I always think of this video as being Mandy Moore goes to Middle Earth or maybe Narnia.
Enjoy!
Tag Archives: Gregory Dark
Music Video of the Day: Bother by Stone Sour (2002, directed by Gregory Dark)
The Spider-Man ring that is visible in this video is due to leader singer Corey Taylor being both a fan of the character and this song appearing on the soundtrack of the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man film. Just as Peter Parker and Spider-Man are the same but different, the same can be said of Corey Taylor, who is introspective and thoughtful as Stone Sour’s lead singer and something somewhat different when he’s performing as Number 8 with Slipknot.
This video, which features Taylor singing to rapidly aging and dying version of himself, was directed by Gregory Dark. Dark, previously known as “the Steven Spielberg of the soft-score set” and “the Martin Scorsese of the erotic thriller,” was making the transition for directing films for adults to directing music videos. It wasn’t always a smooth transition. There was some controversy when he directed a video for Britney Spears, for instance. I think this is one of Dark’s better videos.
Enjoy!
Cinemax Friday: Stranger By Night (1994, directed by Gregory Brown a.k.a. Gregory Hippolyte a.k.a. Gregory Dark)
Detective Bobby Corcoran (Steven Bauer!) is a cop with an anger problem. Whenever he and his parter, Troy Rooney (William Katt!!), catch a criminal, Bobby just loses control. Since, for some reason, they seem to catch a lot of criminals on rooftops, this often leads to Bobby threatening to throw someone over the edge. Even when his boss, Detective Larson (Michael Parks!!!) tells Bobby to stop trying to kill all of the suspects, Bobby still struggles to control his rage. He’s seeing a Dr. Anne Richmond (Jennifer Rubin!!!!), a psychiatrist, about his anger issues but since their sessions usually get interrupted by bouts of soft-core, saxophone-scored sex, it is debatable how much time they actually spend digging into the roots of Bobby’s problems.
Bobby also suffers from frequent blackouts. While he’s unconscious, he’s haunted by black-and-white memories of his abusive father (J.J. Johnston) beating up his mother. When he wakes up, he’s often in a different room from where he blacked out. Anne says that Bobby must be sleep-walking. Bobby says that he’s not sleep walking because he’s stubborn and doesn’t feel safe letting anyone into his mind. Lately, whenever Bobby passes out, a prostitute ends up dead. An unknown killer is stalking them and chopping off their ears. Bobby, with his anger issues and his dislike of prostitutes, is an obvious suspect. Is Bobby the killer or is he being framed?
Stranger By Night‘s credited director is Gregory Brown, who is better known as Gregory Dark. Dark is one of the best-known of the directors who specialized in erotic thrillers in the 90s. Dark was responsible for some of the classics of the genre but, unfortunately, Stranger By Night is not one of his better efforts. The action frequently drags and, with the exception of Bobby’s black-and-white flashbacks, Stranger By Night has none of Dark’s usual visual style. The film looks and feels flat and the plot is never feels as involving as it should. The discovery of the killer’s identity inspires not shock but an indifferent shrug.
On the positive side, it’s got a cast of skilled genre vets and all of them do what they can to elevate the material. William Katt is jittery and frequently funny while Jennifer Rubin, who deserved to have a much bigger career, is as sultry as ever. (Rubin brought both intelligence and sex appeal to almost every role that she played and it made her one of the best genre actresses around.) Steven Bauer, another actor who probably deserves a bigger career than he’s had, does a good job in the lead role. Bobby isn’t always a likable character and Bauer doesn’t try to make him one. On the other hand, it’s frustrating that Michael Parks does not get to do much, other than frown. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching a film that doesn’t take full advantage of the casting of Michael Parks.
Stranger By Night does seem to have a serious subtext. It tries to deal seriously with how Bobby’s abusive childhood has scarred him and there’s a lengthy scene where Bobby finally talks to his aged father. The scene is played straight and it’s not the sort of thing that you’d normally expect to see in a direct-to-video erotic thriller. (It’s a good example of what set Gregory Dark apart from some of the other directors churning out these type of films in the 90s.) For the most part, though, Stranger By Night is a forgettable trip to the world of late night Cinemax.
Music Video of the Day: From the Bottom of My Broken Heart by Britney Spears (1999, dir by Gregory Dark)
Welcome to Cedar Springs Garden!
It’s a nice little town, somewhere down south. It’s a place where you can spend the day swinging back and forth on a tire swing and where you and your boyfriend can chastely spend the night sitting on the back of a billboard. It’s also the setting for the music video of Britney Spears’s From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart.
From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart was the last single to be released from Britney’s debut album and I have to admit that, when I watch it today, I have mixed feelings about this video. On the one hand, the song showed, in its own simplistic way, that Britney was a singer who was capable of delivering emotional content. On the other hand, there’s a soft-focus blandness to the video that kind of reminds you of why it took critics a while to take Britney seriously as a performer. Some of the problem is that the guy that Britney’s singing about doesn’t really seem like he’s worth all the drama. The other problem is that the video itself could have just as easily been set in the 1950s as opposed to the start of the 21st century. This is the safe, non-threatening Britney, as opposed to the Britney who, in her next big hit, would joyously and triumphantly celebrate getting “lost in the game.”
