Sound And Vision: The Big Joseph Kahn Interview, Part One

Joseph Kahn is one of the big music video directors of the nineties and early two thousands. He was present with his new monster movie Ick at the Film Festival of Rotterdam. ScreenAnarchists Ard Vijn and Theodoor Steen had the chance to talk to him about music videos, his movie work, his formative years, how rock music died, and working with Taylor Swift, in this first part of a two-part juggernaut interview. We started the interview by watching his new music video for All American Rejects, which will be referenced later in the interview, but let's pick up where the conversation started properly.

(Editor's note: the interviewer is Theodoor unless mentioned differently.)

Joseph: Have you seen the movie yet?

Yeah, we both saw it on Monday. And we were there for the Q&A. In several questions we will refer to the Q&A. As for Ick, I really liked it.

Ard: So Theodoor once had to write an article about you or wanted to write an article about you. And then I always like to embarrass him in interviews. So he actually watched 200 of your videos...

All of them.... Or at least, what I could find. So what's on Wikipedia and what is available online on Youtube.

So, yeah. I've actually done like 500. There's like 300 missing, yes. You can't even find them.

The digital archiving of music videos and information archiving of music videos is especially bad. That's why I started this series writing about music video directors and film directors who make music videos because it's sorely needed.

Yeah, I used to actually have a lot of the videos that are missing, but then my hard drive went away....I don't even know where they are. So they're missing, like they're just completely gone.

Oh my god. That's horrible. I tend to research a lot on the Internet for
my articles. And I know that there are a lot of directors who make music videos and there's no information about it online. Or if there are music videos they have directed, they are only available in very poor quality on the Internet. And especially with you, with your earlier music videos, I think there are only bootleg copies available online on YouTube.

There was a great time when MTV was putting our names on it like, 'it's this and this director', and then when the media switched to YouTube, that stopped. That's why I had to start putting my name in front of the video, just so people know I directed it. Because it's power for people to know that there's a guy that's doing all these videos. But when you're anonymous, it might as well be your work doesn't exist, you know?

Still. I think you have a very signature style, but your style evolved in the early stages.You start with low budget hip hop videos and then the new Jack Swing, the r&b revival, and then you become thé MTV-director. Can you tell me how you see your own evolution in style and when you found your own voice as a director?

For the videos, I think I'm of the 1st generation that actually processed music videos as its own art form. You know, I didn't see it as being like "a baby sister". The filmmaking in music videos I felt was a complete art form in and of itself because the first time I heard rock'n'roll music was through a music video. Joan Jett's I love rock'n'roll. I didn't even know rock'n'roll, at least the modern version of it. I've heard Elvis and I heard like, I heard like a Fats Domino song...I guess he's not rock'n'roll. But to actually hear rock? It was through music videos. So that's the way I processed and I've always absorbed that information. Now I think that's pretty much standard for everyone that's ever growing up. Like whenever you hear a song, you're expecting to see a music video or some sort of visual. But that was the first one. So I always took it as its own thing and I always studied it. I took it very seriously in terms of trying to break apart the language of music videos. And I remember when I went to NYU film school at that time, it was 1990, they all dismissed it. I went there to actually become a music video filmmaker and they would dismiss it and say that's not film making. Films have to be two hours long. You know, that sort of thing.

But still, I feel like you, you really pushed the genre to to next level. And so where where did you think you had the moment where you thought: 'This is my first Joseph Kahn style video.' Is there one video or are there several?

That's a very good question. And I will be honest with you, I always felt like I was making Joseph Kahn videos from the start, from the very beginning. I mean, you always start in the very early days by copying. I think all artists start trying copy other things you've seen before. For me it was David Fincher. Like I remember, we were trying to track music videos down before they had names to them. So people like David Fincher, Dominic Sena, you know, even David Lynch was doing videos back then. And I tried to break apart who did what video. And that was part of the education, trying to identify styles for directors that did not even have their names on the music video. At that point, there was no wide access to the internet either. So you really had to really sort of study and try to figure out what the actual thought process of each particular shot was. And that was the way I did it. And by the time I started making music videos I had already built up a language of things I identified from different directors. And I only tried to use the best parts for myself.

