunningham's DVD.  It was a good one, but very skimpy... especially since more of their stuff exists.

Without a doubt, I'm picking up Romanek's today.

[cron]

to the millonaires who already bought and saw the 4 dvd's , how are they? worth getting , the four of them?

[RegularKarate]

I am not a millionaire so I have only bought the Romanek so far.

All I have to say is that 99 Problems is one of the best videos to be made EVER and I'm pretty sure that I can say that it's the best edited video ever.

The other three will have to wait until I have cash.

[mutinyco]

The set is a little more streamlined than the last. No dual-sided disks this time. Everybody gets one side. And each focuses on different things. Romanek focuses entirely on his videos. Glazer, whom we're to believe really gets his ideas from a financially handicapped bloke, has his videos, commercials, and clips from his 2 features. Stephane Sednaoui has his videos plus some short films. Anton Corbijn has his videos and a few making-of pieces, as well as a few promos.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I've thoroughly enjoyed Romanek's DVD.  It is jam packed... a lot of commentaries (Tom Morello on "Cochise" is pretty funny)... a lot of nice stuff on this DVD.

I'm going to inspect Sedanoui's tonight and tomorrow... Corbijn is up next for me, Glazer (due to a lack of materials) will be last for me.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/features/d/directors_series_feature_091305/index2.jhtml?epiNum=1

The Directors Label franchise is already looking forward. Next year's series will feature director Mike Mills (Air, Moby, Beth Orton and the feature "Thumbsucker" ( see Elliott Smith, Polyphonics Bring Balance To 'Thumbsucker' Soundtrack") and likely the directorial team Hammer & Tongs (Blur, Eels, Supergrass). Other participants aren't yet locked down, but series brainchild Richard Brown said he'd also love to extol the works of Shynola (Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Beck), Roman Coppola (the Strokes, Green Day, Presidents of the United States of America) and Jean-Baptiste Mondino (Madonna, Björk, Neneh Cherry).

Brown also plans to branch out with a Directors Label offshoot focusing on the work of directors in the R&B and hip-hop fields, singling out Paul Hunter, Little X and Chris Robinson as the debut directors in that series.

[MacGuffin]

Romanek Shifts From Music Videos to Movies



Jay-Z shot. Trent Reznor spinning upside down. David Bowie teetering on a rooftop. These are just a few of the iconic images Mark Romanek has fashioned as an elite music video director.

On a new DVD compiling his clips (part of the Directors Label series that earlier chronicled Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham), Romanek's admirers include Steven Soderbergh, Ben Stiller and Bono.

His work varies from Lenny Kravitz's dreadlock bash "Are You Gonna Go My Way" to the emotional "Hurt" by Johnny Cash, which juxtaposed the 71-year-old with archival footage of the young country star and was proclaimed the greatest video ever by Rolling Stone.

He's touched off controversy with a child-porn theme in Fiona Apple's "Criminal," and was censored for the industrial gross-out "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails. He's worked with Madonna ("Rain"), Beck ("Devil's Haircut") and Michael and Janet Jackson ("Scream").

Now he's moved on to feature films his debut being 2002's "One Hour Photo," starring Robin Williams. He's currently working on commercials (he made those dancing silhouettes for the iPod ads) and a new script.

AP: What's most different between making videos and making movies?

Romanek: I don't mean to sound egocentric when I say, it's mine. It's my expression from the ground up, as opposed to, as a video director, I'm kind of in the service industry. I take it very seriously that I'm not trying to completely subsume the artist's music with my idea of what the visuals should be.

AP: So you view your work in videos as not yours?

Romanek: Yeah which isn't a bad thing. It's like getting a script and interpreting it. It's extremely collaborative in the sense that the entire soundtrack is predetermined, the text of the piece is predetermined I think of lyrics as a text or a script. The first thing I do when I get a song is to type up the lyrics ... and I go, "What is this song about?"

AP: Your video for "Hurt," a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song, was called a breakthrough for music video expressing emotion. Were you thinking this was your ...

Romanek: Yeah.

AP: ... true medium?

