Foo Fighters - Everlong
by Tina Schröder
This analysis refers to the music video made by Michel
Gondry for the Foo Fighters song “Everlong” from their album “The color and the
shape” released in 1997. It is supposed to present the content of the video,
look for a deeper meaning and a possible connection between the lyrics and the
video.
The intro of the song is used to introduce the two
main characters of the video. The camera wanders into a house where a happy
couple is shown on photos hanging on the wall. The camera continuous wandering
into the bedroom and the couple is shown in bed, sleeping. Here the Foo
Fighters are presenting their humorous side right away. Dave Grohl, the lead
singer and guitarist, plays the husband, while Taylor Hawkins, the drummer of
the band, is all dressed up as the wife. Also the major theme of the video is
presented in this first scene: the dream.
Michel Gondry, the director of the video, is known to
be fascinated by dreams. He made a whole film about this topic called “La
science des rêves”. Closer connections to this film are going to be shown later
in this analysis.
In the “Everlong” video Michel Gondry sets up two
different dreams that melt into one at the end. First Dave Grohl dreams about
being at a party all dressed up as a punk. Two rascals, played by the other two
band members Nate Mendel and Pat Smear, are offending his woman, so he grows a
huge hand to beat them away. The huge hand is based on a childhood memory of
Michel Gondry. When he was a child he used to have nightmares about hands that
were growing huge. Other surreal elements that are presented in Dave Grohls
dream are very low ceilings and bricked windows.
At the same time his wife dreams that she is alone in
a cabin in a forest. Two rascals, again the other two band members, try to
break into the house to kill her while her husband is in the forest looking for
firewood. This part of the video is a parody of the cult horror film “Evil
Dead” where a group of friends spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods and
get attacked by zombies.
In the “Everlong” video the wife tries to keep the
rascals outside but when she notices that she cannot handle the situation alone,
she takes the telephone and calls her husband in reality.
This is the melting point of the whole video. This is
the connection between two dreams, and about dream and reality. The husband is
dreaming his dream when he suddenly hears a telephone ring. The telephone rings
in reality but he does not wake up right away to notice that. For him the telephone
is ringing in his dream. Since he does not know that he is dreaming, for him
the dream is reality. He and his wife enter a room where they find the
telephone which is huge and making a very loud noise. He tries to pick up but
the receiver is too heavy. Suddenly he wakes up and notices that he was
sleeping and that the telephone is ringing in reality. He picks up and his wife
asks him for help out of her dream. He tries to wake her up but it does not
work, so he forces himself to fall asleep. But he does not enter in her dream
right away, he first goes back to his dream at the party. Then he wakes up in
his dream but not into reality, he just goes from his dream to her dream. This
is very interesting because that implies that we have different stages and
phases of dreams, like the existence of a dream in a dream. The video was made
in 1997 and years later in 2010, the movie “Inception” by Christopher Nolan
works with that exact same concept.
Dave Grohl runs to the cabin, grows a huge hand again
and saves his wife. They throw the two rascals into the lake. In the final
scene the couple is in their bedroom, still sleeping in bed. The two rascals
are there and magically transform into the band members that they usually are.
They are simply pulling off their faces and clothes and transform to their real
life personalities. So does Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins. The Band is now
performing in the bedroom of the couple. There is total confusion between dream
and reality and that is also the end of the video.
Gondry emphasizes the difference between dream and
reality with different methods. Reality id shown in black and white while the
dream is shown in color. He also uses water running down the screen to
crossfade between dream and reality. At the end of the video there are fast
cuts between scenes in black and white and scenes in reality. This emphasizes
the total confusion between dream and reality.
There are some connections between the “Everlong”
music video and Gondry’s Film “La science des rêves”. First of all, both have
the major theme in common: the dream. In both of his works Gondry processes
experiences he made in his own personal dreams. He once said that when he was a
child he often had nightmares about his hands growing huge. He used this
incident in both works, but in a positive way. In “Evelong” and in “La science
des rêves” the protagonists use their huge hands to protect themselves or the
ones they love. In one of the last fighting scenes in “Everlong” Dave Grohl
grows a huge hand again, even if he has some nunchucks, which he knows to use
very well in the video. But this also makes part of the humerous side of the
video. Grohl already has a useful weapon in his hands which he could use to
defend his girlfriend against the rascals. He also demonstrates how good he is
in using those nunchucks, but then he throws them away and grows a huge hand
instead to fight with. This reinforces the comedy effect that the video has in
many ways.