So which directors do you see as inspirations?

I loved Dominic Sena. I loved David Fincher most, most of all. Then in the early 90s, right when I started making music videos professionally in 1990, I wasn't yet in Hollywood doing it. So there's these other directors that were already making it big like Spike Jonze and Mark Romanek. And I love those guys. I was actually weirdly a contemporary of them. I just didn't break through until they had already made it, you know? And then I started making these videos professionally, like for good. Like I had no other career but being a director since 1993, you know? So that's a long time.

That's quite a long time.

But but I've been studying videos since the 80s, so all those contemporary guys and I, there are a lot of different directors out there with different styles, like Matt Mahurin and Sam Bayer.

Sam Bayer was more 'the grunge guy', right?

Well, they were all doing those grunge videos at that time or Nick Egan back then or oh, you know who was really great... Godley & Creme, you know. Jeff Stein was amazing. He did all The Cars videos. I loved all of those. I even loved the stuff that the film directors were doing, like John Landis with Thriller and Tobe Hooper with his Billy Idol video.

Dancing with Myself.

Yeah, I love those videos. And I remember being obsessed with them like, on Friday night in America, that's before MTV actually became a thing, they had a thing called Friday night videos and they would play them at night. I would wait as a little boy and they would simulcast it. All you had was your little TV....But then they would play the song on the radio on FM. And you would just turn on your FM station and watch the thing at the same time on your TV, so you could get stereo sound.

Wow!

And it was very exciting, you know?

Ard: That's amazing.

And it was like every weekend you would just wonder what type of beautiful world they would create with these videos, you know? And yeah, I was obsessed. And I was obsessed with '80s pop and Michael Jackson and Madonna. Those summers of like the early '80s, I lived in Texas and these hot, hot summers. And I was like a little 13 year old boy and these songs about sex were playing. And there's these beautiful girls that were untouchable and like you'd hear this Prince track and you'd see him in a shirt dancing sexy and trying to woo women. And, and I'd be at the at the pool and they'd play this song and there were these girls in bikinis. It was just an incredibly formative experience, as a kid, fusing those visuals and music and my own experiences. And it was also the music was positive, weirdly enough, right? It wasn't like today where every song is very depressing.They don't even do love songs anymore. It's all arguments about, "you left me and I hate you and I should have never dated you." That was not what was going on. It was "I will do anything for you."

Do you try to bring that positivity back to your own music videos? Because I think you have a very positive, colorful pop culture style.

Yeah. I'm generally an optimist. I consider myself a cynical optimist. I think the world is....[he breathes in]. That's why I think I married a Dutch woman, because there's a practicality in Dutch culture. And, you know, I'm not just a fool running around not seeing the reality of the world, but ultimately I have a positive perception of the world itself. So I think that that is the one thing that people find a very hard thing to grasp about my work. I am positive, but I'm also cynical, you know?

I think you walk a very interesting line between being satirical but still trying to see the positive in people in some ways.

Ard: Heartfelt.

Heartfelt. Yeah. And I I think that's the interesting thing about films like Detention and Bodied. Detention in my mind is one of the greatest films about feeling like a teenager, like the world is going to end. Everything is like the end of the world for a teenager. And I think you really nailed it with that film.

Thank you.Yeah, I mean, Detention, it was an interesting thing in that I think when I made it, I knew that I was making a simulation of the teenage experience. And I think most people are interested when they make movies in "what's the point", you know? But what's the point of being a teenager? You don't need an answer, you know? You need an experience, and everybody takes different things out of going through life. You can have a positive or you can have a negative experience. You can do whatever. But for me, that was not the point.The point was, what does it FEEL like to be a teenager? That's the point of the movie.

You really hit the nail on the head there.

Thank you.

I wanted to talk about Ick for a moment because in the 90s, and early 2000's you established the look of the music video industry basically together with several other directors. With Detention and Bodied you commented on current day events like incels and cancel culture. But with Ick, I feel you're kind of commenting on ageing and the idea of not being able to keep up with current times through the character of Hank. Is that the feeling you share with this character, or is that something you're interested in?