Romanek: Oh, I thought you were going to say the last thing I do as a video director. I think what happened was, that was the first video I did after I made my movie. I was looking for more fulfilling challenges in that format, that medium. Whatever made that video resonate with people so much, it's not really what I did. (The video was made on short notice not long before Cash died. Romanek stumbled across the old footage, and inserted it randomly at first.) I feel a little queasy talking about it as something that is mine. I was smart enough to get out of the way of something that was much bigger than me.

AP: Is there a video you consider more "yours?"

Romanek: I'm very proud of I'm not sure if that's the same thing the Janet Jackson video ("Got 'til It's Gone"). ... There isn't one of them that's the most representative of me. For some reason the Janet Jackson one popped into my head because, it might sound weird to say, I have a love for a lot of aspects of black culture. At the time I thought black culture was being depicted pretty one-dimensionally and that was my little, liberal, white-boy contribution to trying to open up the range of what types of black culture could be depicted in a music video.

AP: Have you found it difficult to get artists to trust your vision?

Romanek: There was a lot of apprehension on Jay-Z's part of him being gunned down in his video ("99 Problems") and I was trying to explain that the intention was for that to be kind of abstract. But in the hip-hop world, it's not abstract. In many instances that has been a literal reality. There was a certain amount of back and forth about it, and he literally typed in an e-mail to me, "I trust you."

AP: Has the variety of music acts and looks to your videos made you especially adaptable?

Romanek: I was trying to foster an image of somebody that you couldn't pigeonhole. ... But generally speaking, I did want to become very adept technically with music videos so when I made a movie I didn't have to worry about it so much ... That's the great advantage of this if you think about it as a very elite film school post-post-graduate film school.

AP: This DVD series gives more import to a previously disposable medium. Is it worthy?

Romanek: I think the directors in this series are some of the most exciting, experimental, poetic short filmmakers in the last 20 years. It would be hard to deny that that Spike Jonze's work is not incredibly original and amusing and deceptively sophisticated, or that Chris Cunningham isn't some kind of genius, or that Michel Gondry isn't some king of M.C. Escher of cinema. The music video, at least in some people's minds, has become like a pejorative it means flashy or ephemeral or gaudy. But these guys are the exception to that.

[sickfins]

jonathan glazer's dvd menus are hilarious.  there is so much to look through in this box set but it looks like glazer/romanek are the ones i'm looking forward to most

[MacGuffin]

Even though French born video director and photographer Stephane Sednaoui has lived in New York City for 15 years his art sensibilities still lie very much in the French avant garde. Back in the early 1990’s he broke major ground with music videos like Give it Away, Mysterious Ways and Sometimes Salvation. Now much of his work is being collected in Palm Pictures The Director’s Label Vol. 7 The Work of Director Stephane Sednaoui.

Daniel Robert Epstein: How much time did you put into your Directors Label DVD?

Stephane Sednaoui: So much time, so much work plus it was tense because we had arguments. It was not good everyday. The amount of work was insane because I had to financially keep doing the other work that I usually do. But like all of us, especially Mark Romanek, I am a control freak.

DRE: You call yourself a control freak?

SS: Yeah, wait no, actually I’m not a control freak. I like to go at 90 – 95 percent. I think Mark goes to reach 100 percent. Me, I let life take over after 95 percent. I wanted to do three special projects for this, because I didn’t really shoot anything in the past four years that I liked enough to put on the DVD. So I shot three projects back to back. I did the Walk on the Wild Side film then I did an animation for Björk. The animation was an old project I had with her ten years ago when it was an art installation for an art gallery. It was based on the drawings that I did ten years ago, so I found the illustrators and they did the animation. It’s called Acqua Natasa.

DRE: How was it working with Björk again?

SS: Since it was animation I didn’t even see her.

DRE: Your DVD also has a never before seen version of Big Time Sensuality.

SS: Yes, it is the night version and is completely different. Basically at night after we filmed everything the light was down so instead of 24 frames, we had to go to 6 to 8 frames per second. We couldn’t cut that footage into the other footage because it would look different so we did another version. Normally the video is four minutes, but on that special one it’s six minutes. It’s uncut. For me it was nice to have it because it shows how good she is.