For such an inoffensive music video, From the Bottom of My Broken Heart was surprisingly controversial when it was released. That’s because was directed by Gregory Dark. It’s one of the many videos that have been directed by Mr. Dark and, in fact, one could argue that, in the 1990s and the early aughts, he was one of the best video directors around. However, before he directed music videos, Gregory Dark directed not only hardcore adult films but also several erotic thrillers. Even though, by the time that this video came out, Dark was no longer making adult features, it was argued by some critics that Dark directing this video was evidence that Britney was an unwholesome influence. That’s especially hilarious when you consider that this is probably one of the most wholesome videos in which Britney Spears ever appeared.
Enjoy!
Music Video of the Day: One Step Closer by Linkin Park (2001, dir. Gregory Dark)
Yesterday I heard about the passing of Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. I have never been fan. I never really kept up on their career. However, I would feel remiss not doing a Linkin Park video today, so I picked the one video that did have a part in my life up to this point.
When this came out in 2001, I was 17 going on 18. Since I am part of whatever you want to call the transgenerational gap between Gen X and Millennials, my music as a kid was stuff like Nirvana or The Offspring. In other words, the Gen X bands of the early 90s. Despite the fact that I was in elementary and middle school during that time, watching Singles (1992) earlier this year when Chris Cornell also left us (his birthday was yesterday) was like looking through a time portal to an era I distinctly remember.
Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, Backstreet Boys, and Blink-182 were the kind of musicians that popped up and flooded MTV and VH1 during the late 90s. Of course back then, you didn’t have a choice as to what videos you were going to see when you turned on the television. It’s not like it is today where if I want to watch Fat Lip by Sum 41, then I can, and then watch any other music videos I want for months or years before returning to watch that video. No such luck back then. If those weren’t the people you wanted to see, then too bad. As a result, I looked to the lists of greatest musicians that VH1 was putting out, and music documentaries in order to begin to fill in the music that came before my time–something I’m still doing to this day. That was me in high school. I was listening to The Velvet Underground while riding out musicians like the ones I already mentioned.
In 2001 I was in my last semester of high school. I’d been on permanent independent study for at least two-and-a-half years at that point. I watched a lot of TV, which didn’t help those musicians because it meant that I was probably seeing their video 2-3 times a day, everyday. That’s not a good thing. Aside from shows like TRL or the handful of videos VH1 played, there seemed to be no other outlet unless you were willing to be up early in the morning when MTV still played videos. Then I discovered that I had MTV2. They played all kinds of stuff. It was wonderful. This is where I remember Linkin Park first showing up on my radar. They showed up with this arguably embarrassing video. They looked and sounded like I would expect Backstreet Boys to be if they tried to combine rap with metal. They did nothing for me.
After I moved onto college and this video stopped being shown, the band basically disappeared from my life. It wasn’t until I transferred to Cal in 2007 that they showed up again. I don’t remember if my first roommate liked their music or not, but they came up. I was rooming with a freshman, so they were probably 10-11 when this came out. This was not the Linkin Park my roommate knew.
In the years that followed, I would hear them on the radio, and it wasn’t this Linkin Park. At the time of writing this, a new Linkin Park video was released for the song Talking To Myself. That is not the band in this video at all. They came a long way from my unfortunate introduction to them in presentation, style, and the place I was in at the time of its release. It’s doubtful that I’ll ever develop the kind of deep connection that many people have to the band. They slipped through the cracks in my life leaving only the memories of them that I have stated above.
Would I have written about this video at some point even if this tragedy hadn’t happened? Yes, I would have. While on the fringes, this video has stuck with me all these years. It would’ve essentially been the same thing I already wrote above about how much they changed while I wasn’t looking. It just wouldn’t have had to be in a somber tone, I would have had some fun with how ridiculous the video looks, made a comparison with It’s My Life by Bon Jovi, and it would have been wonderful to not have to include the following:
Rest in peace, Chester Bennington.
—————–
Now I need to talk a little bit about the crew because this may have one of the most unique directors I have come across while doing these posts. Gregory Dark got his start making adult films. I’ve only seen one of his movies–New Wave Hookers (1985). It is infamous for having Traci Lords in it. Well, had her in it, since the version that is available has her edited out, which is the version I saw–thankfully. The movie is bonkers, colorful, funny, has a humorous setup, and is so 80s it hurts–much like this video is so 2001 it hurts. That film seems to have kickstarted his career.
Looking at Dark’s filmography, it appears that about a decade later he moved into music videos. I can find credits for about 70 of them. I know that Michael Bay made an adult film while also doing music videos. But I’m pretty sure this is the first video I’ve spotlighted that was made by someone who had made a career out of making them.
The video was edited by prolific editor Jeff Selis. He’s done over 100 videos. Even with only 372 of these posts, this is already the third video he edited that I have put up here.
The concept for the video came from Linkin Park member Joe Hahn–according to IMVDb. According to Wikipedia, the video was originally supposed to be like the one released yesterday. He would go on to direct a bunch of their videos.
Toni Jo Peruzzi did the make-up for the video. For her, I can only find a handful of credits.
Through the Shattered Lens 