Nine Inch Nails: the making of the Closer video – Page 1
November 8, 2011
Don’t get me started on Nine Inch Nails. Or do. It doesn’t bother me. It really depends how much you want to watch me transform into some sort of scary ‘AND LET ME TELL YOU ANOTHER THING’ hyperventilating kind of rabid non-human. Next to pre-Michale Graves Misfits and pre-Justice Metallica (you know, when they were good), pre-somewhere-around-The Fragile era Nine Inch (you know, when they were good) constituted an integral part of my formative teenage years, which as we all know, pretty much means I’ll consider them awesome forever. Even when they continue to release a
Casting aside that one time they hired David Fincher to make a commercial for Apple Macbooks, you gotta hand it to them: they knew how to make videos that burned into your psyche. Even during the pre Bit-Torrent era of instantaneous online leaks, the hushed mystique surrounding the long form Broken video, released initially to the likes of S&M club dominatrixes and shared selectively amongst small circles of friends, ensured it gained notoriety akin to that of a snuff film. Indeed, popular urban lore still claims the video was so effective in the presentation of it’s visceral images that it prompted an investigation by the F.B.I., though other accounts mention this in regards to the discovery of footage from a
Nine Inch Nails: the making of the Closer video – Page 2
November 8, 2011
different NIN video shoot altogether. Regardless of whether either of these incidents actually occurred, it’s true they make for good stories.
Mark Romanek directed two videos for Nine Inch – the Edward Gorey inspired ‘The Perfect Drug’, and of course, ‘Closer’. Taken from their 1994 The Downward Spiral release, Closer (along with their infamous mud soaked performance at Woodstock 94) is the song that launched Nine Inch into the upper echelon of superstardom, as well as launching the careers of thousands of strippers worldwide. Giving more than just a nod to the work of both Joel-Peter Witkin and the Brothers Quay, the video is still an amazing work of art, on both a technical and aesthetic level.
Perhaps it’s visual impact is somewhat diminished today, due to the prevalence of automated plug-ins and processing software that enables anyone to recreate, to a certain level, at least, a similar visual sensibility in their work. Still, I can practically smell the ECN-2 when I watch this video, such is the overwhelming strength of it’s deteriorated, tactile images. This 32 minute feature is a fascinating insight into the complete process of creating, constructing and capturing this video, complete with commentary from Romanek himself, sounding an awful lot like Harris from Freaks & Geeks.
