1993-03-06 Billboard
Artist Takes Vid Crew On 'Ego' Trip: 1st Solo Clip A Friend & Family Affair
By Deborah Russell, Billboard, March 6, 1993
LOS ANGELES — "We need sandbags for the talent!" calls a crew member preparing to set up a shot for 10-yearold Parker Thompson. The novice actor wears a mutant, fishlike mask over his small face.
The youngster is sibling of Charles Thompson — formerly Black Francis of the Pixies — whose current persona is solo artist Frank Black. The sandbags will boost his brother's frame into view for this scene in Black's Elektra video "Hang On To Your Ego."
While the artist reels home video footage for the family archives, young Thompson patiently takes direction from John Flansburgh, who also has an alter ego. He comprises one half of the duo They Might Be Giants.
"Hang On To Your Ego" marks Flansburgh's second foray into music video directing — he shot "The Guitar" for his own band — and his second collaboration with producer Elizabeth Bailey, who also plays two roles. She is VP of video production at Elektra.
In late February, a crew working through L.A.-based DNA Inc. convened in a nondescript Hollywood soundstage to begin reeling the first two videos for Black's solo debut, "Frank Black," which ships in early March. When the studio shoot for "Hang On To Your Ego" is complete, the group will trek to the California desert to shoot "Los Angeles," which Flansburgh also will direct.
The artist-cum-director and Frank Black go back to 1987, when They Might Be Giants and the Pixies exchanged opening slots in the other's home town. After meeting up on the road several times over the years, the musicians developed a healthy mutual admiration society.
Now, Flansburgh is sitting in the director's chair, clutching his notes and shouting out commands like "give me that Playboy Mansion smile, Charles."
"Suddenly I feel so much sympathy for Adam Bernstein," says Flansburgh, referring to the director who shot the Giants' debut clip. "But in some ways, directing is a relief... I don't have to worry about my hair."
What he does have to worry about is overseeing a crew whose production credits must outweigh his own, despite the fact that he's been the subject of 10 videos for They Might Be Giants.
"I don't know a lot of the technical jargon, and sometimes that makes me feel like an outsider," Flansburgh admits, but he says he compensates for his inexperience by "overpreparing" and creating long lists and detailed shot grids so that when he arrives on the set he has "the distinct advantage of knowing what I want to do. There's not a lot of dawdling going on."
The video treatment for "Hang On To Your Ego" juxtaposes the concept of not loving yourself too much against images of people caught in the act of self-loving, says Flansburgh. The clip combines hi-tech, pop-art effects with a low-tech video portrait inspired by amateur public-access shows.
"It's going to be very electronic, with lots of floating heads," he says, which required director of photography Eric Edwards to shoot, multiple images of the same person against different scenic backdrops. Pixies' guitarist Joey Santiago and Tony Asher are featured.
Upon wrapping the "Ego" shoot the crew will travel to the Salton Sea, a desert location visited by a freak flood that wiped out — yet preserved — a small community in the '50s. The site will be the backdrop for "Los Angeles."
"It's like a semi-immersed city; the shipwreck of the great American mobile home," says Flansburgh. "And it smells really wild."
The post-apocalyptic video will feature Black, in a dual role, driving a hovercraft over the underwater ruins. "He'll be flying in and out of the immersed areas; I hear these things are as loud as planes," Flansburgh says.
The clip also will take in some of the local color: "People still live there. They have this crazy kind of survivalist gleam in their eyes," says the director.
Black discovered the location in his desert travels, and he and Flansburgh concocted the hovercraft concept. "It's really fun working with Frank," Flansburgh says. "It's great to realize some of his ideas, instead of trying to figure out what's left of mine."