Meyer Directed a Video?

I try to make sweet monkey love to my treadmill in the afternoons when I can, and while doing so I am usually reading and half-listening to whatever music I find on the upteen-thirty music video channels on my cable lineup.

And what to the corner of my eye should appear but a video directed by…Stephenie Meyer? From a genre I call “whine-rock” comes Jack’s Mannequin, and a host of rather obvious images that are the visual equivalent over overly-sweet candy. Hearts! Lots of them! Oy, says I. People’s article has a quote from the band’s singer-keyboardist stating that the video has a whimsical, other-worldliness to it.” Oy, again, says I.

I don’t have a lot of time at the ‘puter to do the full on Google-Fu, but I’m pretty sure that the floating pale corpse-like person near the end is the actress from Twilight.

Wanna see? Have a look & listen:

Now – the real question: what romance authors ought to be directing music videos? I mean, come on now. Five minutes with the Author Talk ladies and Aerosmith would have a KICKIN’ video.

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  1. Catherine says:

    She didn’t direct it, merely came up with the treatment for the video. According to her site, the director was Noble Jones.

    I don’t exactly get the connection between mermaids and a song that’s apparently about cancer, though. I know SM has talked about a book about mermaids… is she currently on a mermaids kick?

  2. theo says:

    Um…okay…I’m with Catherine. What has the mermaid got to do with it? Is that what the song is about? Cancer? I’d have to listen to it again…but I don’t think I can.

    I WANT THE AEROSMITH VIDEO!!! 

    please? 🙂

  3. Mara says:

    well…  there’s 3 minutes of my life I’m not getting back. And er..  the video seriously looks like it was thought up by a 13 year old girl what with the mermaids and the hearts and whatnot…oy indeed.

  4. KimberlyD says:

    I watched 20 seconds. He was very whiny. I didn’t want to finish.

  5. Ocy says:

    So when the band says “whimsical” does that mean they can’t make sense of it either?

  6. kerry says:

    It’s not that bad. Definitely whiny rock though. I do like the piano in the back of the pickup but the hearts and stuff…notsomuch.

  7. Silver James says:

    Uhm-kay. That was a mermaid tail out in the ocean rather than an upended surf board. The whine. It hurts. I’m going back to bed now. And pulling the covers over my head.

  8. Unfortunately, all the waves and flooding made me think of the recent hurricanes and the pictures of the sea sweeping through some of the beach houses on Galveston Island, so I interpreted the tail that kept appearing in the ocean as being part of a dolphin, and the person at the end as somebody who had drowned. But the singer survived, as he said repeatedly, and he managed to save his piano.

    I also started wondering if there’s supposed to be a Biblical element to this, because of him singing about forgiveness and because he’d built his house on the sand. But that doesn’t seem to work because then he should be asking for forgiveness. I suppose it could still fit with a hurricane subtext if he’s trying to say that he doesn’t agree with individuals who seem to think that hurricanes are God’s judgement on the people whose homes they destroy.

    Maybe I need to stop reading so much about US politics/current affairs? 😉

  9. I tried, really.  I did.  I made it until that first whiny, off-key “You hoooold me down,” and had to turn it off. [wince]

  10. karmelrio says:

    Wanna see?

    No.

  11. Suze says:

    I’ve never heard of this band, but on CKUA.com right now, the Clash is playing Rock in the Casbah!  Woot!

    Best. Radio. Station. Evah!

  12. Midknyt says:

    Well that was painful…not sure which was worst though – the whiny high pitchness of his singing or the video (and him) being produced two decades too late?

    I hope she didn’t have much influence on the Twilight movie, because it actually looks like it has potential.  At least, there wasn’t a bunch of sharp pointy vampire teeth and hearts in the trailers so far.

  13. Melissandre says:

    I love Jack’s Mannequin.  Believe me when I say they have better songs than this.  And I can totally believe that Stephanie Meyer wrote the video treatment.  All the heart imagery waaay to obvious and cliched.  Hmm…just like her books…

  14. Karla says:

    I’m confused I thought band ment more than one person?  Shouldn’t there be more people in this vid?

  15. DS says:

    They should have put some weight in that suitcase to give some verisimilitude.  It was clearly empty.  Unless that was some sort of metaphor?

  16. Becky says:

    The video wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that bad.  Just an average, cliched video for an average, cliched song.  Not much different from anything else you might see of MTV.  If, yanno, MTV still played videos.

    The song could be about cancer or just about anything else.  The lyrics are vague enough to be applied to any situation.

    I have to agree with Karla, though.  This is a band?  You’d think they’d at least show the other members playing their instruments around the truck in the wide shots.

  17. Julie Leto says:

    Maybe I have no taste, but I didn’t mind the video or the song.  I liked the song, actually.  Whiny?  Not so much for me.  Of course, I don’t listen to pop music much anymore, so I’m not sure what’s considered good or bad…just that if this song came on the radio, I wouldn’t change it.

    However, that’s not saying I wouldn’t like to see Gena and Jill get a hold of Steve Tyler.