Another similarity of the film and the music video is
that things you do in your dream can affect your life in reality at the same
time. When Grohl and Hawkins fight in the dream, they are also shown moving in
bed during their sleep. They are performing fighting gestures with their hands
and arms while they are asleep. This is a real phenomenon of sleeping people
and animals. Even dogs tend to move their legs and make running movements while
they are asleep. Sometimes they even bark or growl. In “La science des rêves”
the protagonists falls asleep while taking a bath. He dreams about bringing
over a letter to his neighbor. When he wakes up, he notices wet footprints on
the floor leading to his neighbor’s apartment and he becomes aware that he
actually delivered the letter in his sleep involuntarily.
The “wife” in the music video dreams about being
strangled, but in reality it is her husband trying desperately to wake her up
so that she can escape from her nightmare. This scene also evokes connections
to another famous horror movie: the nightmare on elm street series. The people
who are awake want to help the people who are asleep, but it is impossible to
wake them up. So instead of waking her up the husband forces himself to fall
back asleep to help his wife in her dream. This is the supernatural side of the
video. Here it is suggested that dreams are more than just something our brain
makes up, that they have a real connection to reality. But it could also mean
that we often do not know if we are dreaming or if we are awake. Another
commonality between “La science des rêves” and “Everlong”: the confusion
between dream and reality. In both works the viewer cannot tell for sure what
is dream and what is reality, especially at the end of the video/movie.
The “Everlong” video is also a very good
representative for Gondry’s special delicacy, and so is “La science des rêves”.
They both show the special esthetics Gondry is famous for and which is shown in
most of his video clips. Gondry is not a big fan of modern technologies. Nowadays,
with Photoshop and other digital programs to work films and photos, almost
everything is possible. Everything can look really real and authentic, even if
it seems to be impossible. Gondry usually does not use these kinds of special
effects. He is famous for using special effects, but he prefers the “handmade”
kind of special effects. He rather uses clouds made out of real cotton, if he
wants clouds to appear in a room, instead of using a computer program to make
it look like real clouds. This is an interesting approach, since the viewer
would know in both cases that the clouds cannot be real because clouds usually
never appear in closed rooms. So Gondry does not even try to make the clouds
look “real”, he just presents the idea of having clouds in a room. This is very
special and became the typical and unique Gondry style, which many tried to
copy afterwards. These “handmade” special effects seem to be “low budget”, but
they are actually so much more work than just using modern technology. But it
is not that Gondry never uses modern technology, sometimes he mixes both
techniques to get the results he wants.
The only moment where Gondry uses modern digital
technology is at the end of the clip, when the two rascals come to the bedroom
of the couple. First they pull off their faces and then they pull off the rest
of their bodies, and underneath we can see the real band members of the Foo
Fighters with their instruments starting to play. This is not a handmade
special effect, but it still fits into the rest of the video. At this point we
have the connection and/or confusion
between dream and reality, where everything is possible.
This puerile humor, or “childlike creativity and an
out-of-control imagination”[1]
like one might call it, is not only typical for Gondry, but also for the Foo
Fighters. And that is why they make such a great match together. and it might
also be part of the success of the “Everlong” video. The Foo Fighters are known
to have very funny and unique videos, even those one not directed by Gondry.
“Everlong” fits very well into that esthetic. The wig of the wife, the way the
costumes are chosen, the exaggerated gestures of the protagonists, everything
seems to be a parody which makes it really funny to watch.
The last point to talk about is the connection between
the lyrics of the song and the music video: there is none. The lyrics tell
about a broken love while the video has “the dream” as a major theme. The only
possible connection could be that it is also a couple in a relationship being
shown in the video. So the video and the lyrics both have the theme
“relationship” in common. But in the lyrics of the song the relationship is
already over and Grohl is singing about his grief, while in the video we have a
happy ending where the couple manages to overcome the evil dangers in their
dream together.