DRE: I think the Give it Away video in 1991 was one of the first really artistic music videos on MTV.

SS: I don’t know because I don’t know so much about the videos before, but it was very visual.

DRE: What was the inspiration?

SS: The inspiration was a Details shoot I did in 1988. I had been experimenting with photos for a few years. One day we painted them silver and one day we just painted some parts of them silver. The Chili Peppers were totally into it.

DRE: What did you think of Weird Al Yankovic’s parody Yabba dabba do now?

SS: I loved it. I was amazed that I could something a bit special and then the guy comes asks some questions and does something that is dead on.

DRE: Did he call you?

SS: No, but he asked everyone involved besides me. I wish there was no insert of the Flintstones movie he was promoting.

DRE: Then you did the Scar Tissue video the Chili Peppers, how was it working with them again ten years later?

SS: It was very interesting because the song was so different. Give It Away was were all about energy and then song Scar Tissue was all about emotion. I had a broken heart. I had like been very sad between those two times and so were they. John Frusciante disappeared for eight years, Flea had a broken heart; Anthony and Chad had their own problems. They were smashed and beaten up by life.

DRE: The first time I saw the Scar Tissue video the sound on my television was off, and I swear to God I thought Anthony looked like Iggy Pop.

SS: Yes, it’s true. His haircut and everything. He came to do the video like that. I never want to change any artist’s look because I think it’s very important that they keep their identity.

DRE: Where was The Black Crowes video, Sometimes Salvation, shot?

SS: It was shot in 42nd Street between Port Authority and Sixth Avenue. Back when Times Square was bad. Now when I go there I’m like, “Ugh.” It’s not so much fun anymore. Not that I think that seedy is great or anything but it had age and history. Right now it’s kind of lost the gas and it seems out of place. I wish it evolved in a better way.

DRE: How did you meet Sofia [Coppola] back then?

SS: I photographed her for a magazine.

DRE: For The Godfather 3?

SS: Yes and I thought she was amazing and beautiful. I had a crush on her so I wanted to see her again and she was just the perfect character.

DRE: Do you fall in love pretty easily?

SS: Not easily, but I do like strong women.

DRE: When you’re doing photographs or videos you have to capture the inner person so that must help you fall in love with them.

SS: It is a precious moment when you photograph someone or when you meet someone or when you share creativity. So when you meet a strong woman that has a lot of opinions and knows what she wants and things like that. Then you have a creative exchange, that sometimes it triggers something personal.

DRE: I read you don’t have any mirrors in your house.

SS: Yeah, that’s true. Well there’s a small one on the wall in my bathroom. If I have to see myself I have to climb to be sure that my pants is okay or whatever.

DRE: Why don’t you want to see yourself?

SS: I don’t know. I suppose I should put a mirror up. I think it would do me good.

DRE: I also read you photograph all digitally now.

SS: Yeah, most of the time I shoot in digital, unless it’s an advertising campaign where they need to do posters or it’s a beauty campaign and I want to really capture the right texture of the skin. Otherwise I go digital.

DRE: When did you do that?

SS: Eight years ago. It annoyed people because I started when it was just five megs. Now the files are 60 megabytes and you can do something with it, but then you couldn’t really do something with it. but I was still insisting to do pictures with five megabyte files and for a little while it was okay.

DRE: So with the lenses that they have now, is digital as good as film?

SS: It’s not as good as film if you have to make prints. But for a magazine and for most other uses of photography it’s as good and sometimes it’s better because it’s right away. You don’t have to scan it and deal with the film grain. I learned Photoshop because I used to do that stuff by cutting things with scissors and a knife but now I use the same technique with Photoshop.

DRE: How about videos on digital?

SS: Acqua Natasa I shot on film and Walk on the Wild Side is shot on HD. It was fantastic to work with HD.

DRE: What do you like about that?

SS: Faster as a format and it’s already 16 x 9. It’s more physical. You see right away what you’re shooting which is much more exciting. I knew when I had something and I could move on.

