Music Video of the Day: Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. (1984, dir. Ivan Reitman)

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

I wish the literal video for this was still up. Oh, well.

All these years later, I still don’t have any idea why she goes into that house. I guess we are supposed to believe she lives there with these two kids that miss their cue?

These other kids nail it.

Despite finding lists of all the celebrities in this video, I have no idea who this guy is that Ray Parker Jr. becomes for this bit.

I also wonder why she didn’t see him while turning away from the moving table to go to the window.

In the window is footage of the movie that has aged horribly. Parker Jr. is blue screened in there for this famous shot.

He ain’t afraid of no ghost. A lawsuit on the other the hand, that’s a different matter. I hope this music video doesn’t remind me of a Huey Lewis & The News video as well.

Now Ray Parker Jr. stands creepily outside of her window.

This is looking familiar.

Chevy Chase can call Ghostbusters if he has a ghost problem…

but what about if he gets stuck in Benji again?

Who can he call then?

I knew this looked familiar.

Do You Believe In Love by Huey Lewis & The News (1982)

I’m sure it’s a coincidence. I just find it humorous to see that considering the lawsuit saying that this song ripped off, to one extent or another, the Huey Lewis & The News song I Want A New Drug. The scene above is from the video that helped kick off their career on MTV and set the tone for their future videos since it was such a success despite being ridiculous. Is the riff in You Crack Me Up…

sound like the same riff from Johnny And Mary by Robert Palmer?

Or is it just me?

What a feeling. Thanks for making that one easy, Irene Cara.

Something tells me that Cindy Harrell was hired by someone who saw the movie Model Behavior (1982), which she was in.

Model Behavior (1982, dir. Bud Gardner)

From what I’ve read, they just showed up on the set of a movie Candy was shooting to try and get him to make this cameo appearance.

Ray Parker Jr. rising from the top of the stairs like he’s Michael Myers come to kill her. Why?

Or at least scare her. It’s probably a reference to Gozer.

Melissa Gilbert. I have no idea what she’s doing here. I’ve only seen an episode or two of Little House On The Prairie, so I guess there could have been some episodes with ghosts. Some of these cameos feel like they happened because the celebrities were involved with NBC.

Speaking of cameos I can’t explain, it’s former baseball player Ollie Brown.

Boundaries!

I do like that for the majority of the shot it looks like she should be falling over but isn’t.

More people that Parker can summon for some reason.

Don’t worry about them.

Pose for the featured image of this post.

Thank you.

Jeffrey Tambor.

Is it 555-5555…

or 555-2368 as you showed earlier?

George Wendt apparently got in trouble with the Screen Actors Guild for his appearance in this video. I’ll link to the article with that information at the end.

Senator Al Franken.

Now we get a series of confusing cameos.

Danny DeVito. I think this is only the second music video he has ever been in. The other one was for the song Billy Ocean did for The Jewel Of The Nile (1985).

Carly Simon for some reason. She would go on to do the theme song to Working Girl (1988) with Sigourney Weaver. Maybe they were friends. I don’t know.

Umm…one more thing. Have you tried calling the Ghostbusters? No clue as to why Peter Falk is here.

The breakdancing was improvised. So was Parker Jr. pushing Bill Murray around.

I think Teri Garr has one of the best cameos.

Don’t swallow that cigarette, Chevy.

Fun fact: In European and other non-US markets, the “no” sign was flipped.

If you want to read some more information about the video, then follow this link over to ScreenCrush where they have a write-up on the video with information from people who worked on the video.

According to mvdbase, Ivan Reitman directed, Keith Williams wrote the script, Jeff Abelson produced it, Daniel Pearl shot it, and Peter Lippman was the production manager.

If you ever get a chance to watch the literal music video for this, then do so. I doubt it will surface again though seeing as this music video almost didn’t get an official release because of the issues surrounding all the cameos.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask) by Alice Cooper (1986, dir. Jeffrey Ableson)

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYoDoKJTG2E

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986, dir. Tom McLoughlin)

I see director Jeffrey Abelson, writer Keith Williams, and Alice Cooper got that Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) was meant to be funny.

I have a couple of questions right up front.

