Back to Part One For Wu-Tang Clan, where was that shot? Where was that set built? That was shot out on an airplane hangar base. I built a huge.. It looked massive! It was massive, and what was also funny about it was I built it twice. Oh my. That video was shot between three other really tough videos. One, it was shot between two other Wu-Tang videos. That was the centerpiece video, the other two were sort of tacked on. I had to do those two to do the video I really wanted to do. And that was in between, I believe, Moby ·· South Side, and Britney Spears ·· Stronger. I think I did around 10 videos in three months, something like that. So in the midst of all that, somehow, when they started building the set, they aimed it the wrong direction in the sky, so that when the sun came up it casted a big shadow over the whole thing. And they had almost pretty much built the whole thing. And it was a massive build. And I made them strike it down and move it 180 degrees, and build it the opposite way. Anyway, I think that's some of the behavior back in the day that really scared people. (laughs) Then you had them all in furs in the hot sun. Was it summer time? Yeah, it was summer time. And actresses were fainting because they weren't drinking water. They wanted to look skinny. And it was really bad, because they could have fallen and killed themselves, because [the set] was tall. It was like the size of a building, that damn thing. Do you know how many days total it took, from building the set to tearing it down? I think, like, 4-5 days, and shot for two days, maybe.. I don't remember. It may have been a day, with a second unit day going in there and shooting inserts. I don't remember. Was it hard to convince Monster Magnet to do Space Lord? No, they wanted to do Space Lord. Dave Wyndorf was going out to hip-hop directors at the time because he wanted something that was slicker. Which I think was great, because at the time your average hip hop video was slick and your rock video - this was at the tail end of grunge, and before rap-rock.. And I have to tell you that Space Lord was the first rap-rock video ever made. It was the official first one, because I remember at the time going.. Rock and roll, they didn't have women in their videos, what they always had was a naked old man, and he always had something written on his chest. It was basically the Matt Mahurin era of videos. Do you know what Hype and Matt thought about that video? The funniest thing was, Randy Sosin, the commissioner.. Hype bumped into him and asked, "Who did the d.p. work on Monster Magnet? It was really good." (laughs) Because it was just emulating his video. And I don't know what Matt did, but Matt, soon after that, stopped doing videos. I don't know if he saw it and saw a message or something. I don't know, who knows? I'm not trying to pick on anybody. I thought it was a funny cultural statement of videos at the time. You can correct me on this, because I'm not positive, but you're pretty much solid in the American music video industry, but you haven't quite broken through in Europe? I mean, you've done Jamiroquai and a couple of others. You know? On a weird level, I don't think that's true actually. Okay. I actually think I'm more popular in England than I am in America. Really? I've actually done videos in England that have never been seen here in America. Not that this should be a criteria for anything, but they have been some of the most expensive videos the British have ever done. Like George Michael? George Michael is one of them. Jamiroquai is another. Whenever they have an event video, they always come to me. And I really love them for it, by the way. I think the English: #1, they're fucking smart people. Their women have some of the sharpest tongues I've ever met, you know? Right, and they've got the BBC. (laughs) Yeah, and so when they see my videos - and I really really appreciate this about them - they see a little bit beyond 'just the pop guy.' They see that I'm a combination of the guy who can deliver the pop product, but always with sort of an unconventional point of view on it. The reality is I get offered a lot more videos than I do, and my videos are really expensive. From what I know your two most expensive videos are your Blackstreet video, and your Backstreet Boys video Larger Than Life. You're right about one and wrong about the other. Backstreet Boys is really expensive, but my most expensive video was Janet Jackson ·· Doesn't Really Matter. The Blackstreet video doesn't rank in there at all. It says on Wikipedia that Blackstreet and Backstreet Boys are two of the most expensive videos ever made. Yeah, it's completely wrong. What was Janet made for? Janet was about $2.5 million. And Blackstreet was around $750,000. We Are All Made of Stars was more expensive than that. [ed: Joseph later told me Larger Than Life was $2.3m, George Michael $1.5m, then the rest hover around $1m. "In comparison, I've done commercials like British Telecom ("Network") and Acura which were like $4 million apiece."] We've already talked about music video directors a little bit. Do you have any other favorites that really inspired you? Well, there's no question that Gondry... I don't think there's a single director on Earth that looks at Gondry and goes, "He's not the master at our art form." Anytime he does something, I'm like "Wow." Even the stuff that isn't necessarily the most successful stuff, there's still an interesting Gondry feel to it. I've always loved Mark Romanek. He was sort of my second fave of emulation after David Fincher. And then there was Spike Jonze, who.. It's interesting, I love the slickness and design of Mark Romanek. I love the cinematic qualities of David Fincher. But I love the storytelling of Spike Jonze, and the reversal that he can do. I'm not even talking about comedy. I think comedy is one thing that he does, that he's known for. But deep down at the core of his filmmaking, he's a master at the reversal. In my head, when I was starting off, I was thinking I should try to find the best of each director and incorporate that into my own kung-fu. And then there's also Marcus Nispel. He had a certain technical quality. He was like David Fincher, but with more anger. And everyone credits Hype for the wide-angle lens - fair enough - but Marcus Nispel was the first guy to really incorporate the wide-angle lens into his work. It's really funny, because Marcus' videos I don't think are really that remembered. He made really brilliant videos within a really narrow point of view. They were super-demographically oriented. Like if you want to do a C+C Music Factory, it was only for the C+C fans. And if you want to do a Puff Daddy, only Puff Daddy's fans could get into it. They're technically brilliant, but they were very specific in terms of audience. So, there was him. I'm sort of giving up my closet full of 90's retro directors. Sam Bayer was one I really liked - and Matt Mahurin too. Both of them, because Sam was Matt's assistant. There's Hype Williams too, by the way. Of all the directors, he's one of the most underrated. I think he is absolutely brilliant. What is your take on the whole issue of music videos becoming less a promotional tool and more a profitable commodity in their own right, director's points and all that..? Well, I don't think we'll be getting points any time soon. Who knows? I don't really care what the profit margin [is] of what directors get out of videos. I think directors get lots of things out of videos beyond your fee. That's just a very small part of why you should do it anyways. If people will actually purchase videos, and vote with their dollars, theoretically it could be a great way of upping the quality of videos, and the relevance of videos. But I think it might backfire on a level that we aren't thinking about. It may make videos much slicker and much more commercial than they've ever been, which will help the industry not go into ruin. But tiny videos may be harder to justify. In the commentary for Torque, you said you were mostly unprepared in your ability to shoot a feature. Do you feel confident in your feature film-making ability now? Well, more so than when I did Torque, because now I know what to expect. Now I know how a crew works on set, to shoot a day, to work with actors.. There are a ton of things.. The research of when they screen films for an audience. I could write an entire book on what I learned on filmmaking by doing the first film. When can we expect another feature from you? (laughs) Yeah, that is something that is completely up in the air. (laughs) Who knows? What would the penultimate Joseph Kahn feature really be? Would it be a comic book movie, like Spiderman 3? I don't think a Joseph Kahn film exists, except for Torque. People that like it: thank you. People that hate it: go rent it anyway. (laughs) When I came to Hollywood, all I wanted to do was make movies. I'm constantly watching movies, studying them just as passionately as I ever have. When I finally get the opportunity - and the question's not when, but if, because nothing's guaranteed - I'll be very happy. Who knows, right? Who knows. Do you have a recent film you wish you could have directed? I wish I had directed Mission: Impossible III, even though I haven't seen it. But I see my version in my head, and I like it. (laughs) Will you ever abandon music videos entirely? I hope not, but at a certain point, I might just get too old for the art form. I'm already doing videos for people that are 10 years younger than me. My first shedding point was when I did my first Backstreet Boys video, back in '98. I was 23, 24, and the Backstreet Boys were 23, 24. I was working with my peers. From that point on, I hopped over my peers, and I became a year or two older, or three years. Now I'm ten years older than my peers. It's a very interesting perspective to see what fascinates them. Specifically knowing what their life journey is like, and [wondering] what