Oh yes, this is a film that is different. Like it's funny.....People would think it's like Detention, but it's taking a completely different perspective. Detention is inside out. Ick is outside in. This is the perspective of a millennial.This is what happens when you stick around a little too long in high school. And so it's funny, like some people see it as this celebration of millennial culture. And I guess because you survive as a millennial, that's a celebration in and off itself.But at the same time, it is another experience of what it's like to be older. To suddenly shift. You know, one thing that a teenager does not do is have a child for the most part. And this is something that our main character goes through while he's still trying to retain his youth, he's still stuck in the 2000s listening to the same music. And the music plays differently now, then it was playing in the beginning of the film. In the opening scene those songs are a contemporary experience. And then 20 years later, where the rest of Ick takes place, these are retro classic songs. The entire point of the nostalgia is the point of the movie.

I also think it's a comment on nostalgia being kind of toxic in some ways and something that that can poison you. The Ick stands for several things including that.

Yeah. When I make these movies, I try not to be judgmental on a certain level.
I try to put you in the perspective of the character and it's also what I do in music videos. What I try to do when I do a music video is I try to tell it from someone's point of view. You know, you don't have to agree with that point of view, but you have to actually experience that point of view. So when Hank is in high school and these kids look uber woke, in Ick, I'm not saying the kids are woke. No, I'm saying that's his perception. Like the way they talk, that is an interpretation from his perspective. Of how he's a fish out of water, you know?

I'm so glad you're saying that because it was my take away. I put my review online recently and there is a take-away in there which was this exact comment. I'm happy "I got it".

Ha! The funny thing is, I think the movie is very interesting. I feel like 40 year olds and young people get it both. I've screened it in several film festivals now.The amazing thing is the movie works exactly as it should. 40 year olds love the movie because they get the experience and they feel the simulation of that nostalgia. And young kids before they get out of high school, they're just enjoying the visceral vibe of the movie. It weirdly enough, it's the 20 year olds that are in college that tend to hate the movie because they think I'm making fun of them. Because they see someone making fun of woke jokes. They're going, oh, they're picking on me again, but they're missing the context. No, it's not me. This is his perception, you know. If I hated the kids, there wouldn't be like 3 survivors at the end that you love, you know?

Exactly.

I clearly do not hate kids. This is his perception. This is the millennial perception.
And I'm sorry, but it exists, you know?

I love that answer.

Ard: I have two kids aged 20 and 16. I very much know what it feels like because sometimes I get the feeling I can't say anything anymore. "Don't you guys understand that I'm kidding?"

Well, but the thing is that I think when you're 16, you're still in high school, so you're not quite, you're not quite done putting the armor on. You're putting armor around you, but...

Ard: But you haven't fully done it, yet.

When you go to college and you're living by yourself, you have to build that armor, you have to build that identity and you have to build a perspective that is defensive in order to survive. So I feel like people in their 20s do not ever want to have any criticism. And only as you get older can you open up that armor again for survival reasons, you know?

Yeah. Now for something completely different. You stated before like in the Q&A, and just now in the interview, that music plays a big part in the origin of Ick. Can you expand on the metaphor in Ick as connected to the music?

Well, there's always an interpretation of music in the stuff I'm doing, because it's certainly my biggest obsession for my entire life. And I was noticing even when I was there at the time...I'll be very honest with you, when all that pop punk music came out, I never took it that seriously because the wrapping of it was ridiculous to me. This entire idea that this is punk music and what is punk? But it is supposed to be anti-capitalist anti-corporation, anti-selling out. But meanwhile, all these bands are trying to make as much money as possible, but just not admit they do it. Now it's different. Now everybody just admits that they're trying to make as much money as possible and they are a brand. But back then, putting your song next to a Coca-Cola commercial was considered the kiss of death. Death because we are punk, but you're a punk processed through a record company. For me that's like, you're not really punk, you know, you're just rock with maybe a few less production notes.

So I never quite took it seriously, although I appreciated certain pop punk. I always liked Blink182 and things like that. But I could see there was all these other bands that and remember, it almost felt like the death of rock. And like now rock'n'roll does not exist. And what really started that sort of descent of rock, if you really study it... I'm talking as a student of music and culture...It was pop punk is white music at that point. Because I entered the business at a time when there was black music and white music. Black music was the rap, you know, and white music was the rock, right?

