3: Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden

Some might say stuck on the edge of the horizon.

Does that sound, Gordon Larkin?

No, no, it's like on the edge of a black hole.

What's at the event horizon?

I'll cut it out so we all laugh.

Just everyone laugh.

Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far,

a podcast where a Scotsman, an Irishman and a Bulgarian review the most terrible,

silliest and weirdest as fuck music videos.

Hi, I'm Nelly.

Hello, I'm David.

Hello, I'm Neil.

Today, we will be discussing one of the most memorable 90s videos,

Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden.

Strap in because we're going to be sucked into a giant black hole.

Get it?

That was really bad. I loved it.

Not you, your delivery was fine, my cheesy writing.

Bad by design.

Black hole sun, won't you come?

Wash away the rain

Black hole sun, won't you come?

Won't you come?

Won't you come?

We have a bit of history with the director of this one,

Howard Greenhalgh.

Howard Greenhalgh.

He also directed Go West,

which was the first video we attempted to talk about

and utterly failed because it's a pretty much constant stream of nonsense.

And you never hear about this podcast ever again.

I'm determined we're going to redo it at some point.

Yeah, this is a similar one where just lots of random shit happens in quick succession

and you're not really quite sure what's going on.

Do you think Howard's sort of unique selling point was, you know,

he can do really high quality motion graphics and make things look...

High quality. Define high quality because that's not high quality.

Well, he can put you on any planet by the looks of things.

That's high quality to me.

I don't know.

My issue is that, okay, so I had a lot of free time last several days.

I watched through a lot of his videography.

It just genuinely feels like he had access to a computer or like people who can do stuff.

And he was like, okay, that's the reason why I'm going to search CGI in every single video I do.

Because that's high concept, isn't it?

Was it impressive at the time?

I can't really remember because it was around then.

You know those, you know where you can get like plugins for stuff now?

of plugins for after effects i feel like he stumbled across like a late 80s early 90s version

of these and thought shit i can make really hot like music videos make them like i do this world

these days it does look like someone had a bit too much fun in after effects but i don't know if

back in the day it was impressive i can't remember oh it kind of looks like look mom i've discovered

the warp tool yeah warp mouse i remember i actually remember it as a kid um when i first watched it

it was like it was really fucking creepy yeah which to understand that there was not the target

audience but it was still fucking creepy as a kid this is probably a good point to say if you haven't

seen this video go watch it on youtube we're trying something a bit different and not just going through

the whole thing as a summary because it's a pain in the ass and it's probably going to be totally

impossible for this video so just go watch it on youtube well i actually i i will elephant in the

corner and all that i mean it's a song that i've listened to many times my brother is a really big

sound garden fan and it's always been creepy to me but you know it's a song i know and i've listened

too and i think i played it many times in rock band or guitar hero whatever one it was in um and

i've only recently seen the video oh really i feel like i'm i'm getting my uh i don't know i feel like

i'm getting you know a glimpse into you know a history that i've not actually touched when i know

the song but i don't know the video i've never wanted to go see the video because i've never

really thought you know what i'm gonna search on youtube or black old sun and see see what happens

but my god what a fucking visual feast it was yeah it was ridiculous i don't know it's a video you

just need to keep watching because he just keeps on giving i don't know if i'm jumping the gun here

but i think as much as the visual effects look a bit cheesy today i think it still has the desired

effect i wasn't a huge sound garden fan but i was a huge audio slave fan so i guess i got there a bit

later maybe it's a good point to like point out in the video like none of the south gardens guys

actually had anything to do with the video.

Like it was all the director's idea completely.

It's probably a good thing

because if you look at all the other videos they did

were very much like, oh, we're a rock band.

We're going to look like a rock band

standing in the crowd playing music.

As much as I would be bashing the video later

because I would be.

It's still like conceptual about it.

Chris Cornell said he kind of just left

the actual direction of the video to the director,

obviously, and his role was, and I quote,

pretend to play and not look that excited about it.

I think they nailed, personally.

No, definitely.

I think their performance in it was definitely the odd thing,

or the odd one out.

It just felt really disconnected from the landscape,

dreamscape, whatever you want to call it,

that's going on in the background.

It actually felt like it was two videos put together.

Or maybe they're summoning the Black Hole

with their raw rock energy

to get rid of all these weird fuckers.