the next ten years holds in store for them, and what their music's all about. Do you have any other videos coming up? I just finished up this video for the Pink Spiders. And you spent your own money on that? I spend my money on quite a few things, actually. Right now the video business doesn't have enough money to support my type of video. So, fuck it. How do you balance that out? I'm rich: fuck you! (laughs) That's how you do it! I'll just go fuckin' do it. If they don't want to put the fuckin' money into what I think should be done, then whatever. I'll just do it myself. And if no one else appreciates it but me, myself, and I, well, that's it. I have 'fuck you' money. Video directors, we scrape our fees off the skin of music videos. We get crumbles; we get flakes. Except for Hype Williams, who apparently charges $100,000 no matter what. But if you do a feature film, that's where all the checks come in. In the beginning, I made less off Torque than I did on a music video, but then the residual checks start coming in. Even on a movie like Torque, which was not a blockbuster, you still get these big chunks of checks that are surprises, giant bonuses 4 or 5 times a year. I can only imagine what it's like if you did a film that made a billion dollars. You've been shooting videos for 15 years now, do you feel like a seasoned, accomplished director, or do you still feel the same way as you did 15 years ago? I'd be a liar, and it would be a very Hollywood thing to say, if I said I still feel like I did 15 years ago. The reality is, I've been doing it for 15 years, and the business itself isn't that old. MTV's like 25 years old, or whatever it is. So I've been working in that field for over half of MTV's existence. So I don't feel like I did 15 years ago. But the biggest thing that I feel.. I feel that I am different than the new directors coming up. It's sort of.. the mediocre age, where tons of videos are being made for around $250,000, which is enough money to make it look slick, but not really ambitious. This era right now, it looks like videos that were being made five years ago, but just cheaper. It's lame. Really lame. Do you think that's going to change? Yeah. Hopefully when people buy videos and they can recuperate the cost. I wrote that into a couple treatments. Yeah, this video is going to cost more, but you are going to recuperate it because you can get it off iTunes now. Okay, finally, where do you keep your Grammy? I keep my Grammy.. I dunno.. On a bookshelf in my office.		wu-tang clan ·· gravel pit Downloadable Videos Eminem ·· Without Me (real) Moby ·· We are All Made of Stars U2 ·· Elevation (Remix) U2 ·· Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of (US) Chemical Brothers & k-os ·· Get Yourself High (win/real) Britney Spears ·· Toxic blink-182 ·· Always Kelly Clarkson ·· Walk Away (win/real) Busta Rhymes ·· Light Your Ass on Fire Ashlee Simpson ·· La La Backstreet Boys ·· Incomplete Muse ·· Muscle Museum (real/small) Downloadable Videos (Flash) note: these raw flash files will not play in your browser. you must download a stand-alone flv player. mac: try j-vhs · windows: try flv player or click on to watch in your browser. Ashlee Simpson ·· La La Backstreet Boys ·· Everybody Black Eyed Peas & Macy Gray ·· Request + Line blink-182 ·· Always Brandy & Monica ·· The Boy is Mine Britney Spears ·· Stronger Britney Spears ·· Toxic Busta Rhymes & Pharrell ·· Lite Your Ass on Fire Chemical Brothers & k-os ·· Get Yourself High Destiny's Child ·· Say My Name DMX ·· Who We Be Eminem ·· Without Me Faith No More ·· Last Cup of Sorrow Garbage ·· Cherry Lips George Michael ·· Freeek! Jamiroquai ·· Feels Just Like it Should Janet Jackson ·· Doesn't Really Matter KoRn ·· A.D.I.D.A.S. Mariah Carey & Cam'ron ·· Boy Moby & Gwen Stefani ·· SouthSide Moby ·· We are All Made of Stars Monster Magnet ·· Space Lord monster magnet ·· space lord Muse ·· Muscle Museum Pink Spiders ·· Little Razorblade Sisqo ·· The Thong Song Sugar Ray ·· Someday U2 ·· Elevation (Remix) U2 ·· Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of Wu-Tang Clan ·· The Gravel Pit jamiroquai ·· feels just like it should george michael ·· freeek! Downloadable Ads quicktime files BTI ·· Network (flash) Acura ·· Urban Sprawl Acura ·· Windows Coors Light ·· Two Girls Ford Fusion ·· Ignition Fox Sports ·· Jimmie Johnson Fox Sports ·· Kurt Busch Fox Sports ·· Finale SAAB ·· Transformer Links JosephKahn.com Joseph Kahn videography HSI Productions janet jackson ·· doesn't really matter britney spears ·· toxic britney spears ·· stronger destiny's child ·· say my name destiny's child ·· jumpin', jumpin' moby & gwen stefani ·· southside (remix) d12 ·· purple hills pink spiders ·· little razorblade Published 8 May 2006. Modified 8 May 2006: Torque wasn't a box office failure: $40m budget, $50m gross worldwide, easily doubled with DVD & broadcast sales. This page (C) 2006 Kevin Holy. All rights reserved. Welcome to director-file.com.
wu-tang clan ·· gravel pit