Post by lovinglebon on Jul 22, 2008 18:10:02 GMT -5
Duran Duran - Falling Over
Is Dr Simon Le Bon genuinely attempting to cure celebrities of their addictions in his new video? Or is there a more sinister plot afoot? Anna Pickard investigates
As music conspicuously doesn't start, the camera pans down a very long, very black limousine. The atmosphere is charged. The quality is filmic. The band is... Duran Duran? Hang on, aren't they dead?
Apparently not. They have survived to become the only band EVER to have featured in both Classic Pickard of the Pops and, now, the regular kind. And they have brought us something really, really special.
Yes. It's two people in a car. With drinks.
One wears a pair of glasses so big they look like an advertisement for a new brand of armoured face shield, able to protect the wearer from fire, nuclear strikes and tigers. The other is either rubbing his gums with cocaine or scratching his nose. We understand what this means: these people are young, hip and famous. So what are they doing in a Duran Duran video?
Outside the car, men stand dressed in white, holding their penises.
Perhaps they are Scientologists.
I don't know, do Scientologists do that? I assume they must do that sometimes.
Inside the car, there is unconvincing dialogue. Why is it that whenever video makers decide to involve a "plot", they tend to hire models and then ask them to improvise? Or skip the whole "hiring of a writer" thing and ask their 12-year-old child to whip up something convincing?
The woman stumbles up a pathway, assisted, after two minutes of conversation too vacuous to repeat. The basic thrust of it was that the gentleman was imploring his lady friend to enter this institutional building, and she was basically saying "Meeeeeeeeeeeeeh!"
As two heavies "help" her up the path, a man watches from a window far above.
Wow, the guy looks just like Simon Le Bon, but younger!
No! Wait! I think it IS Simon Le Bon! Has he been pickled all this time? Did someone varnish him in 1987? Does he live in a Tupperware house? Does he put his hat on with a vacuum-packing hose? The man's a miracle of modern science!
A miracle he may be, but it seems he's not a very good doctor. The door slams shut on the rehabilitation centre, if that's what it is. And, as the song begins (two and a half minutes in, mind; the song's just started, and it's two and a half minutes in), we see some of the other inpatients at Dr Bon's Rest Home for the Attractive and Unstable.
They don't look very well. In fact, I've seen footage of abandoned orphanages with inhabitants who were healthier and happier. And weighed more.
Is this really the kind of place celebrities go when they're tired and emotional? Well, it must be! I mean, the video has to contain some truth on the subject, being as this song is co-written, produced by, and featuring the backing vocals of... Justin Timberlake! THE Justin Timberlake!
I mean, he knows something about the difficulties faced by rehabbing starlets, doesn't he? Hasn't he dated most of them? He's subtly reaching out to the public and demanding their attention here. The starlets of Hollywood need your help: when you think they're hiding out in rehab for a while, they're not!
They're stuck in Simon Le's House of Correction and Breast Augmentation, being treated to such terrifying and invasive treatments as group therapy:
Being stared at by Nick Rhodes:
(Um, if it is Nick Rhodes, that is. It's difficult to tell sometimes, now they're all old and lightly tightened. Still, as a wise woman once said, "A murky man lurking behind pillars has got to be Nick Rhodes!" I think it's a bingo call. Or something.)
And having headlights shone at them while tied to furniture closely resembling the electric chair:
(That is two pictures, honestly. It just looks like two halves of one.)
The women appear to be forced into baths wearing flesh-coloured bikinis. Where, undoubtedly, weasels will be let loose upon them. That will teach them to get caught drink driving in front of the paparazzi!
This is terrible. They are even force-fed drugs.
But our heroin-chic heroine, she is a feisty wee mare, and spits the pill out! You can see in the picture below. Or rather, you can't, for she spits it with such ferocity that it is invisible to the human eye. Spot the drug!
I have placed a cross where I think it might be.
Why don't you play along at home? And let it never be said again that Pickard of the Pops isn't an interactive feature.
Eventually, after an awful lot of soul searching, flesh panning and boob zooming, the video reaches some kind of climax as the attractive young debutwonks are physically restrained by angry nurse types.
This is terrible! Don't these actresses have some kind of union representation? Or brain? Between them?
Still, one woman is having none of it. The woman we arrived with, as we draw to an end seven minutes later, is leaving. Possibly having put a water fountain through the evil Duranny window, we do not know.
Sassy Starlet looks up at the window smugly and, seeing Dr Bon, sips on champagne handed to her from, we presume, her man in the car. Which makes you wonder what he was doing encouraging her into rehab in the first place? That was a big waste of everyone's time, wasn't it mate?
She may look like she won the war, but honey, who's going to be sorry at the end of the day? All those other women stay, don't they? All those other women took their pills, didn't they? You know why? Have you seen Simon Le up there?! He's about SIXTY! And yet, he's got better skin than my three-year-old niece! He's clearly hoarding the secret of eternal youth!
You fool.
I heard a rumour there's a 15-minute version as well. Consider yourself lucky. The single, Falling Over, is released on November 5.