“And he’s after your soul”??? Umm…since when did Jason want your soul? It may have been 5 years since I watched parts 2-10, Freddy vs. Jason, and the remake, but I’m quite sure Jason was never concerned with souls. The closest he got was hopping into bodies in Jason Goes To Hell. That didn’t have to with souls. That was because he needed a Voorhees womb to get into and then pop-out fully grown seconds later to make his second cameo in his own film.

Also, he “knows your house”??? Jason is Santa Claus now? Cooper took some liberties with this song.

I’m not 100% sure why the kid in this video is named Jason. However, the film does make several jokes about the abandoned idea of having Tommy Jarvis become the new Jason, so I’m going to assume that’s the reason.

Jason is basically a stand-in for people who thumb their noses at these kinds of movies. And just in case you didn’t get that, they include the scene where the caretaker says:

Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment.

at the end of the video.

Seeing as Jason didn’t get good grades, much like his movie counterpart doesn’t have any of the following qualities,…

he has to walk to the theater with his date.

Why does this theater have an entrance that makes me think Pinhead is going to walk through it?

A codpiece? He doesn’t even break anything over it in the video. He does smash a bottle on his forehead though.

I’m glad they included the best scene in the movie. Tommy Jarvis deciding he needs to double-kill Jason, and in the process accidentally resurrecting him as a zombie .

It’s all your fault, Tommy. You could have just set fire to his coffin. You didn’t have to open it and poke at his corpse with a metal rod before trying to burn him.

Thanks to this video, we get to see Tarzan-Jason. I don’t remember that happening in any of the movies.

Yes, it turns out to be Alice Cooper pretending to be Jason. Still, Tarzan-Jason is something I could’ve have gotten behind. I’m guessing Cooper was pretending to be Jason because he just can’t let go of the ending of A New Beginning.

Continuity wasn’t a high priority for these movies. Not for the mask though. That must always have the gash in it no matter how much retconning goes on.

While the Cooper fanboy is scared by the film, Jason and his girlfriend eventually get fed up and wander onto the set of the rest of the music video. A lot of weird stuff is going on here.

Cooper is hanging out with a snake.

Cooper apparently had a cage setup to catch his son. What if they had been standing a little off-center?

Someone with wings rising off a horse. Sure.

They escape…somehow. Also, Jason gets Cooper…somehow.

In the end, the twist is that Jason’s father is Alice Cooper because we weren’t supposed to recognize his speaking voice? I guess that works seeing as I’m sure plenty of people didn’t notice Kane Hodder standing outside the corner’s office in Jason Goes To Hell. I didn’t.

But does that mean that Jason never saw his father before now? I’m going with it being that the films are make-believe like Alice Cooper in makeup. Alice Cooper is a man behind a mask too. Within the video, it’s a side his son never saw before.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Pressure by Billy Joel (1982, dir. Russell Mulcahy)

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I’m really not sure what to say about this other than to watch it. It is one of the best music videos I have spotlighted so far. That shouldn’t be a big surprise since it is Russell Mulcahy directing a Billy Joel music video. For whatever reason, Billy Joel’s music videos are some of the best I have seen. Russell Mulcahy is an excellent director of music videos. It’s a winning combination.

I guess there are two things I want to make particular note of in the music video. First, is that it uses a modified version of the training montage from The Parallax View (1974) at the beginning. The second thing is that I love how Mulcahy used water and liquids in general as something that not only builds up pressure when attempts to contain it are made, but also as something that can consume you if you cannot handle pressure as the song says. It is much like the television that winds up capturing the kid within it since it is also a source of pressure along with magazines and other mass media.

This is another one of those music videos where we know more than just the director.

Andrew Dintefass was the cinematographer on Pressure. He shot a few other music videos with Russell Mulcahy, some other music videos, and did a few other things as well.

Doug Dowdle edited Pressure. He also edited, directed, and wrote a few music videos.

Keith Williams wrote Pressure. He wrote over 60 music videos, which includes a bunch of Russell Mulcahy ones. I found an IMDb entry that I am pretty sure is him and includes numerous producer credits.

Jackie Adams was the producer of Pressure. She seems to have exclusively produced music videos directed by Russell Mulcahy.

I love when I come across a music video that has this much documentation available.

Enjoy!