Making a Music Video
Kim has always had and still has a passion for music. From singing and dancing in the girl’s room in Kindergarten to studying theater at Indiana University to doing the Broadway musical roadshow circuit to playing cabaret to being Board President of Singnasium, Kim is all about music. She is constantly taking classes at Singnasium. Here favorites have been jazz singing and scatting with Gabrielle Stravelli. She is currently taking a class called The Arrangement Experience with Lennie Watts (her cabaret guru) and Michael Holland. The class project for all students is to produce a music video that is an arrangement mash-up of a classic American songbook song and a 1980’s pop song. The exercise is about arranging, but it very quickly has become one about singing the arrangement and about all the production aspects of making a music video.
It so happens that we have two family members that are in the business of producing video content. There is my youngest son, Thomas, who is social media content manager for Shake Shack. He made his mark at Shake Shack by creating Tic Toc video content. He is a musically-inclined young man who sang a capella in college and played drums in a band in high school. He is very keen on video production and is even producing his own GoFundMe-financed original short play. Then there is Kim’s nephew Josh, who she is particularly close to. Josh has worked in the film and TV production business since he lived with us in the South Street Seaport. He started with day work as a production assistant doing whatever a PA does and has worked his way up over the past dozen years to being a line producer for Anthony Bourdain and now a supervising producer for a number of different projects in process. Josh is also very musically-oriented with guitar strumming a popular pastime with him and his brother.
Kim was given the assignment to do an arrangement mash-up of Cole Porter’s Dream Dancing, written in 1941 for a Fred Astaire movie, and Billy Idol’s 1980 New Wave song Dancing With Myself. She talked the project over with nephew Josh and got into conceptualizing a music video for the ages.
While short films based on music have been around since the 1920’s, they really came into their own in the 1980’s, which, given the nature of this assignment, seems all too appropriate. The instrument of their rise to prominence was a new cable TV station called MTV, something which has now become almost mainstream rather than its radical beginnings in 1981. I had a strange interaction with MTV back in 1989. I was running the Global Derivatives business at Bankers Trust having just come off of a four year stint creating and running the Emerging Markets Division (being responsible for all the non-developed markets of the world for the bank). I was in London on the trading desk with my team there when I suddenly had an E.F. Hutton moment when someone yelled that there was a call from Robert Maxwell for me. The floor went momentarily silent. Bob Maxwell was on the phone for me telling me that he had met with my Chairman and had been recommended by him to me. He asked me to come over to his office at Maxwell House (the real name of the cylindrical building). I called the Chairman’s office and was transferred to the EVP’s phone. He told me that our Chairman (Charlie) had told Maxwell that he should address his Argentine interests to me. The EVP was a very down-to-earth guy who agreed with me that Charlie had likely forgotten that I was now running Derivatives and that because Maxwell was a large man that he thought I should handle him. How’s that for rational management.
The bottom line was that I flew to Argentina with Maxwell and his team for three weeks of a company buying spree. Maxwell was a media mogul in those days and was very much a larger-than-life figure in more ways than one. One of the properties he owned in those days was Europe MTV. The team he brought over to Buenos Aires included the young American executive in charge of Europe MTV. It was a very weird three weeks that should probably be the topic of an entire book, but one thing that specifically came out of it was a friendship between that young executive from Europe MTV and me. His life and his professional focus was so different from mine at the time that we found each other interesting to hang around with.
Whenever I went to London, which was every few weeks, he and I would find a reason to get together and have a few laughs at the expense of Captain Bob, as we all called Bob Maxwell. He used to give me tapes of all the latest greatest music videos, which I would regift to someone or other. One time he invited me to Wembley Stadium where he was entertaining people in the Harvey Goldstein box (Harvey was the show’s impresario). When I walked in he introduced me to the head of Paramount Pictures and to Prince and his manager, saying I was the world’s leading Merchant Banker. It was my moment in the music video world.
So, back to Kim and her music video. She invited Josh and his professional cameraman to spend Saturday with us at the house and shoot the video for her. Josh and she had scripted the whole video. Since I don’t know either song, I didn’t get into understanding where exactly where she was going with the video. What I knew was that there was a dream sequence and she had a full-on 80’s new wave outfit complete with make-up, a frizzy blonde wig and a pink taffeta tutu. There was a scene to shoot down in the play area and another in the “desert” across the street. Lennie (who has been here on vacation) played a mailman and one other role. I was cast in two roles as well. But both roles involved only my right hand and forearm. Several scenes were me as a plunked-out biker. My hand was adorned with Sharpie tattoos of a spiderweb, a skull and cross-bones, the work PUNK across the knuckles and an Oxnard Goth rune. I put some rings and a steel bracelet on to complete the costuming. There was a dance scene and a scene driving away with Kim in her tutu on my motorcycle. Then the other role required me to scrub the tattoos off my hand (luckily they came off with s good brush scrubbing), but on a white shirt and tuxedo jacket and invite Kim (now dressed in a red gown fully made up as her beautiful self) to dance and then twirl her. The final scene was us in bed, still with the viewer only seeing my hand and forearm no in my pajamas.
Even though I don’t know the songs and the music video script, I can pretty much put it all together and imagine the way the storyline will go. While I was driving down our driveway with Kim in her tutu and wig, we naturally ran into a neighbor. All I could say was “don’t ask”. I imagine it looked like a professional shoot to the casual observer since there were lights and a full filming crew. I am now anxiously awaiting the final cut of this music video. I know it will only be 3-4 minutes long and I know my part is just a prop of sorts, , but I am still looking forward to seeing it. I think its fair to say that my new moment in the music video world will be the making of Kim’s music video. There is something to be said for the humility of enablement.