Do they get 16 again?

I can't remember.

I don't think they ever shown being 16.

and plot seconds it's like inception you know does it happen is it real is it a dream plus i mean for

a rock song and for the you know lead singer guitarist and whatnot to not look interested

it's quite a curious um bold move especially by the director i wonder what his uh his plan was to

that one um i felt like it might have just been you know talking your way into having total control

over to how to make this thing look the way you want it to look and making the band just there to

provide the you know the soundtrack the song oh it actually did read a couple of interviews and he

said in one of them that chris cornell specifically or just the band specifically said that they don't

want their faces digitally like changed manipulated and they said that i presume maybe that was the

original idea that they would be part of the like surreal dreamscape that's hilarious because i mean

every single shot of them they're warped they've been sort of weirdly yeah weirdly yeah weirdly i

it just looks like they're slightly distorted.

I didn't know that was intentional.

I guess they were trying to get them a bit more

in tone with the race as opposed to just

static images of them on green screen.

I think he said that the

opening scene, sorry, the video is supposed

to resemble the opening scene

of Blue Velvet, which completely

bi, but also it kind of means that he

completely misunderstood Blue Velvet.

I think that's one of my biggest problems with the video

is the warp, like the

CGI. I understand that it was

very of its time but the problem is that it's immediately dated now and it was dated by the end

of the 90s as well i mean it looks ugly it really does like yeah the cgi looks ugly but i don't know

what you would you make of the rest of the video is it well shot from your guys points of view i

really like the colors it definitely conveying the whole idea of a very 50s style neighborhood in the

states like steppard wives that's the vibe i was yeah which is good but i think that's my problem

with the like the warping because i don't know i kind of feel like it wasn't needed because you

got some amazing shots of all the actors both kids and adults who just before they got warped

they're like psychotic eyes and very unnatural smiles because they were still them and it felt

like it felt more off for me as opposed to the moment when they start getting warped it would be

creepy regardless of whether they actually warped anything i think about it and there's generally

quite a lot of weird shit going on like the fucking what looks like an actual alive fish getting

caught up i'm sure it was life it just didn't get caught up oh well it doesn't get caught but it's uh

it's not in the water so it's not happy and there's also an insect at one point which looks

alive as well so oh it's at the like the cockroach there is a scene for whoever hasn't seen the video

yet there is a scene where a couple of kids are holding a cockroach close to a uh like um magnifying

glass yeah magnifying glass things uh trying to set you some fire that's the vibe of the video we're

talking about today uh there's definitely a lot of high concept scenes like the family the kind of

watching static tv father is on his knees in front of the tv it's kind of vaguely sexual i don't want

to say i guess you could kind of argue a lot that's kind of my first metaphorical images sort

of situation crouching staring at a static tv like oh he's a slave to television blah blah but i don't

do you think that's what i was trying to say slave to tv no not really actually i know that i'm actually

saying one of the interviews he did say that it's just meant to be a like a surreal dreamscape which

it certainly is so i don't know if ever really meant to be a point to it particularly just kind

of reflect the lyrics and do some weird shit the same director directed a couple of other videos

that are very similar to this one like there's kunkanansi's lately video which is basically the

same one as this sounds a giant black hole son right but it's still like kind of as neil said

stepford wives aesthetic with like warped images and kind of off feeling the whole thing and then

there is nancy boy by placebo which also uses the warped images oh yeah it's all the same guy and

it's kind of like when you find when you realize this it's kind of like did that video actually have

any high concept or was it just this guy trying to force himself into the video scene as the guy

to use the cgi i guess this is stale i think i kind of feel that the four guys priests are the

religious people i think they're kind of meant to be like a metaphor of the four horsemen for them

they're they're all very different um and they're all they're all doing like specific things yeah

they're all freaky fuckers what do you think they're representing because you're right they're very

very different the conquest the famine plague and uh yeah i can't remember the other one there is a

plague of locusts okay yeah yeah it's maybe what the whole video is trying to be built around but i

the whole black hole thing,

which looks nothing like a sun.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Well, apparently I was reading as well

a version of the video

initially released without that

and then they re-released it

with allegedly more impressive CGI

of the sun and shit.

So I don't know.

I've not managed to find the original version.