And the white rock, if you watched it carefully, it went from Guns 'n' Roses and Mötley Crüe and all that to grunge, right? Which was kind of like anger rock, right? And depression rock... Then eventually they still wanted to make it poppy so they went into punk, but they kept all the sort of meaning of it, which is I'm anti world, I'm political, et cetera. And what they did in the process, they extracted all the sex. It became a completely desexualized style of music. Women could not dance to it. But hey would still want to see the sexy boys up on stage. But now you couldn't admit that was what you're watching, allright. So the sex got extracted from rock'n'roll in the 2000s, right? To the point that like, if you extract sex from music, there's no reason teens will ever fucking listen to your music. So what did they do? Where did all the sex go? To rap, you know, and it went extreme to the point where literally there's no metaphors anymore. They're literally rapping about their pussy. Lyrics are like "look at my pussy." In rock they would at least sort of make a metaphor about it. So anytime that you need any sort of sexuality, it all went away from rock music and that's why rap music took over.

And now if you look at it, there is no rock music at all. It's all rap, hip hop. Because that's where all the sex is. And teens, if you're 14 or 15, you're going to be discovering that. And someone has to talk about it, you know? So it died, right? It died. And now there is no rock'n'roll because rock is sex, you know? And so I was just, I've been thinking about that for quite a while. So I was wondering what happened to those guys in the 2000s that were listening to this music because they were listening to it. But now it seems like no 40 year old admits they listened to SUM41 or any of these bands. So the question is: who was listening to this stuff? Where are they, you know? On a certain level, I was like, OK, I need to make a movie about that guy. What is he doing now? What was he like then and where is he and how does he fit into the world today?

That completely makes sense, yeah. Especially with the montage at the beginning where you have, I think maybe 10 needle drops of pop punk music in there. You told in the Q&A after Ick that you had a lot of favors called in.

I called in a lot of favors, called people personally, called record labels. I have a great music supervisor. His name is Bud Carr, he did Bodied with me. He did the music for The Doors for Oliver Stone. And a lot of other Oliver Stone films like Natural Born Killers. So he's used to doing very complicated soundtracks, but he's one of my biggest assets. So we worked together on getting all these bands.

Oh amazing.
Your films and music videos have a definite everything-and-the-kitchen-sink quality to them while never feeling like too much. How do you know when to stop and adjust the pacing of the films?

Well, the version you saw on Monday was actually a slower version of this. You know, I slowed the movie down at least three to four minutes and that didn't mean I added any extra scenes. It just means I held certain shots longer. Literally, I did add a couple of insert shots here and there to make things breathe, but otherwise I literally just extended some shots out by two or three seconds. And the truth is, if I had my "true Joseph Kahn version" of it, it would be back to that three minute shorter version.It's shorter, you know, because I realize something and it is that that I'm trained to see images much faster.

People always think that we all see things or do things the same. It's not true. We're all individuals. So if you're running a lot every day and then someone that doesn't run tries to run with you, the pacing is going to be different. It's the same thing with visual filmmaking. I spent the last 20 years doing commercials and focus every day on really one or two frames making a difference in terms of a commercial, right. So in terms of how I process images and information, it is just much more quick and precise. It's only because my mind has been trained for that. So for me, the pacing of something, it's very hard for me to watch movies because movies are too slow. If it's a deliberate slow movie like The Godfather it's perfectly paced because at the same time there are multiple planes of action going on in a Godfather film. It's not just Marlon Brando sitting there, it's him stroking a cat, you know. So there's two things going on that I can watch back and forth. It's actually a weirdly fast-paced film even if it's a relatively slower paced movie, you know. But other movies are often too slow for me. So when I watch a movie like Ick during the making of it, I tend to push it to my comfort level and then I have to find out that I have to retract it from that level so that more humans can enjoy it too.

And does it work the same with music videos or do you approach films and music videos very differently?

With a music video you understand that the audience is going to watch it multiple times. So the more dense you make it, the more rewarding it is. Because you can watch a music video of mine multiple times and then you can get something out of each time. You can make more connections and more sort of mathematics that I've added in it. I hope people can watch my movies multiple times too. But I know that a lot of people are just going to watch them once. And and so there's going to be, there's a calculation made at least to this style of filmmaking that I'm bringing to it. I know I'm going to lose a chunk of the audience. I know that it's going to be too fast for some people. And when it's too fast, they don't go "I'm too slow". They go, "he paced it wrong."

