So last week we wrote about Blur’s video homage to the glacially paced abstract classic, “Last Year At Marienbad,” by Alain Resnais. It seemed fairly popular (two people read it), so it got us to thinking about all the videos that were homages to film which made us realize most of them were shit songs and or garbage bands and the whole idea imploded.
But then we remembered Elliott Smith’s homage to Chris Marker’s 28-minute experimental science-fiction film, “La Jetée ” which was also was the specific inspiration behind Terry Gilliam‘s “12 Monkeys.” There is no dialogue and the short is just presented as a collection of still photographs while a narrator tells the post-apocalyptic tale (it finally came out on easy-to-find DVD via Criterion bundled with Marker’s “Sans Soleil” in June of last year).
The film was also the inspiration behind Elliott Smith‘s last video, “Son of Sam,” that was directed by Autumn De Wilde who has become the go-to indie-rock photographer in recent years shooting Beck, the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, the Strokes, Jenny Lewis, etc. etc. Told (mostly) in stills, the video uses the same concept of photographs informing the narrative augmented with other homagistic nods to “Le Ballon Rouge” (The Red Balloon), which recently made its way back into repetory theaters (and DVD). Like the cute little kid in the original, Elliott is followed around by a balloon, so it’s basically merging the two ideas together. This is what we would call a good homage. Wish more videos had this much thought put into them.
Watch: Seven whole minutes of La “Jetée”
Watch: “The Red Ballon”
Watch: Elliott Smith’s “Son of Sam”
