When the same director makes a new version of an already good music video, its best to add something special to make sure it stands out. In this case, the director is Pete Lee, the music video is The Magic Clap by The Coup, and the something special is Patton Oswalt lip-syncing the song in a suit. According to Pete, Patton is a big fan of the band and gives a genuinely excited and fun performance, all on one really comfortable looking couch We talked to Pete about the video, the intimidating powers of Pattons funniness, and getting love advice from Boots Riley.
Doug: You directed a video for this song at the end of last year, how did it come about that you would do a second?
Pete: The single that I was hired to direct, "The Magic Clap," caught lots of critical attention last year - from places like The Rolling Stones, Pitchfork, and AV Club - and it seemed like the momentum just kept building, albeit slowly. I know it's a legitimate radio hit in several countries in Europe, so I think the new video premiere is in conjunction with this new momentum.
Doug: How did Patton Oswalt get involved with the project?
Pete: Patton has been a long time fan of The Coup. Boots [Riley] is this magical creature who lives in a little house in Oakland, but also seems to have lots of fans who have lots of fans. When the label asked for a second music video, Boots was really busy with touring and wanted a video that would almost have a b-side feel. He just asked Patton to do something funny and Patton quickly agreed. I think in the beginning they were just thinking of some weird, silly thing with a webcam, but when I heard about this I kinda begged Boots to give me a shot at coming up with something. Maybe it was the fancy Hungarian Japanese food I fed him, but he relented. A month later I pulled my back muscle from trying to impress the crew by moving some equipment on a music video set. I was on my back for three days, and I got this idea to incorporate lyric miming with quick cutting. Boots and Patton bothed liked the idea so a week later we went at it.
Doug: What was behind putting him in a suit? That doesn't seem like his general attire, although I don't hang out much with him to know that.
Pete: Ha - I have no idea. I gave him no note regarding wardrobe. He said he was bringing a few different clothing options, and showed up in that suit at 6 am - an hour before call time. Nobody objected to it, so the suit stayed on. In fact, I never thought about the suit until just now.
Doug: Were his pantomimes planned, or did you more have him just do a bunch a takes with a bunch of props?
Pete: None of them were planned. I find myself very intimidated in the presence of professional funny people, and though I was expected to script every action, I largely didn't, because I wasn't sure what would be funny to him, and more importantly what would be funny by him. Boots and I drove down to LA together with my lovely art director Margaux Rust, who's been working on all of Ben Fee's latest and greatest hits. We had pen and paper out, ready to script things vowel by vowel, but never got past the first two lines. We ended up just talking about heartaches for like six hours. Boots has lots of good advice.
I know like zero people in LA, but a friend of a friend hooked us up with this downtown LA location. It was an office in a comedy studio named Hot House Comedy. Margaux and an intern, Richard, dug up a whole bunch of props, and we just went to town. One thing I made clear on set though, was that we shouldn't rely on props, and should only use them if they were funnier than Patton's poses. Some of the props were CG - like the framed photos of MLK and Coretta Scott King - Patton just held up two empty frames and the title artist, Cosmo, CGI'd the photos in. Our original idea was to break down that whole sentence, Mar-Tin-Eh-ver etc, but Patton protested and pointed out that we shouldn't come across as disrespectful to MLK. Margaux did a good job scouring the building for anything that might be remotely useful.
We didn't do a whole lot of takes though. Each shot lasts only five or six frames on average, so having him hold a pose for a second was like him giving us six takes. Once we got moving we didn't discuss the pantomimes very much, Patton was just on funny autopilot, only stopping for some suggestions here and there. Most of my suggestions weren't even that funny, but he would make them shine. Like his blink-and-you-miss-it impression of the Pillsbury Doughboy, and I might not even have been the one to come up with that idea, was way more adorable than it needed to be.
Doug: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate Patton's dance moves?
Pete: I think it's obvious that he's a 10, but I don't want him to read this and become complacent. So I'm gonna say 6 and see what happens. Like, imagine if Brad Pitt found out he was handsome at age 20, then maybe he wouldn't've tried so hard, and we wouldn't have World War Z, you know?
Doug: Does the couch hold any significance, or did it just provide an ideal location for the concept?
Pete: Originally I thought he'd be standing in front of a wall or something, but we saw the couch decided that he would sit on it for the chorus. I guess he got comfortable and we forgot to move it? He would take these 90-second naps between takes on that couch, so I think we were all pretty blessed by this couch.
