Post by lovinglebon on Jul 23, 2008 18:50:07 GMT -5
Duran Duran - Wild Boys
Classic Pickard: Our intrepid Anna casts an eye on one of greatest videos of the 80s and discovers that it predicts World of Warcraft, Norbit and Harry Potter
* Anna Pickard
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday July 18, 2007
* Article history
Come with me. It is 1984. Duran Duran - young heartthrobs with glossy torsos and rippling hair - are at the forefront of the musical genre that would later become known as "Really Eighties-sounding Music".
Already finding musical-visual success with the fledgling MTV, the Durans are persuaded by their frequent collaborator and video director Russell Mulcahy to write a song to fit a video he is envisioning. (True story)
This done, he will show this video to large Hollywood studios as a kind of pilot, or teaser, and they will commission a full movie to which Durans shall provide the rocking soundtrack. It is a great idea. But what is this movie that they dreamt of? The details have been hazy. Until now.
Hushed reverent silence. We remember we haven't pressed play. We press. The video begins.
It is a dark and stormy night. Something is rotten in the exam halls of Hogwarts. Kept in detention long after the Quidditch practice bell has rung, young men rebel in the shadows, eating chalk, throwing desks and chairs, and setting fire to their burps.
This theme - childhood innocence and fiery burping - is immediately contrasted with a second theme...
... that of World of Warcraft avatars watching telly.
Sadly, not having the online adventure game World of Warcraft as a resource in 1984, the ambitious Duran Durans turn to the emerging world of animatronics and spend thousands of record-company dollars on the most advanced piece of robot engineering that could be engineered with primitive 1980s tools. Very impressively (for the money), they end up with a big baldy robot head that nods.
The robot nods, interestingly enough, while watching Eddie Murphy - in drag here for the first time ever (a theme he would later expand upon to great popularity and profit) - playing popular UK television chef of the 1980s, Rustie Lee.
As stunning as all of this is, Mulcahy knows that themes (The Future, Evil, Angry Wizard Schoolboys, Darkness, Television Chefs, etc.) are not enough. He must also have a plot.
And so, panning around the dirty laboratory that serves as Mr Robot's TV Den, we see dark figures emerging from the shadows. Wire cage lifts descend carrying nightmarish silhouettes and we get tantalising glances of the Duran Duranners themselves dressed in ripped shirts, greasy headbands wrapped around their hairdos of blow-dried perfection.
Trying to warn us of the encroaching army, dreamboat lead singer Yasmin Le Bon* surreptitiously points at the creeping danger.
But it does no good. We pan through a frightening - and frighteningly expensive - set, all metal pyramids and artfully torn curtains, when all of a sudden, BAM!
There is an explosion! We break into colour.
Fire everywhere!
Men with feathered headdresses pop from open hatches in the metal walls like angry Poptarts with no shirts on.
Too late for Yasmin, too, for they have caught him. Here we find him tied, it seems, to some monstrous windmill. Yes! Mulcahy has taken it upon himself to update the safe, cosy world of Camberwick Green!
The Windy Millers of this world have had enough of milling grain and enough of porridge and are rising up against their natural enemy, the effete rock stars.
Le Bon is tied to a blade of the slowly turning windmill thing. Every thirty seconds or so, his head dips into the water to some extent.
The residents of Camberwick Green are torturing Yasmin the worst way they know how, and the worst way a properly groomed, sexpot rock god could possibly imagine. By washing his hair on such a damnedly slow spin cycle, and in water heated only by occasional burp-fire, that they will be removing all the natural oils and pro-vitamin complexes he has worked so hard to develop. He is understandably upset.
And even worse for Yasmin, his bandmates fare no better. Nick Rhodes is caged with synthesisers and offered cups of lukewarm tea...
... Andy Taylor is tied to a masthead, his head resting between enormous wooden bosoms as he attempts to play guitar. While his brother John still is tied to a car and tortured in the bizarrest of ways, by being shown pictures of himself.
And the word "car".
Yes. He's tied to a car. He gets it. You're just rubbing it in now. All the while, the tanned, athletic, half-naked men torture the band cruelly by dancing luridly in front of them, mentally knocking them dead with high kicks and jazz hands...
..and a catchy chorus dance routine that seems to include the international symbol for "Up yours!"...
