His whole demeanour would shift. She'd have absolutely no shot of actually being in the video, but the bodyguard would be going, "Yeah mamma. Do it up." And you were the one who had to break the news to her.
The first video that really freaked you out was the one you did with Janet Jackson. "Doesn't Really Matter", it was called. You first met her at a dance rehearsal and she was this fragile little girl in sweats. Astonishingly beautiful. Your hands got all sweaty. The next time, she walked on set and you had to tell her where to stand, how to move.
You lined up the camera and looked through it, and fucking Janet Jackson was staring straight back at you. And you were wondering, "Am I going to fuck this thing up?"
Last year, the big fuss was over Eminem's "Without You" video, the one with the fake CNN footage. The record company had called and asked, "Do you want to do this video? Because it's goingto be MTVs Video of the Year." |
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And you were like, "OK, definitely." They didn't even give you an advance of the song. You had to come into the record company offices to hear it and then write the treatment on the spot. A few days later, Eminem called and said, "Let's do it a totally different way." And you said, "Cool." And it became MTV's Video of the Year. Last winter, Mariah C arey called you up. She wanted you to document her fame by showing all these Japanese people screaming around her.
So you go to Japan with Mariah Carey. And you know it's not gonna work. "We're gonna get crushed," you tell management. "We're gonna get shut down, we're not gonna get any footage." And sure enough, you get there and this thing that's supposed to be a big secret is suddenly everybody's business. The Japanese kids all have videophones and these super wi-fi devices and after an hour every teenager in Japan is in your business, waiting for Mariah. |
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