It's your fault.

And it IS my fault. But I purposefully say it's my fault. I apologize for those that can't keep up, but I didn't make it for you, you know? At some point somebody has to make the movie that's faster paced for the audience that can keep up. For the ones that can keep up, I think it'll be a nice reward for them.But the ones that can't, and it's unfortunate, but at some point, you know, do all songs have to be slow songs? Is there any room for thrash metal? Is there any room for high tempo music or dance music? No one's making that. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be made. In fact, it should be made. And if I've got to be the one that does it at the expense of some of the audience, I'm sorry, but it has to be done.

You are really marching the beat of your own drum.

I am, and my BPM is much faster.

Ard: Do you ever envision yourself making a movie that would take three hours?

Yes, of course I know how to play the notes slower. Because I make so few movies, I have to make decisions like "what movie am I making"? Why am I making it and what's going to make me happy at this particular time? If there's ever a reason to make a three hour slow movie, yes, I can do it. But I don't have one right now that I go "I have to make that. I'm going to devote the next five years of my life to that." I have to make decisions. And right now, I just wanted to make this movie right now at that pace with this music with these scenes and these actors.

When making music videos...back to music videos, sorry because it's one of my favorite topics. We can also talk about Ick more of you want?

No, it's all good.

But when working with an artist, do you bring ideas to the table? Do they bring ideas to the table? Do you have full creative freedom? Or does it depend on the artist?

It depends on the artist. Part of my maturity as a filmmaker as I've gotten older, I know how to take other people's ideas and make them better. And that's the professionalism of being a professional music video director. As a spiritual filmmaker, I love doing my own ideas. In a perfect world, I would just like to call my shots. However, that last video for all American Rejects I just did. That was just me saying I want to do a thing about puppets. And they said that's awesome. "And I want to kill each one of you." And they're like, that's amazing. And they just let me do whatever I want, you know? So and that's a wonderful situation, but that only happens every once in a while. You know, Muse, let me do that with Knights of Cydonia. So you can tell every once in a while you'll see some bands that go "Joseph, just go wild." So I'll do the Chemical brothers, you know, "Get yourself high" or Muse, Knights of Cydonia or now the new video for All American Rejects. But then other times the assignment will be work with a 20 year old girl and she has some ideas about relationships.

Am I a 20 year old girl? No. Do I know anything about what a 20 year old girl feels about being abandoned by a boyfriend? No. So at that point I just have to talk to them as a film director, almost like a doctor. Like, "what's the symptom?" OK, these are the medicines of my filmmaking. I think I can fix your symptoms and give you the video that you want.

So a Taylor Swift, right? Like do I know anything about being her? Absolutely not. I know nothing about how to be Taylor Swift. But I've done eight videos with her. And so those are discussions and she has some very distinct ideas. And I'm just a doctor prescribing medication for the video. How to make it look good, you know?

I talked to a colleague of mine who is a really big Swifty, and she was saying there are a lot of Easter eggs in those music videos. So does Taylor Swift bring those Easter eggs in or do you?

I think in the beginning they were like a little bit here and there and she'd go, I want to have a locket like this or I want something like this. But towards the end, by the time we did that second album together, they were more deliberate. She would throw more things in there, but we would have discussions about them and I'd have to understand what each one of those were. But I think sometimes the audience adds more because they see one clue and then say everything is a clue, you know what I'm saying? So like for instance, a video might have five Easter eggs, but then they will see 30 of them. There is one video that's clearly full of Easter eggs and that's Look What You Made Me Do. That's a video completely made out of code on purpose. Like every scene is an Easter egg, everything is an Easter egg. That's the one that was deliberately the Easter egg video. But everything else, people tend to interpret it their own way and that's perfectly fine. And as an artist, you have to give them the space to do that...


And that concludes the first half of the interview! Below, you can see a few examples of Joseph Kahn's work as a music video director.

Check in tomorrow, for Part Two (linked here)!