“The first rock song I heard was Joan Jett's I Love Rock 'n' Roll - and I didn't hear it on the radio, I saw it on MTV. MTV and music videos are a huge part of how I process music."
He was already directing videos when he graduated high school in 1990, and although he then enrolled at NYU he dropped out after a year to pursue his career. By the mid-90s, and based in LA, he had progressed to shooting videos for hip-hop and metal acts before rising irresistibly to the top of his profession with a succession of hugely popular R&B and rap videos.
His pop breakthrough came with the Backstreet Boys' Everybody (Backstreet's Back) In '97 - a narrative pop video, which he says is a good early example of how his ideas lend to become mainstream only once they are made. “I loved the idea of having a narrative in a pop video but in the 90s it was considered ridiculous. Then I made Everybody - and now the idea of narrative pop videos seems so obvious. |
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But Kahn's Incremental progress through the 90s had another effect, and he thinks a major Impact on his ability to be continually productive, “I never had an explosive career,” he claims, "I wasn't considered a genius, which means that I don't always have to break new ground. For me the process is to just get work out there. I could work the other way - occasionally pull out a Chemical Brothers or Blink 182, or Knights of Cydonia and I people might see me differently, But there's never been that pressure."
That might explain his evidently relaxed attitude towards his commercials-directing career. “Ouite frankly commercials are way easier,” he says. “The copywriter and the art director - they are the true auteurs of an ad. If it's a great idea, and you have a smart copywriter and art director and agency... how hard can it be? For Duckzilla I was working with really smart guys who knew exactly what they wanted. |
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