The Denial Twist is Michel's most ambitious concept yet for the White Stripes. It's very complicated, so follow along at home.
In 2003, the Stripes appeared for a rare, ambitious week-long stint on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. During one of those nights, they presented Conan with a replica of himself - a head with coifed orange hair made by Michel. "It was made of plaster and it was like something a little kid would do for their mother. And it got on TV, so I thought it would make for a funny and weird video," Gondry told MTV News.
From what I understand - I could be wrong - Michel's main idea was to compress his experience of watching television with the experience of being inside it (the White Stripes' experience). He wanted to show how weird it is to be on TV, on TV - all in one take.
Recursion and complexity are nothing new for Michel, of course, and neither are one-take videos or weird ideas. This idea turned out to be exceedingly complex, however. To portray Michel's concept, Jack and Meg White are continuously squashed and stretched as they move from section to section in their travels - from the set of Conan, into an elevator, out to their car, and finally back at home.
To accomplish this Michel's crew erected a distorted set with stretched props, like the one he did in Eternal Sunshine, at Cinema World Studios in Brooklyn for the 13 October 2005 shoot. Indeed, art directors Jeff Everett and John Ferguson won an MVPA Award for their work. (See a walkthrough and some pictures of their work.) The resulting footage was then distorted by The Mill to return the set to normal, while stretching the characters, some of whom were played by little and giant people.
Says the Mill, "The masterpiece of the project was the set for the final scene created by Mill NY's talented CG team. Their work involved extensive tracking, 3D reconstruction and match moving shots - a result of the fact that the video was shot on steadycam - so no repeatable movements were possible."
Usually Michel can (seemingly) effortlessly carry off such complexity. However, in this case The Denial Twist is flawed, primarily because the video doesn't flow seamlessly with the song and its lyrics. In it, Jack preaches about a former girlfriend, but the video ignores that plotline altogether. This continuous distraction couples with the deliberate visual confusion to mess with your head, and not in a good way. And, personally, it was disappointing to see the brilliant Conan O'Brien end the video with an out-of-character and humorless non sequitur. Ultimately, The Denial Twist is packed with potential and creativity, but it makes a few missteps in its execution.
Some fun tidbits:
· The squished car is made of some 20-odd car pieces, and was hand made by the same fellow who designed Jim Carrey's car-bed in Pecan Pie.
· Can you spot Michel?
· One of the Conans was played by Village Voice blogger Status Ain't Hood (aka Tom Breihan), who recounted his experience (and gave away the concept) the night after the shoot, and the day after. He also took these two pictures:
