Lights, Camera and...erm...sort of...Action?

March 13th – The pop video was a real fillip to the music industry, a shot in the arm for the debilitated corpse that was falling record sales, and when MTV took up this ready-made, advertising/promotional machine, the pop video, it was a win-win situation for both audio and visual outlets. Times had been tough but now things were looking up.

The music industry had recently managed to sort out another way to make cash with CD releases. With a clever marketing campaign and before we knew it we were all out buying the CD version of the vinyl recording we already had, and it was then but a small step for them to get us all buying de-luxe editions...enhanced recordings...bonus track compilations...previously unheard out-take recordings...guest singer recordings...post -recordings of pre-recordings of post-recorded records of previously unrecorded outtakes… 

Throughout this spending spree we bemoaned the fact that the CD sounded nothing like the vinyl recordings we already had but we kept on purchasing them just the same. Don’t like to state the obvious but, of course the CD sounded nothing like the vinyl recordings we already had…that’s because they were CD's (digital), NOT vinyl (analogue). But despite this clever ploy sales were flagging now and the artificially created high price of CD’s (in the UK in particular) weren’t helping either.

The pop video, ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ (by Bungles was it?) anyway, that video was the first one to be aired on MTV (there’s prophetical) given to MTV in a pre-packaged format; ready-made content for a ready-made visual output station. No outlay needed apart from the PRS rates the agents and copywriters demanded; it appealed to the young who had yet to develop a discretionary sense that would enable them to differentiate between articles of quality and  just summat to spend cash on (‘cos of course, I was always perfect so I knew exactly what was happening…but, everyone else? Ha!) So there it was; a ready-made output that only needed line rental and a playback machine…

It wasn't long before the pop video release was every bit as important as the actual record release. Timing of both was synchronised to gain maximum impact and with that came a commensurate rise in sales. Soon the movie directors got interested as it was an easy, less time-consuming way to make money in an industry (film) that was beginning to feel the pinch of TV austerity. OK, it has to be said that there were (and are) a number of seminal moments in the pop video genre that have stood out for their filmic/storytelling quality, but ethical messages and social teaching platforms were a secondary to the money to be made.

 “What has this to do with anything then, Peter; this potted history of nothingness?”
Well, I got to wondering what the pop gods of the day did BEFORE the pop video picked up the cash-cow ball and ran with it. Now there’s a bag of mixed metaphors but, semantics aside, if Elvis Presley was anything to go by, instead of the three-minute video the popsters of yesteryear made movies.

He made thirty-one, Mr. Presley; sometimes 3 (yes, three) per year. Now, a three-minute pop video takes about three days to shoot if it’s to remain a profitable venture capable of accruing its original expenditure. If we work out the process on a quid-pro-quo basis (you all know by now how my mathematical processes work when I’m costing things out…when it comes to budgets I liken myself to the accountant in Bob Newhart’s skit on the retirement speech; I quote:

“I've never been hard and fast in the job. I've always reckoned that as long as it was close, you know, a couple of bucks more or less, then…”

So, on a quid-pro-quo basis, to make an Elvis Presley movie with an average run-time of 100 minutes you’d have to reckon on the shooting time being no more than, say, 100 days; that’s three months @ three films a year… Doesn't leave a lot of loose time for plot development, story research and characterisation study, does it? Must have been frenetic, like cut-and-paste movie making; you know, cross out the word ‘dog’ and insert the word ‘goldfish’. Lack of socially savvy plot lines and high production values are neatly summed up by the fact that Col. Tom Parker, his guide and mentor (?) requested the appearance of a talking camel in the movie, ‘Harum-Scarum’. From that time on we can figure it wasn’t going to be a Kurosawa epic was it?

OK, not wishing to rub salt into an already opened laceration, see if you can guess the five Elvis Presley movies from the following, genuine, critiques of them:

1) ‘Lots of scenery and one tolerable song’

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‘A lifeless star vehicle shot on glamorous locations’

2) ‘Thin, even by Presley’s standards’

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‘A just tolerable musical’

3) ‘Well into his descent into celluloid oblivion, Presley tours a Europe that a mere puff of wind would have dislodged.’ 

4) ‘Turgid western with Presley wandering expressionlessly through a stock plot. All but unwatchable’

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‘A dismal western with a singing star playing straight. A bad experience’

5) ‘This is not exactly a feast of wit and erudition, but one of Presley’s better lightweight vehicles, thanks largely to the presence of Stella Stevens’

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‘Empty headed star vehicle for die-hard fans’

I gather in one of his movies, Mr. Presley was so disgusted with the stuff he had to sing in it that, after filming finished, he refused to put a foot on another film set for eight straight months. Now, I don’t want to offend but, given that he’d already recorded stuff like ‘Cryin’ in the Chapel’ and ‘Old Yeller’, can you imagine how bad that stuff he was asked to sing but refused to actually was?

Now you may think from the preceding that I have a downer on Mr. Presley; not true. I happen to think that anyone who had that much influence on my generation and its empowerment, who helped us see our way through the fog of obedience and showed us a route to the land of fucking over the power-brokers is alright in my book. No what I do have against him is the way he allowed the leeches, drug-pushers, pimps, shallow-hearted ne'er-do-well’s and yes-men to dilute his talent into a money-making property that still continues today with umpteen look-alikes that do nothing for the reputation he deserves.

Answers to the quiz tomorrow. Night-night all!