LIST OF R.E.M. VIDEOS & DIRECTORS W/ BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS
Ron Henry
LIST OF R.E.M. VIDEOS v.1.1a
DIRECTORS AND BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS
(FAQ APPENDIX A)
by Ron Henry (rg...@cornell.edu)
Last Modified: 31 July 1995
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My intent with this list is not so much to catalogue R.E.M.'s video
works, as to create a sort of entry-level criticism, a conceptual
organization, of what the band has done in the medium in collaboration
with the C-00 Film Corp and their various other directors.
Even a quick perusal of this list will I hope make clearer some of the
ways in which there have developed common themes and stylistic concerns
running through R.E.M.'s visual oeuvre -- themes that comment upon, and
make tribute to, the tradition of independent ("art") films, as well as
making self-conscious commentary upon the show-business cliches of the
music video itself -- only natural from a band who was resistant to
entering the video arena in the first place.
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1. Collected on _Succumbs_ (released 1987)
Radio Free Europe (Arthur Pierson; 1983)
The band walking about Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens sculptures
with a mysterious box, interspersed with set shots of Mills as a
schoolboy under the tutilage of Jefferson Holt as the master; ends
with a shot of Finster and the band watching a little figurine, which
was taken from the box, tumble down a slanted plank. Esp. notable for
Bill's white buckskin boots.
So. Central Rain (Howard Libov; 1984)
In-studio performance video with a scruffy Stipe singing in the fore-
ground while the other band members mime their parts behind him,
backlit through gauzy screens.
Left of Reckoning (James Herbert; 1984)
Extended footage of the band at the Gainsville, Ga., Whirligig Farm
and various other rural Athens area locales with experimental effects
of jump-cuts, changing speeds, and odd coloring, to the soundtrack of
the first (LP) side of _Reckoning_. "It probably blew a lot of
people's minds in Omaha," Marcus Gray quotes Peter Buck as saying
with satisfaction.
Can't Get There from Here (Michael Stipe, Rick Aguar; 1985)
Michael and Jefferson goofing around on a farm, and at a rural
roadside stand; the band at a pretend drive-in movie throwing popcorn
at each other between the cars while giant insects stomp around on
the screen. Cut to the band doing an odd dance routine with horns and
fake animal heads. Some of the lyrics are superimposed (handwritten)
across the bottom of the screen as they are sung. (Michael made some
rules ["no printing lyrics"], Michael tore them down....)
Driver 8 (James Herbert, Michael Stipe; 1985)
Footage of trains interspersed with the band sitting around in a room
with the train footage projected on them. Pretty low key. Prefaced by
a rustic Stipean anecdote about a lantern he can no longer buy batteries
for.
Life and How to Live It/Feeling Gravitys Pull (Jackie Slayton, J. Herbert; film
from 1983; edited 1985)
Footage of the band live in concert, with effects somewhat similar to
Left of Reckoning, to the soundtrack of these two songs (note: footage
*not* in synch with what they are performing -- in fact Marcus Gray
thinks the footage is probably from before these songs were even written).
Fall on Me (Michael Stipe; 1986)
Upside-down shots of an industrial yard, with the camera lazily and
dizzyingly wandering across the black and white rubble and debris;
the picture is box-framed like an art-film, and lyrics and some
other odd phrases ("Let's gather together," "Bury magnets, swallow
the rapture,") are superimposed over the picture in bright print.
("Dammit, Beavis, I hate videos with words!" was one reviewer's
commentary.)
2. Collected on _Pop Screen_ (released 1990)
The One I Love (Robert Longo; 1986)
Creative, impressionistic imagery of various people and superimposed
scenes including folks lazing in summer heat by fans, fireworks going
off, Michael's friends (including the Caroline of "Auctioneer" and
concert-anecdote fame), flowers blooming in fast-motion, angst-filled
lovers, and brief cuts to the band playing at a club or party. (Note:
Robert Longo also directed the film "Arena Brains" which starred Stipe,
and recently the feature film of William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic.")
It's the End of the World... (James Herbert; 1986)
A hip young skater kid (named Noah Ray) messing around with piles of
junk in an old tumble-down shack by a cowfield, accompied by a curious
hound dog. Among the debris he uncovers and displays to the camera are
a dented globe and a handbill for an R.E.M. show.
Finest Worksong (Michael Stipe; 1987)
Men and women working at industrial furnaces and working various large
machines, inspired by the WPA Depression-era murals also seen in the
_Document_ liner. At one point a globe is smashed into the hot coals
with shovels. Ends with 1950's documentary footage of children in
awe visiting Hoover Dam, which when accompanied by the coda of the song
(harmonic chords and slapped bass notes) seems apocalyptic.
