The day after Gerard’s official sobriety day, on July 12 2004, My Chemical Romance started shooting the music video for I’m Not Okay (I Promise). There was already a music video for this song produced by Rafaela Monfradini and Greg Kaplan, but it was merely a montage of the band’s life on tour. Marc Webb (director of 500 Days Of Summer and The Amazing Spiderman) directed the second version. He decided to make it as if it were a teen movie trailer instead of a music video. They filmed in Alexander Hamilton High School and Loyola High School in Los Angeles. Alexander Hamilton has been used as a filming location for some episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Donnie Darko was filmed at Loyola High.
The concept of the video was that the band was the outcasts in high school that everybody picked on, and one day they decide to get revenge and go after the jocks with croquet mallets. They did scenes were all the “characters” were recapped like many trailers do before the credits. Mikey hijacks the intercom with an old-school tape deck, Frank jumps out of a locker to scare a girl, Ray eats a crayon to impress a girl, and Gerard is tackled while playing croquet, amongst other things. Brian had to get dressed up as the school mascot and get tackled by the band as part of their revenge. There is also a scene in which people are dancing in the library, which is homage to The Fisher King, (Robin Williams and Amanda Plummer meet during a huge waltz in the middle of Grand Central Terminal).
These scenes were intercut with shots of the band rehearsing in a garage. Because Bob had only just joined the band, he is not included in any of the scenes in high school, and is only seen when he is playing the drums in the garage. The video begins with a rating (“R for Revenge”) and fake production company animation of the Demolition Lovers. At the end of the video, credits are shown movie trailer-style. Bob is not included in these either, and Frank’s surname is misspelt as “Lero”.
No comments:
Post a Comment