John Hassay, the video commissioner for both videos, shares his notes on the award-winning collaboration between Norman Cook and Spike Jonze:
Spike gave Norman a VHS of himself spaz dancing to “Rockafella Skank” outside the [Mann] Chinese Theatre in LA at the same time Skint took delivery of Doug Aitken’s video for the track. Norman didn’t love Doug’s vid because he thought it was too pop and really wanted to use Spike’s instead. Of course there were the inevitable contractual issues and it just didn’t happen. We sooooo wanted Norman to work with Spike. He was my hero when I worked in the MTV library. But it looked impossible due to his schedule as this was around the time of Three Kings and Being John Malkovich but then we got a lucky break. Roman Coppola directed “Gangster Trippin’” for us and he pointed out that as he and Spike were good buddies – “Heck, he’s marrying my sister” – they could probably do something together.
Serendipity max when we realized that Norman was playing LA on the one weekend that Spike was possibly free and suddenly I was on a flight to Cali for the shoot. What you see is what you get. The shoot took about 20 minutes and that included getting out of the car, setting up and then leaving which made this greenhorn commissioner rather nervous. From a record company point of view our only intention was to do something that Norman liked and that we thought was cool. From a commissioning point of view I thought MTV couldn’t possibly ignore a video from Spike and Roman (part of my holy trinity with Gondry at the time) plus they gave us back 50 percent of the budget!
When we showed the video to Sony (they handle Skint distribution) they thought it was a test – “Is this a fucking joke?” – but once they got on board, the video pretty well conquered the world. The best was yet to come, however, as we went on to win three MTV awards including beating Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” and Will Smith’s “Wild West” to the best choreography awards. The looks on their faces will stay with us for a long time.
John Hassay, the video commissioner for both videos, shares his notes on the award-winning collaboration between Norman Cook and Spike Jonze:
Spike gave Norman a VHS of himself spaz dancing to “Rockafella Skank” outside the [Mann] Chinese Theatre in LA at the same time Skint took delivery of Doug Aitken’s video for the track. Norman didn’t love Doug’s vid because he thought it was too pop and really wanted to use Spike’s instead. Of course there were the inevitable contractual issues and it just didn’t happen. We sooooo wanted Norman to work with Spike. He was my hero when I worked in the MTV library. But it looked impossible due to his schedule as this was around the time of Three Kings and Being John Malkovich but then we got a lucky break. Roman Coppola directed “Gangster Trippin’” for us and he pointed out that as he and Spike were good buddies – “Heck, he’s marrying my sister” – they could probably do something together.
Serendipity max when we realized that Norman was playing LA on the one weekend that Spike was possibly free and suddenly I was on a flight to Cali for the shoot. What you see is what you get. The shoot took about 20 minutes and that included getting out of the car, setting up and then leaving which made this greenhorn commissioner rather nervous. From a record company point of view our only intention was to do something that Norman liked and that we thought was cool. From a commissioning point of view I thought MTV couldn’t possibly ignore a video from Spike and Roman (part of my holy trinity with Gondry at the time) plus they gave us back 50 percent of the budget!
When we showed the video to Sony (they handle Skint distribution) they thought it was a test – “Is this a fucking joke?” – but once they got on board, the video pretty well conquered the world. The best was yet to come, however, as we went on to win three MTV awards including beating Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” and Will Smith’s “Wild West” to the best choreography awards. The looks on their faces will stay with us for a long time.