Filmed in London in April 1997, The Next Big Thing is one of Cunningham's early throwaway pop videos. The video shows the band playing inside a circular, space station-type hallway. Taking advantage of the anti-gravity, the members play on different sides of the hallway. The video is reminiscent of similar shots in Michel Gondry's video for Inspiral Carpets' Two Worlds Collide and Mark Romanek's for Michael and Janet Jackson's Scream.
Watch a good copy of it here at launch.com, or download a copy of it here. Or purchase it; it's on the DVD 'Never Enough - The Best of Jesus Jones.'
Mike Edwards, the lead singer of Jesus Jones, wrote a book in 1998 about his music experiences of 1997: "Death Threats from an 8 year old in the Seychelles." That happens to be the year when Chris directed The Next Big Thing, so naturally Chris and the video are also mentioned in the book, which is available for downloading in pdf format.
Here are the parts of the book that mention Chris:
Page 38
The first single, "The Next Big Thing" (a defiantly optimistic choice of title, at least) was cut on my father's birthday which is the only thing I can remember about the day, cutting sessions being as described. The same evening Andy Ross, manager Gail and I met EMI's head of video, Trudy, and her recommendation for director of the first video for the album, Chris Cunningham. We'd already seen Chris's show reel and loved it. He was keen to work with us because of a tenuous connection with the Aphex Twin (who once remixed a song of ours), a musician he much admired. Slight as that may seem, it was an improvement over the usual director's approach of "well, why not?" It was a great meeting, by which I mean that everyone stayed well past the 30 minutes or so they thought it would last and got very drunk, leaving only when ordered to do so by the bar staff.
Page 47-48
"Sorry, hair in the gate. Can we do that again please?"
Chris Cunningham's video shoot was ready. I cycled to the warehouse in Kings Cross since I knew exactly how long it would take me and didn't want to have to get up even earlier to accommodate the vagaries of London traffic in a chauffeur driven car, courtesy of the production company. It backfired on me. Approximately 45 minutes before our 8AM call time, the IRA informed the police that bombs were set at most of London's major rail stations, including Kings Cross. I cycled past the traffic chaos while everyone else sat in it. Some people, like our director, arrived just 30 minutes late, having paid a taxi driver £10 for what would have been a 20-minute walk. Others were much later and some of the camera equipment didn't arrive until 5 hours after we were due to stand in front of it. I sat in a cold warehouse from 8AM waiting for something to happen. At 10PM, faced with starting an all-night shoot or scheduling a second day, we went home.
The construction of the set was tricky enough to delay shooting for another couple of hours the next morning. Chris's idea was to film us miming the song inside what looked like a giant, revolving baked bean can. The inside was covered with bright white boards and strip lighting. A remote controlled camera moved along the length of the can on rails. I had to sing to this camera while the entire structure rotated, the camera moving in front and behind me on the rails, the can revolving it through 360 degrees. Fixed to the floor in different positions but equal angles apart were three steel strut-supported harnesses for the rest of the band to be strapped into. This meant that at any one time, at least one of them would be at an angle where the blood would rush to his head and the metal truss and harness straps would begin to cut into his skin.
Video filming takes hours, most of which is spent waiting for technical problems to be sorted out. How long can you hang upside down for? All three band members looked like tomato-headed humans with musical instruments after a few seconds. Minutes passed and complaints started. We'd barely done the fifth take when we reached "GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW YOU F**KING B*****DS!"
The heat from the lighting in the can rose quickly and became stifling. I had great difficulty singing the song to camera as most of my time was spent trying not to step on the strip lights. The can began to come apart, showering bits of wood and foam on me during the takes. The motion and disorientation from running inside a horizon-less sphere made me queasy but at least I wasn't an exploding tomato-head. At the end of every take, the can was revolved so that only one perspiring, swearing person was fully upside down and I would stand with my shoulder supporting that his head to try and ease the pain. We looked like Siamese twins in the Mir space station. It didn't seem like a good point to mention that at least we weren't cold as in the photo shoots and I had a brief, uncharitable memory of looking past Brazilian interviewer # 10 of the day at the rest of the band sitting with drinks in their hands by the side of a sun-dazzled pool.
Two hypothermic photo sessions and the most painful video we'd ever made. This had better be worth it.