Regular television just kills writing productivity, so I flipped over to the XM stations as I continued to massage this outline for the graphic novel. I’m a chronic channel hopper, even on the radio, so every so often I’d flip around to find something worth listening to. At one point I stumbled across Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys”.
It instantly put me in mind of the Mad Max-like video. Anyone else remember this thing?
When I was a kid, I thought this video was the shit. Post-apocalyptic setting, a rough sound, bad-ass lyrics, fire and explosions… it had it all. I know better now, of course, but at the time I was wondering when they’d strap me to a windmill so I could sing defiantly as they dunked me in the water.
In fact, it’s that ridiculous windmill that I remembered the moment the song came on. I was so struck by its stupidity that I looked up the video to make sure it wasn’t just some corruption of the video by my memory. I dragged the slider through the YouTube video and sure enough, there’s Simon Le Bon strapped to one blade of a windmill that dipped his head into a pool of water every time it reached its lowest point.
Then it hit me: they weren’t just trying to make it look cool, they were trying to drown the bastard!
“Climb on, Simon. No, really, it’s perfectly safe. We promise!” Then, a couple hours later: “I knew we should have made it go deeper. Now I guess we need to finish this damn thing. We’ll just make it as ridiculous as possible so nobody will watch it. That’ll work, right?”
Oops.
on May 30th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Don’t forget the brief parading of the victor/survivor past the line of boys bent in supplication, during which one of them breaks training in order to touch the hem of the victor/survivor.
That was rebellious… and I suspect in the darker context of the post-apocalyptic future we were watching, earned the disobedient “wild boy” either a few hours on the dunking windmill, or a session of boot cleaning by the pretty-pretty atheist overlords who caused this evil/perverted/sick/tasty future to occur with their godless ways.
Or is that me projecting too much into the video?
In answer to the question… yes I remember the video.