DRE: When did you first pick up the camera?

SS: When I was 16 and I started to work when I was 21 and make money when I was 22. This year is my 20th anniversary in the business.

DRE: What was your first music video?

SS: For a French band named NTM. It’s on the DVD set.

DRE: Do you still like that video?

SS: Yes, I really like it because the lyrics and the power of the performance are really good. On the DVD I also put my first short film that is no good but it was funny. Everybody should see that you can start out with a big mistake.

DRE: Do you want to do theatrical movies?

SS: Yes. I developed something a few years ago and it fell through. Now I want to develop something because last time I was trying to buy the rights of the book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [by Jean-Dominique Bauby]. It took two years to free it from DreamWorks then the agent didn’t want to sell it to me anymore then sold it to a big studio. They wanted to work with Steven Spielberg and Russell Crowe. I was like, “Well, fuck it” then they changed their mind and finally they contacted Julian Schnabel. He is supposed to do it with Johnny Depp.

I think in the back of my head I was hoping it was going to fall through and that I would get a better project.

DRE: How the videos affected your photography and vice versa?

SS: The photography definitely set up the whole look of my first videos because every first video came from something that I did with photo shoots. Then after that the photo shoots took on a more cinematography aspect so they fed one another.

DRE: Are you going to be doing any more music videos?

SS: No. I want to do it the way I want and that would be with a more artistic approach. I would like to be the owner of my images.

DRE: What are you listening to now?

SS: I’m listening to RJD2. I don’t know if it’s one guy, two guys, three guys.

DRE: Just one guy and he’s amazing.

SS: I listen to Citizen Cope. Then the classics from the ‘70s, like Deep Purple, Janis Joplin. I grew up listening to Jeff Beck, Santana and all those things. I love Fred Frith too.

DRE: If the Chili Peppers asked you to do a video, would you consider it?

SS: Yeah, if I like the song.

DRE: Do you watch videos?

SS: No, I don’t have a TV. I just have an old monitor to watch tapes and now DVDs.

[MacGuffin]

Out of the four directors selected for the latest round of Palm Pictures The Directors Label DVD sets, Jonathan Glazer is probably the most fascinating. That’s because he made his bones doing just a small number of music videos for such artists as Radiohead, Massive Attack's and UNKLE. He’s been most acclaimed for his films Sexy Beast and the Nicole Kidman film, Birth. He co-wrote the enigmatic Birth but isn’t planning on going back to the music video world anytime soon.

Daniel Robert Epstein: When did you do your first music video?

Jonathan Glazer: I did my first music video probably in about 1990 for Massive Attack and it’s on the DVD set.

DRE: How was it looking at some of these older videos?

JG: Painful. I haven’t made that many videos. Only nine, actually. It’s interesting to go back through the journey a little. It makes you quite dizzy.

DRE: If you only made nine videos that means they are all on the DVD set.

JG: Nine videos. Two films. That’s the sum total of all my efforts.

DRE: Probably your biggest video was Virtual Insanity for Jamiroquai. That was really cool. Was that all one shot?

JG: Four shots and the cuts are hidden. That one was very difficult because it relied entirely on the accuracy of Jay Kay’s performance and the accuracy of the room and the accuracy of the way the chairs moved and so on. If he bumped into a chair or whatever, we would have to start again so it was very tense.

DRE: It seemed like that video was inspired by listening to the song because it was very smooth.

JG: All the videos, in some way or another, came from the music.

DRE: Mark [Romanek] was telling me something a little different. He has a computer file filled with ideas.

Was Virtual Insanity all your idea?

JG: Yeah. Jay Kay had the idea of being in an airport on the baggage thing that goes around. But then we saw that he was an extraordinary dancer and we created a stage for him to be extraordinary. It was a combination of that and what I wanted to do with him anyway.

DRE: How did doing music videos help you once you started making films?

JG: It certainly helped. I’ve done a few videos and a few commercials, so I’m aware of the camera enough to be able to not look foolish. But Sexy Beast was the first time I worked with actors on that scale.

DRE: Sir Ben Kingsley is a high scale.

