With the massive publicity surrounding the end of Breaking Bad and the announcement of the spin off Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk is becoming a household name really fast. He of course played Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad, (a character without which I don't think the show could have reached the heights it did), but Bob Odenkirk has been part of amazing projects for many years now, most famous of which is probably Mr. Show. He also has a new IFC series he's producing called The Birthday Boys, which may be my favorite title of anything ever.
Odenkirk also directed a music video in 2008 for a band called Rogue Wave. The song was "Chicago x 12" - let's take a look!
The video starts off in "Bobby O Studios" where Odenkirk is pitching Rogue Wave a video with a method I'm pretty sure has not been tried before - creating a demo of the video that consists of cardboard cut outs of the band doing what they'd be doing in the real video. Sidenote: if any directors have actually tried this, please get in contact with us.
The title of the demo has the odd name of "Lost in Reseda", and the video features the cardboard band members in and around the Reseda area of Los Angeles. It's soon becomes clear that Odenkirk heard the song and assumed the lyrics were "no one comes to Reseda" when they are, in fact, singing "no one comes to see us". The second half of the video is Odenkirk's on-the-spot idea for a second video, with the band playing to a group of empty chairs on a white cyc and Odenkirk dressed in a full body green screen suit so he can be in the shot and "no one can see [him]".
This music video really needs to be viewed twice, because during the first viewing I had no idea why the band was posing near Reseda landmarks until the joke reveal, and on the second viewing, hearing the chorus over the ridiculous shots of the band in front of the "Reseda Village" sign and knowing what is going on made it much more hilarious to me. I lose it every time Odenkirk says "you guys will be completely alone in Reseda!"
This video is also interesting for the fact that there is a fair amount of talking during the song, and most of it is done via sub titles instead of bringing down the music and adding in the diagetic sound. It's obviously done so you can hear the music, but we miss a lot of Odenkirk's delivery by completely cutting out the sound for those lines.
And if it's any indication of how much the role of Saul Goodman defines Odenkirk's career at the moment, a YouTube comment writer on this video said it best - "Need a music video for your band? Better Call? Saul!"