..which only makes me wish that I was old enough at the time to have known what we were all actually doing at those primary school Christmas discos.
Eventually, after extensive scenes of rock-god torture, interpretive dance and nipples...
...Yasmin Le Bon breaks free from the slow wheel of hair-wash and into the pool below. Where, alarmingly, he is attacked by a large germ from a bleach advert.
What were you thinking, half-naked dancing grain-millers of destruction! If you spent less time studying your jazz dance and more time squirting under the rim, you wouldn't have this problem.
Schoolgirl's pin-up Yasmin bats the alien away with ease - being careful not to hurt it, as it obviously needs to be returned to James Cameron's prop wardrobe before he notices. It chews happily on an under-dressed warrior, like a peeled terrier with a nude-man chew toy.
Still, it gives us valuable insight into the direction of Mulcahy's suggested film. In the minds of the studio buyers, it is now an All-male Futuristic Alien Tribal-themed Thriller with Moments of Televisual Cookery in Drag, a Pumping Rock Soundtrack and Throbbing Homosexual Undercurrents! What major studio could NOT want to buy this?!
And as if to represent this happy fact, suddenly, the Duran Duranites have won!
Not sure how, but they have. And there we have it. It's a classic film in a terrifying future landscape. Boy meets tribe of half-naked other-boys, boys dance provocatively and with rude arm gestures at boy, boy rides off with other boys into the new dawn.
And there it ends. The entire plot of the last Harry Potter film spoiled before it was ever dreamed of.
Looking back at it from 23 years distance, it seems alarmingly short-sighted on the part of the major studios of Hollywood not to jump on this film. Still. Believing that it was a proposed William Burroughs adaptation rather than a glance at the future wizard boy-king, they somehow failed to make it. Their loss. Our gain.
Is there room for another look at schoolgirl heartthrob Le Bon?
Go for it, Yasmin*. Get it down there.
Thus ends this week's special edition of Classic Pickard of the Pops.
The end.
*And yes, of course we know he's not called Yasmin. But it's so much prettier a name than boring old 'SIMON', don't you think?
You can watch the video on YouTube here. Or you can buy a high-quality version on iTunes here.
Classic Pickard: Our intrepid Anna casts an eye on one of greatest videos of the 80s and discovers that it predicts World of Warcraft, Norbit and Harry Potter
* Anna Pickard
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday July 18, 2007
* Article history
Come with me. It is 1984. Duran Duran - young heartthrobs with glossy torsos and rippling hair - are at the forefront of the musical genre that would later become known as "Really Eighties-sounding Music".
Already finding musical-visual success with the fledgling MTV, the Durans are persuaded by their frequent collaborator and video director Russell Mulcahy to write a song to fit a video he is envisioning. (True story)
This done, he will show this video to large Hollywood studios as a kind of pilot, or teaser, and they will commission a full movie to which Durans shall provide the rocking soundtrack. It is a great idea. But what is this movie that they dreamt of? The details have been hazy. Until now.
Hushed reverent silence. We remember we haven't pressed play. We press. The video begins.
It is a dark and stormy night. Something is rotten in the exam halls of Hogwarts. Kept in detention long after the Quidditch practice bell has rung, young men rebel in the shadows, eating chalk, throwing desks and chairs, and setting fire to their burps.
This theme - childhood innocence and fiery burping - is immediately contrasted with a second theme...
... that of World of Warcraft avatars watching telly.
Sadly, not having the online adventure game World of Warcraft as a resource in 1984, the ambitious Duran Durans turn to the emerging world of animatronics and spend thousands of record-company dollars on the most advanced piece of robot engineering that could be engineered with primitive 1980s tools. Very impressively (for the money), they end up with a big baldy robot head that nods.
The robot nods, interestingly enough, while watching Eddie Murphy - in drag here for the first time ever (a theme he would later expand upon to great popularity and profit) - playing popular UK television chef of the 1980s, Rustie Lee.
As stunning as all of this is, Mulcahy knows that themes (The Future, Evil, Angry Wizard Schoolboys, Darkness, Television Chefs, etc.) are not enough. He must also have a plot.