JG: Yeah [laughs]. It’s hard to jump into that and answer their questions. You’ve got to know what you’re doing so it was a fast learning curve.

DRE: Commercials and even music videos to some extent are to sell something. But that’s certainly not what you did with Sexy Beast or Birth.

JG: No.

DRE: Is it a different mindset or is it just working from the script?

JG: I think it’s a different discipline all together. A two minute video is different from a film, but you still want everything to work and make sense on some level. So that’s similar in that respect but they’re not completely unrelated. With commercials, you’re selling something but I don’t look at it like they’re using my shit to sell their shit; I look at it like I’m using their shit to sell my shit.

DRE: Why does that image of the guy being hit by the car work in the Rabbit In Your Headlights video?

JG: I think what’s interesting is that when he gets hit by cars there’s something kind of odd going on in it. When he first gets knocked down and you look at him lying there he looks like he could be dead, which would normally be the case. But then he takes a breath and gets up. Each time he gets hit, it almost gets easier for him to get up. So it’s working opposite to what would happen because normally, every time you’d get hit, it would take more minutes to get up. When the ending comes, it’s inevitable, but you didn’t guess it. Then the last time he gets up he becomes superhuman.

DRE: Of course you used computers for the effect at the end. Was he surrounded by a greenscreen?

JG: The guy who took all the hits was actually hit so that was hardcore. Then in the end, he’s shot separately and we do a little lighting change. The car was rammed into a post and there was a charge in the car that made the smoke come out.

DRE: Was that Thom [Yorke] and you that came up with that concept?

JG: Thom didn’t come up with any of the concepts, I did. But I go through them with him so that we would both feel that the work is being represented in the best light. I want the artist to be responsible to the song but all the concepts are my concepts.

DRE: I’m assuming that when someone reads a script like Sexy Beast, you see what a great part Don Logan is and that’s what Sir Ben Kingsley saw because I don’t imagine he’s a big Radiohead fan.

JG: No [laughs]. He saw the script; he saw my stuff, so he knew there was something going on that he could work with.

DRE: Were you nervous working with him?

JG: Yeah, I wanted to get it right. I wanted to give him the right directions. I had the ingredients, the casting had gone well and I had a great script. I was the thing that would make it all gel or not so you have to learn fast and communicate quickly. It was nerve-wracking but I find everything to be nerve-wracking. I’m never comfortable.

DRE: You see a lot of music video directors who jump right into whatever piece of crap film is available. Did you just keep saying no until right thing came along?

JG: Yeah, I was being sent everything, big and small. Sexy Beast came to me because I knew the writers. We were going to work together before but didn’t for various reasons. We still wanted to work together and they developed Sexy Beast into a film.

DRE: I read you haven’t done a video for three years.

JG: I was on Birth for two years. That was a long time so I haven’t had a chance. But I’m going to come back. I’ve just done a commercial which is actually on the DVD. I will do videos for the White Stripes, PJ Harvey but this past summer I’ve been too busy writing.

DRE: Who are the directors that you admire now?

JG: I think Michael Haneke is very smart. I don’t really like doing lists because I’m going to remember people in an hour I wish I could have said.

DRE: Well, Michael Haneke on his own is a good enough list.

JG: I like people who aren’t afraid to fail.

DRE: Are you afraid to fail?

JG: No I’m not because if you come from the right place your failures are successes. You’re not failing if you’re pushing the envelope, if you’re challenging genuinely challenging something. If you fall short, you fall short. That’s the nature of experimenting. If you don’t try to push the envelope, then you fail.

DRE: How did you get to do videos?

JG: I was doing commercials then music videos at the same time in 1991.

DRE: Where did you grow up?

JG: On the outskirts of London right next to Dartmouth. Being there you get to see all this music.

DRE: What were you like as a young man?

JG: I was a bit of a dreamer and stuck in my own world. Lonely, geeky and dreaming.

DRE: Did any of those dreams become music videos?

JG: Those dreams are all over my work.

DRE: What else is on the DVD besides the commercials, videos and films?

