Tag Archives: Jonathan Dayton

Music Video of the Day: Spider-Man by the Ramones (1995, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In 1995, producer Ralph Sall and MCA released an album called Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits.  The album was made up of covers of the theme songs of various Saturday morning carton shows.  For instance, Matthew Sweet covered Scooby Doo, Where Are You?  Sponge covered Go Speed Racer Go.  Liz Phair did a version of the Banana Splits theme song.  In order to promote the album, MCA released a music video compilation on VHS tape.  It was hosted by a young Drew Barrymore.  You can still order a copy of it off of Amazon.  It’ll only cost you around twenty dollars.

The Ramones were brought in to cover the theme song for the first Spiderman-Man cartoon show.  The video, which was directed by Johnathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, features animated Ramones performing while an animated Spider-Man swings around the city.  (If Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris sound familiar, that’s because they went on to direct feature films.  They’re best-known film is probably still Little Miss Sunshine.)  The Spider-Man theme song proves to be the perfect song to be covered by the Ramones, as they give an energetic performance that feels like it could have been written for any of the current MCU productions.

Interestingly enough, both Spider-Man and the Ramones were from the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens.  There’s no evidence that any of them met Uncle Ben before this unfortunate demise.  If they had met, Ben probably would have told them that with great audio equipment comes great responsibility.  Ben then would have kicked everyone off of his lawn and gone inside to take a boomer nap.

The theme song for Spider-Man was written, in 1967, by Paul Francis Webster and Bob Harris.  Before he wrote the Spider-Man theme, Webster won three Oscars for Best Original Song.  Over the course of his career, he would be nominated a total of 16 times.  Of his Oscar-nominated sons, I guess Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is the best known but its popularity pales in comparison to the song he wrote for Spider-Man.  Who doesn’t know that Spider-Man can do everything that a spider can?

 

Music Video of the Day: In My Darkest Hour by Megadeth (1988, dir. Penelope Spheeris)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I sound like a broken record every time I say this, but there isn’t much to talk about here beyond it being a good song.

Even if somebody didn’t know anything about Megadeth or director Penelope Spheeris, it would make perfect sense for someone to look at this music video and think it was extracted from a documentary. I haven’t seen The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988) yet. According to Songfacts, the music video was either shot before the documentary, then integrated into it, or it was part of the documentary, then extracted to be released as a music video. Either way, you’d be right to look at this and think it was from a documentary.

I like what Spheeris did here. She made a stripped down concert video that lets the band shine on their own merits rather than her work as a director. It isn’t devoid of her touch though. She clearly tried to capture them as people performing for other people rather than creating a stylish representation of the material like you would see in their music videos for Peace Sells and Sweating Bullets. The thing that subtly jumps out at me when I watch this over and over is that Mustaine is largely invisible due to the limited amount of time he is shown on stage, the sunglasses, and his face being partially darkened during parts of it. I would imagine this was done not only to visually show the darkness of the lyrics, but to keep your focus on the lyrics and how they are resonating with the crowd.

Speaking of the lyrics, this is one of those music videos that was banned from MTV. According to Wikipedia, it was due to alleged references to suicide.

According to mvdbase, the husband and wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris produced this music video. They would go on to do a lot of other famous music videos together as well as the movie Little Miss Sunshine (2006). They were also producers on The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins (1996, dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

One of the most common arguments I’ve seen about why music videos aren’t actually films is that they are just advertisements for a song. Right now Gary has just finished reading that sentence and is digging out his copy of Dewar’s-It’s Scotch (1898), Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee (1930), and other examples that destroy the illusion that even ads aren’t films. I think The Smashing Pumpkins video for Tonight, Tonight is one of the finest examples of why that argument is a bunch of BS. Why? Because it’s a remake of Georges Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon (1902). Even IMDb Data Editors agreed with me when I submitted it as such about a year ago. Tom Kenny and Jill Talley play the man and woman who go through their incredible journey. One that ends with them even being rescued by the S.S. Méliès. Not only have more people probably seen short films since the launch of MTV then since the pre-1915 days of cinema, but this video introduced many kids to Georges Méliès long before Martin Scorsese did with Hugo (2011).