Talk About the Passion (Jem A. Cohen; 1988)
Stipe's hand, writing endless numbers on a chalkboard (costs of war,
numbers of homeless people); footage of homeless people in the city and
warships at anchor in the harbor. Ends with a caption citing the
exorbitant cost of a Navy destroyer ("In 1987... 910 million dollars").
This video was the first official project of C-00 Films.
Orange Crush (Matt Mahurin; 1988)
A disjointed visual narrative cutting between a shirtless soldier,
obviously anguished, smearing mud on his face (on drugs?) interspersed
with shots of a child (the soldier as a boy?) taking something from
a dresser drawer and hiding it his pocket, going out into the woods and
putting together wood and wire and various objects in the form of a gun,
and finally revealing the pocketed object from the dresser to be a
bullet. (This video won MTV's 1989 Post-Modern video award.)
Stand (Katherine Dieckmann; 1988)
Happy, bright footage of people of various ethnic and racial backgrounds
dancing together on compass-rose designs in choreographed patterns, with
cuts to footage of fields and homes and cows. Some shots of Ithaca, NY.
Closes with Stipe grinning shyly at the camera.
Turn You Inside Out (James Herbert; 1989)
The band performing (intentionally not in synch with music, Stipe with
megaphone) at the 40-Watt Club, set up on the floor, not on stage. Stipe
turns the camera (and hence the video picture) on its side at one point.
Ends with a superimposed school of fish used as a backdrop to this song
on the subsequent Green tour.
Pop Song 89 (Michael Stipe; 1988)
Topless long-haired Stipe and three topless women (one his friend Caroline
from "The One I Love") all of them in harlequin pants, dancing as mock-
topless dancers, with ironic and often seemingly sullen expressions.
Black and white, with the chorus lyrics ("Should we talk...") super-
imposed. An obvious commentary on MTV's cliche video bimbos. Shown on
MTV with censor bars over the women's *and* Stipe's chests. ("A nipple's
a nipple," quipped Stipe at the time, "so we got rid of them all.")
Get Up (Eric Darnell, with Jim McKay; 1989)
Frenetic animated kaleidoscope of flowers and clocks and shapes and cows
and (briefly) band members.
3. Tourfilm (Declan Quinn, with Jem A. Cohen, Jim McKay, Chris Lovett,
and Ernie Fritz; 1990)
Live footage from the _Green_ World Tour. Full length film.
4. Collected on _This Film is On_ (released 1991)
Losing My Religion (Tarsem)
Renaissance imagery, begins with the band standing about in a weathered
room looking mournful and consoling each other, an injured angel falling
from heaven being examined by people who discover he's wearing a wig, some
craftsmen trying to forge a pair of mechanical wings, very pretty young
men and boys in martyr poses, and some exotic Asian women in costume.
Shiny Happy People (Katherine Dieckmann)
Deliriously happy dance party (even Peter smiles finally) with handmade
backdrop provided by an elementary school class from Athens. An old
man whose bicycle-motor is being used to power the backdrop's false
motion is offered a drink by one of the children, then asked to join
the celebration. B-52's Kate Pierson is among the dancers (she sang
on the song, after all).
Near Wild Heaven (Jeff Preiss)
The band sitting about in a cafe in (Spanish?) Harlem singing the song
and hanging out with the other people eating and drinking there. Stipe
with a particularly bohemian-looking hat and goatee. Black and white
(or tan-and-white -- has a sepia tint to most of the print, though it
it bright blue-and-white for a couple shots.)
Radio Song (Peter Case)
R.E.M. members and KRS-One in an industrial junkyard set lip-synching
the song and holding up various flat objects onto which footage of
themselves singing and clips from the MTV Rocumentary are projected.
Lots of odd angles and circling camera shots.
Love Is All Around (Beth McCarthy)
Taken directly from the MTV Unplugged live performance of the Troggs'
tune, with Mills on lead vocal and Stipe on self-conscious back-up.
Losing My Religion, live (BBC)
Live on stage on BBC2's _The Late Show_.
Low (James Herbert)
Creative film manipulation of several paintings to make them come alive:
mainly the two figures in Elizabeth Jane Gardner's _La Confidence_, but
also adaptions of imagery from John Frederik Kensett's _Italian Scene_ and
Thomas Doughty's _Echo Lake, New Hampshire_. Reveals the note being passed
from one figure to the other in the Gardner falling to the ground, a
butterfly emerging from clasped hands, one figure loosening the other's
blouse drawstring, and washing the other's feet. Brief cuts to footage of
some naked people (one of them Stipe?) and a dog in a stream at night.
Very compelling and ambitious video. (The paintings, I believe, are all
in the Univ. of Georgia art museum.)
Belong (Jem A. Cohen)
Soundtrack from live _Tourfilm_ performace. Footage of a woman with her
child at a window, also travel footage including a shoreline seen from
an airplane, and murky car or train travel shots; superimposed images
from the band performing live.