JG: I’ve got these menus of me doing a sketch with my friend. Basically, I play me and he plays a tramp who I buy drugs from.

DRE: Lets first talk about your last picture, Birth. It wasn’t as successful critically or commercially as Sexy Beast. Did that throw you into a funk?

JG: Not really. I don’t think commercially because the numbers of a film don’t represent the value of a film. Unfortunately we live in an age where things are measured by the profit they make. Everything you make, you judge in terms of how far you fall short creatively, not how far you fall short in terms of audience.

DRE: Did Birth come out exactly how you wanted it too?

JG: No, I don’t think anything has ever come out exactly how I wanted it. I have my own feelings about my shortcomings regarding the work. I wasn’t happy with the situation, I wasn’t happy with the way it was marketed or received. I was trying to create this perspective which was unique. But like I said, I don’t go along with the idea of thinking that the work is less valuable because it makes less money. I think we’re living in this very competitive marketplace now where movies don’t have the same chance in the theaters that they do on DVD. Sexy Beast was the same because it was never a hit. It worked through word of mouth as a slow hit in England. It was when people started getting the DVD that it started getting an audience.

DRE: I’m sure Birth did well on DVD.

JG: I think it’s probably doing okay on DVD but again time will tell. Of course I would have preferred the film to have made more money than it did. But it doesn’t occupy my thoughts. It won’t stop me from challenging myself again the next time around.

DRE: Did that increase the length of time until you make your next film?

JG: Well I don’t want to go the studio route and go through what happened last time. The problems I had were largely because I went through a conventional studio route and their expectations of the film weren’t mine. So we were in opposition to one another very early on. We’re planning on setting up a film now independently but I still need 30 million dollars.

DRE: What’s the film you’re doing?

JG: I’m doing a film called Under The Skin.

DRE: 30 million dollars isn’t a small amount by far.

JG: No, it isn’t.

DRE: What’s it about?

JG: It’s a political horror film, if that makes any sense.

DRE: Have you written it?

JG: I’m writing it with another writer and I’ve got a very good team of people around me. I think it’s going to be a very different experience this time. I’m going to shoot it in July 2006.

DRE: Do you have anyone attached yet?

JG: No, I don’t want to attach anyone to it until I know what it is exactly.

[MacGuffin]

Of all of all the directors who have been given Director’s Label DVDs, the only one who can truly be considered old school is Anton Corbijn. This DVD contains this photographer turned director videos such as Joy Division’s Atmosphere, Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box, Depeche Mode’s Barrel of a Gun and many more.

Daniel Robert Epstein: How involved were you with putting together this DVD?

Anton Corbijn: I made the selection of my videos that I thought were relevant. I used only a third of my videos. I’m the old guy doing because I started doing videos in 1983.

DRE: I spoke to Julian Temple and he stopped doing music videos a long time ago. It was interesting because in the 80’s it was more about the band. Don’t you think?

AC: Well, maybe. [laughs] I’m not a big Julian Temple fan.

DRE: Why is that?

AC: For me, it has nothing to do with the music. It’s still one-dimensional. I think the best video leaves all that open. But he did some good things for punk.

DRE: How did you choose the videos that you directed?

AC: I basically waited for people to send me stuff because I never aimed to become a video director. So people send me stuff and I listen to it. If it’s fun, I listen to more of the band. Sometimes I can’t come up with a good idea, so that’s the end of that one. Sometimes there’s one I am sure will work for me but then I don’t have ideas. That’s also strange.

DRE: Is it possible to be experimental once you get to the set of a music video?

AC: I think you need some idea. You need to build four minutes or whatever it is. With a still photograph, sure, that’s exactly how I work.

DRE: On your website, I saw some of your photos but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of crossover in terms of how your videos and pictures look.

AC: I think photographs are more emotional sometimes. It’s very personal when you meet someone and take their portrait. With videos there’s more of me creeping in. Although I think my latest photography is more conceptual because of my work in videos. With videos, it’s based on the song and the song tells you something about the band. I always have a little story.

DRE: The band you worked the most with was Depeche Mode, what did they bring out of you and vice versa?

