If you are compiling a list of music video performances that look like they were really uncomfortable to shoot, I've got a great entry for you. It's the tune that I think is one of the most fondly-remembered singles of the late 1990s by rock fans - 1998's "Inside Out" by Eve 6, directed by Scott Sampler, and it's today's Music Video Relapse.
The first ten seconds introduces us to a central concept in this video - Max Collins of Eve 6 is sitting in a restaurant at a table by a window, and just getting pounded with water from above. I mean, relentless water. The concept is supposed to evoke him being rained on indoors, but all I can think of "why is he subjecting himself to this. He looks really uncomfortable".
In this restaurant, a woman in making Collins smoothies of some sort, a reference to the "wanna put my tender / heart in a blender" line in the song. Collins dutifully takes them and consumes them. The water is still pouring. People come and laugh at him from the outside. A fancy boy stares at him, mockingly. He's not having a good time.
You know who is having a good time, though? The "ugly sad" people who are protrayed as the only happy people in the video. They're only in there for a second, but it's an interesting little image. Max Collins is say that these happy people who are having fun on a nice day are super sad, but you're the one sitting drinking smoothies in the rain indoors while people laugh at you, Max.
Interspersed are performance scenes, and scenes of a lady with pigtails and roller blades rocking one of those short sleeved shirts that were so popular in the late 1990s and very early 2000s. I searched for what those are called for close to three minutes and then gave up. You know what I'm talking about.
The amazing thing about this video is the Max Collins performances while he is getting pelted by water from above. It genuinely looks like he is trying very hard to get an emotional performance in, but is constantly just thining "fuck what they fuck all this fucking water. Fuck." I can't imagine what that must have been like, but Max gets it done, even finding the energy to literally blow away his lady friend when he tells her he's done with her and her roller-blading.
I'm not saying the water thing didn't work - it's definitely the aspect of the video that I remember the most - it's that I feel really bad for the character Collins is portraying here. Only Thom Yorke really knows how he feels.