I don't know if I had something else.

I don't remember ever seeing the version without it.

I don't quite understand.

I don't think it's explained very well

whether the people,

why are they getting warped?

Are they getting warped

because of the whole,

whether they're getting

all the weird things they're doing.

Are they just a weird place or are they all being infected by the black hole?

I just don't understand the video.

Maybe that's okay because the music is not supposed to be understood.

Like it's just random, honestly just random string of words.

Chris Cornell said he basically, he came up with a song when he was driving his car.

And yeah, it wasn't particularly meant to mean anything.

Maybe the video is not supposed to mean anything then.

It's just images.

It's a real dreamscape.

But there is a woman who fucking has like a lizard tongue at one point.

That's interesting.

So that's a good question.

Did she always have a lizard tongue?

Is this just how this place goes?

Maybe that's what America's like.

I've never been there.

I don't know.

You know what's in America like last year?

I can confirm that lizard tongues are a common occurrence,

especially in San Francisco.

Not as much in New York.

Out of people or out of lizards?

Yes.

Oh.

Well, actually it was out.

Yeah, the lizard tongue woman was curious

because she was trying to catch the flies,

which I don't know.

I feel that the whole thing about their faces getting warped because they're all smiling.

Everyone's like, well, most people are doing weird sort of massive grins and then the faces

are warped into sort of, you know, sad, frowny faces.

I think it's meant to be like a message towards like everyone's going on, everyone's happy,

but everything's actually really miserable and dark.

And, you know, it's not too dissimilar to, you know, current times, which maybe makes

the video itself kind of timeless because maybe it's making a message or sending a message

that everything's always miserable.

Everything's always dark,

no matter how good it looks.

The British mentality

of just keep calm and carry on.

You know,

everyone's just trying to do their thing

and then they know

there's a massive fucking black hole above them.

And then when it starts sucking everyone up,

then that's when they start freaking out.

Yeah, yeah.

They're like,

oh shit,

we can't ignore it anymore.

Something I've actually never noticed before.

There's like a shot of bees

with one of the little girls

running around

and then you see a beekeeper

dead on the ground.

He doesn't seem to have died

through any black hole related activities.

That's really good artwork, actually.

Just this kid in a pink tutu and a dead beekeeper.

I was going to say, I think my favourite character is the woman sunbathing,

but she has like a massive heat lamp.

Of course, that's your favourite scene.

Not because of the woman sunbathing.

It's just, you know, there's a massive heat lamp.

It's 2.15 in the video.

Oh, fuck it.

Yeah, I'd never noticed the heat lamp.

I don't know.

There must be irony in that.

I don't know why.

Apparently, I haven't watched this video enough.

That CGI still irks me.

Not because they decide to use CGI in 94.

fine well means but they could have gone into uncanny valley without the cgi the people all

really fucking creepy without their warped eyes i agree with that but i think you have to bear in

mind it was the 90s it had to be edgy and using all these crazy effects and shit like i've seen

yesterday about the logo reminding me of of a 90s video game show if you ever go back and watch any

shit like that it's all like this it's just fucking it's a 90s aesthetic i mean you're probably right

just irks me because it's it's kind of hailed as this quintessential 90s video but it just feels

really dated. I'm not saying it's bad, just dated.

Some might say stuck on the edge of the horizon.

Okay, so let's talk about what our favourite moments were.

God, there's so many.

There's a guy who's like brushing his hair in the mirror

and there's a woman with a great day in the bath.

For a little while, I thought that was the same guy

played Bob in Twin Peaks, but I looked up and it's not.

I think that'll probably get my vote purely

just because it's potentially a Twin Peaks rip-off.

That's a very good point.

Why does he never have any of the people

from any of Lynch's movies?

I understand Kyle MacLachlan might be a bit too expensive

for that video but yeah Bob or just some of the cut the sorry the background I actually have to

change that answer because I'm I'm just I've got it playing on a loop in the background and I forgot

about the fucking the baby there's a woman with a pram and the baby just turns into some sort of

fucking ectoplasm jelly floats off because I'm like I know everyone's getting sucked into the

black hole I don't know at what point that you literally just disintegrate uh just after the

event horizon I guess let's not go into the actual physics of this video because it's gonna get

fucking crazy.