AC: Because I’ve done them so often, I don’t know. I never liked them as a little kid. I always said no to them. But then I connected with Depeche Mode especially with Dave [Gahan]. I connect with people who put everything into what they’re making. Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley. That’s the only way I can connect. I can’t connect with superficial people. In 1986 Depeche Mode offered me a video and the only reason I said yes was because it would have to be done in America and I’d never done a video in America. I thought of something but it was so low budget, there was no money for a cameraman. That turned out to be a positive thing, because it became me using the camera myself.

I used the movie camera more like a still camera which was a very good thing. But Dave [Gahan] was great at it. When I make my scripts, I know what he can do.

DRE: In the Nirvana video there was a Ku Klux Klan member and there was one in the Joy Division video as well.

AC: Yeah, but I think it’s an American association. In the video for Joy Division it’s monks. But yes there is a Ku Klux Klan member in the Nirvana video.

DRE: As a fan you must have been excited to direct Joy Division.

AC: Absolutely, it was where I wanted to go to when I heard that music. That whole post-punk thing. It was a very exciting time the late 70s. The Clash did London Calling, Joy Division so it was all great bands.

DRE: You started off photographing mostly musicians.

AC: Only musicians. All the 70’s and 80’s it was only musicians. It was after that that I started to photograph many more artists in different disciplines like painters, directors and actors.

I didn’t study photography. I was a music fan and I just used the camera to get close to the music. It had nothing to do with photography. It became about photography after a while. For me the musicians were a natural subject matter.

DRE: Were you ever in a band?

AC: No, my only claim to fame was that I did some drumming with Depeche Mode on TV. That was good.

DRE: How do you pick the videos you do now?

AC: I still say no to everything. I sort have stopped doing music videos, but people keep sending me things. I say no to everything but friends. If I know people really well, then.

DRE: But you did The Killers video.

AC: The Killers was the only recent video I’ve done.

DRE: What do you think of these other guys who’s DVD sets just came out?

AC: Oh, they’re terrible [laughs]. Terribly good. They’re more about perfection than I am. I’m not about perfection.

DRE: Have you ever tried?

AC: No, I strive for it but somewhere along the line I do something that keeps it from being perfect. I think my videos say more about me sometimes, more about my world.

DRE: I read that you had a bit of a lonely childhood.

AC: I was born in a little village but it’s part of my character to be lonely. But I never had a lonely childhood in a certain sense. I had a brother who was a year younger. It was both of us on a farm.

DRE: What kind of music do you listen to?

AC: At the moment I am great supporter of a band from Montreal called Arcade Fire.

DRE: Do you have any interest in doing movies?

AC: Well, I’m supposed to do one this year called Control about Ian Curtis.

DRE: Is that a go?

AC: It’s been on the shelf. If anybody wants to send me the spare cash…

DRE: Is there a script?

AC: Yeah.

DRE: Does it start when he was young?

AC: No, just the last few years of his life.

DRE: What made you say, it’s time to do this?

AC: Joy Division is a personal thing. I think I can bring something to the project that’s different. I think it wont look like Hollywood. It wont be as abstract as the Atmosphere video.

DRE: What else is on the DVD set?

AC: The making of the U2 videos. Some projects I did for Depeche Mode and Captain Beefheart. There’s a documentary on me, which is quite long at 40 minutes. My first ever video from 19883.

DRE: Are there videos you just don’t like?

AC: I put some videos on there for historical records. I put my very first video on there because no one has ever seen it. It was a German band. I’m not saying it’s the best video but it’s the first video and that’s the reason it’s on there.

DRE: What’s a regular day for you out there in London?

AC: I’m not always in London. I don’t have a studio. I go to where the people are. It’s important to meet people in their environments. So I go to where the people are rather than have the people come to me. So I’m always on the road. I don’t drink, even coffee.

DRE: Did I see you dressed up as Freddy Mercury on your website?

AC: That project had to do with where I’m from and my upbringing and stuff and I associate with musicians. So that’s part of it. I did this project where I’m dressed up as deceased musicians like Hendrix and Freddie Mercury.