Who Shot It: Harris Savides. Savides was the last great cinematographer of the 1970s, with the fact that he became a cinematographer in the 1990s being of only moderate interest at best. He’s stolen tricks from only the best cinematographers of the 70s (that includes Gordon Willis, Nestor Almendros, Vilmos Zsigmond, and Conrad Hall), and used them to achieve interesting new results. He started out shooting music videos, a lot of them. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that if you were to name any classic music video from the 90s, he shot it. Lemme give you some of videos he worked on; “Closer”, “Criminal”, “Everybody Hurts”, “Scream”, the Rolling Stones’ “Like a Rolling Stone”. That’s a damn good collection of videos right there. He won three (3) MTV Video Music Awards in his lifetime. He branched out into feature films in 1996, shooting the likes of Zodiac, Birth, Whatever Works, The Game, Gus Van Sant’s Death Trilogy, Milk, The Yards, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, Somewhere, and American Gangster. He was nominated for zero (0) Academy Awards in his lifetime. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2012 of brain cancer, with his final project being Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring.

Who Directed It: Mark Romanek. In the pantheon of music video directors, Romanek has to be up there, maybe even in the same tier as Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. You know all those videos I mentioned that Harris Savides shot? Romanek, of those, directed “Closer”, “Criminal”, and “Scream”. He also directed the videos for Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way”, Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut”, Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”, Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”, and, uh, Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off”. He’s also branched out into film, directing the late Robin Williams and getting possibly his best performance in One Hour Photo, and adapting the classic novel Never Let Me Go for the screen (he’s about to direct a prequel to The Shining, an awful idea that could conceivably work if they just let Romanek go wild with the imagery). Speaking of wild imagery…

What Do You Mean, Song?: Madonna’s “Bedtime Story” comes from her album of almost the same name, Bedtime Stories. This album is not particularly remembered, positively or negatively, by all but the most devoted Madonna fan. I have only heard this song from the album, and it’s pretty good. It was co-written by Bjork. Okay, that’s the end of this segment.

The Story Behind the Video of the Song: Madonna originally contacted Romanek (they worked together on her video for “Rain”) to direct a video for her song “Bad Girl” (the job ultimately went to David Fincher). When he met with her, he noticed that she had many surrealist paintings on the walls. He knew doing a video like those paintings wouldn’t work for that song, but he mentally stored the idea away. When she contacted him about this song, he knew what he wanted to do for it.

Screw That, Let’s Talk Pretty Pictures: I realize this is complete hyperbole, and it may not stand up to criticism, but it’s what I think at this moment; “Bedtime Story” is the most gorgeous music video ever shot. You know the cliche in calling a movie or a video “painterly”? That compliment frequently borders of meaningless, but damned if it doesn’t fit the bill here. You could frame and hang every shot in this video on your wall, call it a lost painting, and no one would bat an eye. I considered making this review entirely screenshots, because words are useless (exact lyrics from the song) when describing how goddamn beautiful this video is, you gotta see it for yourself. I mean, if you aren’t convinced by the screenshots, I don’t know what to tell you.

Stray Observations:

– For the video, Romanek and Savides researched surrealist paintings (duh), but primarily the works of female surrealist painters. You can probably tell the female influences from images like this one.

– If you count this as a Bjork song, then Bjork has made appearances in all but two of the Directors’s Label DVDs.

– Here’s the video for yourself, just watch the damn thing.

Here Are Some More Screenshots Just For the Hell of it