  18. JaneyD says:

    The first time his voice cracked, I turned off the sound. I had enough of Whiny Male Syndrome when I was married.

    The rest was—um—well, I’ll agree with Mara, only I didn’t waste 3 whole minutes of my life and just sped up to the rising corpse scene to end my misery.

    Ew.  All that whining and the build up is to something I saw on NCIS the other night?  And no Mark Harmon to take off the edge?

    Going to YouTube to watch Kevin Bacon dancing to Kenny Loggins.



  19. Anj says:

    I was just watching out of the corner of my eye…

    So he drove away and the water was following him. Then he’s sitting in his ‘camp’ playing piano and I kep expecting the water to peep over the edge of the hill. And maybe wave. And then disappear and just sweep him away. It would have been hilarious.

  20. Lyra says:

    That came off looking like a parody of a whiny rock video. From the “oh woe is me” passing-for-pretty pretty-boy to the vague “oh look I’m so DEEP” lyrics to the “look at me! I’m subtle” unsubtle symbolism.

    Except that it wasn’t funny. It was all in earnest.

    word: interest92
    I couldn’t feign interest in this video even if I lived to be 92?

  21. Elizabeth Wadsworth says:

    Now – the real question: what romance authors ought to be directing music videos? I mean, come on now. Five minutes with the Author Talk ladies and Aerosmith would have a KICKIN’ video.

    Since nobody’s weighed in on this yet, I cast my vote for Neil Gaiman.  True, he’s not a romance writer per se (except perhaps in the medieval sense of the word), but he’s brilliant and funny and has experience in the worlds of music and puppetry, and I bet he’d come up with something extraordinary.

  22. Deb Kinnard says:

    (Putting on Herself hat here) I want the individual who told this man he could sing, taken out and shot.

    We Are Neither Amused Nor Entertained.

    (Taking off Herself hat & returning to your regularly scheduled writer/soccer mom/bloglurker)

  23. Carolan Ivey says:

    Alllllrighty then…

  24. Marta Acosta says:

    1) His teeth scared me and made me cry.

    2)  Why should any authors be directing videos?  If authors were visual they’d be in the visual arts.  We can say, “Hey, those lyrics make no sense, dude!”

    3)  I have made my own video book trailer.  No one has scary teeth in it and the song’s lyrics are sheer poetry.



  25. ev says:

    No way am I gonna waste 3 minutes of my life on this.

    Aerosmith on the other hand…

  26. Toka says:

    Obviously, it’s about global warming.

  27. piranha says:

    I see that corpse-y mermaid floating at the end and all I hear in my head is “DON’T… FOLLOW… THE LIGHTS!!!”

    And then I want to say, no, please, follow them. Right into the bog of death.

    PS. First shot of lead singer = Eric Idle doing an impression of a crappy lead singer?

    PPS. Spamword = large69. No connection to the video, but seriously. Best. Spamword. EVER.

  28. mirain says:

    I second Elizabeth’s request for Neil Gaiman. Dave McKeon, who does the art in several of Gaiman’s books, could do the visual effects while Gaiman did lyrics and concept. But who would sing?

  29. amy lane says:

    Uhm ME!  PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME!!!  I want to be the writer who gets to do the video… please please pretty please pretty please… it could be my one and only chance to meet Bruce Springsteen OOOOHHHHHH PLEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSEEEEEE!!!! 

    *sob* *sniffle*  *shudder*…

    Okay, I have a hold of myself now.  I’m with the person who said Neil Gaiman, with a side dose of Carrie Vaughn—anyone who loves music as much as she does would have to do a kick-ass job!

  30. Catherine says:

    I second Elizabeth’s request for Neil Gaiman. Dave McKeon, who does the art in several of Gaiman’s books, could do the visual effects while Gaiman did lyrics and concept. But who would sing?

    Tori Amos, of course.

  31. GrowlyCub says:

    Marta,

    I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed those teeth.  Scary!  The sound on my laptop is wonky so I had no sound to distract me from this ugly dude and his screaming and white rabbit teeth when I first attempted watching it.

    Then I got my sound back and now I wish I hadn’t!

  32. Minze says:

    It might have worked better if the video hadn’t been photographed in such a sugary way. Did they use a filter? It looked like a whiskey advert. If they’d shot it in a grainier, edgier way… But this way it was like pouring sugar on treacle.

  33. Melissa S says:

    Someone needs to put this woman out of her misery. If it’s one person who seems to be the epitome of author celebrity (reading the other article first) it’s SMeyer. No wonder she can’t write she’s too busy doing this!

    But I do have say I kind of liked the son, but not the video with it’s extra trademarked brand of Smeyer Chedder.

  34. Mac says:

    Okay, I spent WAY too long wondering “Why is Adam Sandler blonde and 15 years younger???”

  35. xssa says:

    is it me, or his mouth scary wide in the first whine?
    i think the girl at the end was mocking that M. knight sham-ma-layan-whatever flick, girl in the water. lady in the mist. whatever it was.

    ps. love the phrase whine rock. perfect. it’s a whole name genre, aptly named.

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