And so, panning around the dirty laboratory that serves as Mr Robot's TV Den, we see dark figures emerging from the shadows. Wire cage lifts descend carrying nightmarish silhouettes and we get tantalising glances of the Duran Duranners themselves dressed in ripped shirts, greasy headbands wrapped around their hairdos of blow-dried perfection.
Trying to warn us of the encroaching army, dreamboat lead singer Yasmin Le Bon* surreptitiously points at the creeping danger.
But it does no good. We pan through a frightening - and frighteningly expensive - set, all metal pyramids and artfully torn curtains, when all of a sudden, BAM!
There is an explosion! We break into colour.
Fire everywhere!
Men with feathered headdresses pop from open hatches in the metal walls like angry Poptarts with no shirts on.
Too late for Yasmin, too, for they have caught him. Here we find him tied, it seems, to some monstrous windmill. Yes! Mulcahy has taken it upon himself to update the safe, cosy world of Camberwick Green!
The Windy Millers of this world have had enough of milling grain and enough of porridge and are rising up against their natural enemy, the effete rock stars.
Le Bon is tied to a blade of the slowly turning windmill thing. Every thirty seconds or so, his head dips into the water to some extent.
The residents of Camberwick Green are torturing Yasmin the worst way they know how, and the worst way a properly groomed, sexpot rock god could possibly imagine. By washing his hair on such a damnedly slow spin cycle, and in water heated only by occasional burp-fire, that they will be removing all the natural oils and pro-vitamin complexes he has worked so hard to develop. He is understandably upset.
And even worse for Yasmin, his bandmates fare no better. Nick Rhodes is caged with synthesisers and offered cups of lukewarm tea...
... Andy Taylor is tied to a masthead, his head resting between enormous wooden bosoms as he attempts to play guitar. While his brother John still is tied to a car and tortured in the bizarrest of ways, by being shown pictures of himself.
And the word "car".
Yes. He's tied to a car. He gets it. You're just rubbing it in now. All the while, the tanned, athletic, half-naked men torture the band cruelly by dancing luridly in front of them, mentally knocking them dead with high kicks and jazz hands...
..and a catchy chorus dance routine that seems to include the international symbol for "Up yours!"...
..which only makes me wish that I was old enough at the time to have known what we were all actually doing at those primary school Christmas discos.
Eventually, after extensive scenes of rock-god torture, interpretive dance and nipples...
...Yasmin Le Bon breaks free from the slow wheel of hair-wash and into the pool below. Where, alarmingly, he is attacked by a large germ from a bleach advert.
What were you thinking, half-naked dancing grain-millers of destruction! If you spent less time studying your jazz dance and more time squirting under the rim, you wouldn't have this problem.
Schoolgirl's pin-up Yasmin bats the alien away with ease - being careful not to hurt it, as it obviously needs to be returned to James Cameron's prop wardrobe before he notices. It chews happily on an under-dressed warrior, like a peeled terrier with a nude-man chew toy.
Still, it gives us valuable insight into the direction of Mulcahy's suggested film. In the minds of the studio buyers, it is now an All-male Futuristic Alien Tribal-themed Thriller with Moments of Televisual Cookery in Drag, a Pumping Rock Soundtrack and Throbbing Homosexual Undercurrents! What major studio could NOT want to buy this?!
And as if to represent this happy fact, suddenly, the Duran Duranites have won!
Not sure how, but they have. And there we have it. It's a classic film in a terrifying future landscape. Boy meets tribe of half-naked other-boys, boys dance provocatively and with rude arm gestures at boy, boy rides off with other boys into the new dawn.
And there it ends. The entire plot of the last Harry Potter film spoiled before it was ever dreamed of.
Looking back at it from 23 years distance, it seems alarmingly short-sighted on the part of the major studios of Hollywood not to jump on this film. Still. Believing that it was a proposed William Burroughs adaptation rather than a glance at the future wizard boy-king, they somehow failed to make it. Their loss. Our gain.
Is there room for another look at schoolgirl heartthrob Le Bon?
Go for it, Yasmin*. Get it down there.
Thus ends this week's special edition of Classic Pickard of the Pops.
The end.
*And yes, of course we know he's not called Yasmin. But it's so much prettier a name than boring old 'SIMON', don't you think?
You can watch the video on YouTube here. Or you can buy a high-quality version on iTunes here.