I have to throw out

all my calculations.

There's a woman

who's just putting on

makeup while getting

vibrated by one of

those Vibro belt

machines.

It's casually doing it

and then there's just

a random guy just

doing push-ups

who's bright pink.

He's tanned.

Oh, there you are.

They're so tanned,

yeah, burnt,

whatever you want to

say, burnt by the

black hole sun.

It all just feels

so out of place

and it's just so

random.

It's just the way

the camera casually

pans up as she's

getting vibrated.

yeah to me the whole the whole the whole song and videos like feel for nightmares and i think all

the modern day tropes referencing real world problems i think it's that maybe time shows that

it's quite timeless and you can kind of uh associate it with pretty much modern day especially with a

guy getting you know sucked not sucked into the tv but just watching tv you know there's all that

screen culture it can reference to and i guess how people can be happy all the time in the video as

the world crumbles around them can director howard uh greenhut whatever his name is um predict the

future that's that's what i'm trying to find out what do you guys think of that it's like these are

just kind of constant problems disregarding whatever the current apocalypse is uh and we're

currently in quite a big one the problems are kind of continuous throughout humanity and he's kind of

possibly accidentally i don't know kind of struck that chord i mean i won't say that it's probably

accidental i think it probably is just more stuff is yeah just because yeah i'm not saying there has

to be more to not be so for free to have a point it could be like very very subtle but it just kind

of feels like that we're just assigning thoughts into it like it just kind of feels like the video

should be taken at face value it's still creepy it's still things to talk about but i don't think

it's quite the social commentary that's that we're thinking it is yeah yeah no i i i do agree with

it's it's it's just ironic that i can find so many links i think maybe it's just the way it was

constructed and made you know it's it's it's just obvious that everything's falling apart in that

video and i guess it is kind of easy to link things falling apart in real life to that yeah i mean

possibly whenever we're watching any kind of media when it comes to looking at ideal society that's not

actually ideal it's very easy to assign features to it that probably were not intended when you watch

david lynch movies you kind of like it's even he doesn't have that word like he shows in uh blue

velvet i don't know neil have you actually seen it no no i'm actually not really a fan of david

lynch but i've not really give uh give him a chance he's not for everyone i guess but when you

watch like the movie is about yeah it's about a suburban like almost idyllic place where shit goes

down but like yes people pretend i think it's okay when things are not okay but it just feels

more directed.

Yes, everything is a bit creepy

under the surface level

but on the surface level

you don't need to show

or he doesn't need to show

the inhabitants of that neighbourhood

with warped faces

to make it feel like something is off.

Like people having their day-to-day lives

it's just that there's always something

kind of a bit off on the background

that makes you feel like

there's something happening there.

One thing I've kind of noticed

from years of being forced to watch

terrible independent art films

thanks we've worked in two of those films like two is it present company excluded i think the

reason someone like david lynch works is that there is kind of a logic to it even if you can't

really figure out what the logic is because it's batshit fucking insane there's usually some form of

logic potentially something like this doesn't have the same amount of logic it can just come across

like just nonsense being thrown at a screen yeah can we just also just kind of agree on the

on the statement that's probably Howie.

I'm just going to call him Howie from now on.

Our good friend, Howie, friend of the show.

Yes.

Future club later.

Give us a £2 on Patreon.

If you're listening, Howie.

We don't have a Patreon yet.

We don't have Patreon, no.

I just kind of feel like he really wants to be David Lynch.

Yeah.

But he's kind of lacking the subtlety that David Lynch has.

I think that's what I was trying to say with my off-topic narrative about Le Velvet.

Yeah, yeah.

it's a bit more subtle usually calling david lynch subtle is not really anything to do

i think i've seen that scene even though i've not seen the full film it's where it's like

going through a idyllic suburban place and it goes underground and there's a bunch of bugs going

yeah i yeah that's one because i suppose you could argue even that's not particularly subtle

no it's not it did remind me of um i can't really go in the detail because i don't really want to but

really specific nightmares i had as a kid which just involved a lot of weird things going on a lot

of distortion a lot of shapes there was no black holes and no suns and none of that but sort of

brought it back a little bit it was quite uncomfortable to watch i presume that's the

point though i it definitely feels like it wants you to feel uncomfortable watching it kind of