Half a World Away (Jim McKay)
Moody black and white footage of a lonely man wandering and hitch-hiking;
the actor is Stipe's friend Tom Gilroy. In retrospect seems like a
pre-quel to the beginning of the "Man on the Moon" video.
Country Feedback (Jem A. Cohen)
Fireworks being shot off in some city street in classic C-00 cut-up
style, glimpses in through the windows of a textile factory of colorful
carousels of spools of thread, and finally Stipe standing uncomfortably
close to a passing train, then turning to watch it fade into the
distance and the night.
5. Collected on _Parallel_ (released June 1995)
Drive (Peter Care)
Stipe crowd-surfs, held up by a packed concert audience, lit with the
passing strobes and spotlights, in slow motion. The other members of
the band stand in the audience and at some point the crowd begins to get
sprayed with water (crowd-control hoses?) The whole thing has a dreamy,
surrealistic feel. Peter Buck's wet grin for the camera is priceless.
The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight (Peter Care - ?)
The band is sitting in a slowly-flooding, strangely-lit room.
Everybody Hurts (Jake Scott)
Framed by a faux traffic-copter newsreport; random shots of people stuck
in a freeway traffic jam, with poetically-phrased subtitles revealing
their personal, often tragic inner thoughts. The band get out of their
car and the rest of the people gradually follow, abandoning the stuck
vehicles, to the bafflement of the airborne reporter in the closing
moments.
Man on the Moon (Peter Care)
Stipe in cowboy hat walking across a (b/w) desert alone, various images
superimposed on or near him (snakes, Andy Kaufman doing Elvis, books,
etc.) He hitches a ride with a truck to a roadside diner; inside,
people are eating, playing pool (including the rest of the band) and
while he settles down with a beer and some fries, random people in the
diner lip-synch the words to the repeating chorus. End with Stipe leaving
into the night again.
Nightswimming (Jem Cohen) [have not seen]
Begins in a gas station, late at night. A man walks in and appears to be
buying something. A couple are swimming in what appears to be a lake.
Both of them remove their clothing. The video ends back at the gas
station, the lights going out. [B/W]
Find the River (Jodi Wille) [have not seen]
Features an old, bearded man and his dog, with shots of some rural
coastline. There are also shots of the band playing in a studio. The man
meanders down a path, followed by his dog. At the end of the
video, he lies down on the ground and the scene changes to a gently
rising wave. [B/W]
What's the Frequency Kenneth? (Peter Care; 1994)
The band performing the song live in an industrial warehouse with
plenty of jump-cuts, bizarre lighting, and seemingly apocalyptic
glimpses out a large garage door into a suburban neighborhood (R.E.M.
as ultimate "garage band"?) The footage during the "backwards solo" is
also backwards, and at moments during the video various of the band
members seem to be missing momentarily from their places.
Crush With Eyeliner (Spike Jonze; 1995)
Performance lip-synched by a stand-in Japanese teenagers kareoke-
style.
Bang and Blame (Randy Skinner; 1994)
Three side-by-side frames of different takes of the band performing
the song on a blank white set (black and white footage); interspersed
with shots of the interior of a house, and later speeded-up scenes
taken driving along some back roads.
Star 69 (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris; 1995)
Black and white hand-held video-cam footage of the band performing the
song live in concert in Singapore, taken at various angles with lot of
jump-cuts.
Strange Currencies (Mark Romanek; 1995)
The band alternately performing the song in a grimy alley in some inner
city, and riding in a large late model car through the same bad back
streets. Their car has a police-style spotlight mounted by the driver's
side and this light is used to illuminate themselves performing, as well
as various scenes of urban squalor, sadness, and desperation (a poor
mother with her infant behind a broken screen door, a child playing
inside a smashed tv set, a young man running for his life up the alley)
which Stipe, from inside the rain-spattered car window, looks out upon.
A darker vision coming from a similar idea as the "Everybody Hurts" video.
6. Other, uncollected
Wolves, Lower (?, 1982)
Very early staged performance footage.
Green Grow the Rushes (Jim Herbert; 1985?)
Described as similar in style to Life and How to Live It/Feeling Gravitys
Pull.
Swan Swan H (?; 1986) and
All I Have to Do Is Dream
Both have the band performing live versions of these songs. From the film
_Athens, Ga. Inside-Out_.
Tongue (Declan Quinn, 1995) [Have not seen]
People watch R.E.M. on a television set in their living room. Live "tv"
footage from the Albany, NY, June 20th performance.
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Thanks to all the kind folks who have offered advice and information on
this text.
Further suggesions, comments, or questions to:
Ron Henry <rg...@cornell.edu>.
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