rounded off as well i mean all the effects i think they still kind of hold up for the time i think as

we said earlier um but they're obviously very off the time very 90s whenever everything had to be

um you know magically put together using cg people who watched the video probably didn't know how that

happened they just thought it was you know movie magic um it doesn't hold up nowadays it just looks

like you know cheap rubbish but it's fine it adds to the charm and it makes the video sort of you know

you sit and watch it because visually there's so much going on in it i can't believe you just called

this video charming i think my favorite part and that not because of the video but because of the

background story of it is the Barbie that's getting spit-wasted but the girl who is watching the Barbie

she has a scene where she's eating the ice cream and then she has like a couple of scenes later

scene where she's spitting out the ice cream kind of drooling on over her the reason why I love this

scene is because I was when I was reading about the video the director was saying how the parents

that girl's parents were obviously like behind the camera and were completely horrified this

batshit crazy director will get their lovely very beautiful daughter to look so ugly in the scene

i kind of just love that because they were clearly like oh no what are you doing to our kid how dare

you which i just kind of found hilarious but um i'm gonna go gonna go with what you bald guy said

like even just ignoring the cgi a lot of interesting parts everywhere in the video so it's kind of like

every time when even now when we're just re-watching it we kept on finding some really cool shit it seems

to be our good friend

Harry's trademark

is just fucking

assaults on the senses

judging by

go west

and this so far

I haven't watched

the placebo video

in a while

I might watch that again

you should also watch

something that I was

I was laughing at

how cheesy it was

um

things if I ever

lose my faith in you

because it's so

on the fucking nose

I've always hated

that video

but I never knew

that it was this guy

who did it

a lot of users

will probably do

in this podcast

at some point

in the future

coming for you

Howard

Harry

Harry

parts that we don't like. Probably the only part I don't like is the open-ended ending.

It'd be nice to see if they actually got sucked into the hole themselves,

but the band didn't want to be distorted, which is ironic considering they were

pretty much distorted all the way through the video,

the way they were slightly warped. Yeah, that was probably my least ever bit.

Apart from that, no. I guess my thing that I've just kept talking

about is, I'm not a fan of the CGI. I think that he could have gone

actual physical effects he could have done something along the lines of i don't know like the the tim

burton's batman movie something a bit more physical where he could have still had like distorted faces

but be a bit more real like a bit more physical cgi just i'm sure that it was like older age in 94

but nowadays it just feels outdated and i don't know which one would be more expensive i'd imagine

the cgi 94 was hell expensive but that's my only beef is that the cgi just doesn't hold and it kind

of makes everything a bit ugly in not in the way he intended it to look like i think the only only

that i can find that i don't like because when it cuts to the actual black hole sun itself uh there's

a few times where it kind of looks like it's just been shoved in there i think because from judging

by what i read it was um but yeah that's my only real complaint with it does that mean that we are

all on a very strong eye for this movie. I keep covering a movie, it's a video. My beef with the

video doesn't take out the part of the video, it's like it's a staple of 90s video and staple of

Soundgarden videos and even if I'm not a massive fan of it, it still was noticeable enough that I

would remember it since it was four. If that reminds me, it's an eye for me as well. It's a

memorable video. It's an eye for me, it's mental, you don't really understand what's happening and I

quite enjoy that kind of thing so yeah eye for me yeah definitely an eye for me i mean i never want

to watch it again but yeah loved it you don't mind what we're doing next time neo you should choose

something because i think we keep on choosing but you should choose something now what will make us

very confused probably all of them to be honest i think i would like to do uh things can only get

better by d-rayim oh purely because i am a fan of professor brian cox so it'd be good to kind of

see him

good to see him

post post

astrophysicist

science

he's not in the

video

the semi-non-90s

classic

things can only

get better

I didn't know

that D-Rim

were Northern

Irish

neither did I

and the Labour

Party notably

used him as

the team tune

during the

party successful

campaign in the

general election

97

I forgot about

that

it's bringing

back Tony Blair

flashbacks

Tony Blair

should be like

a very

extreme close-up

of Tony Blair

with the episode thingy

images of the Iraq war

floating in and out

things can only get better eh

going great so far

oh god

that's not depressing

anyway so

shall we all say goodbye

bye

goodbye all

stop recording

Outro Music