Time (September 1, 1997) THE NEW VIDEO WIZARDS FOUR HOT YOUNG DIRECTORS ARE BRINGING FRESH VERVE TO MTV. HOLLYWOOD COULD BE NEXT BY CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY Six months ago, Elektra Records decided that Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott was a hip-hop star. However, there was one problem. Outside of the relatively small demographic of people who pay close attention to the songwriting credits of R.-and-B. albums--Elliott has composed minor hits for such acts as Aaliyah, Ginuwine and Jodeci--hardly anybody had ever heard of her. Also, Elliott isn't your typical Top 40 sex siren. She has a regular, stocky body, the kind most people have unless they're members of a professional sports team or Keenen Ivory Wayan's all-woman house band. So the record company turned to music-video director Hype Williams. Over the past year or so, Williams--his real first name is Harold--has become the most in-demand music-video director going; his clips boast a sensuous palette of colors, and, most important, they tend to get heavy play on MTV. Williams met with Elliott and outlined his plans: he saw her in a patent-leather suit pumped full of air. "He told me he wanted to make me look like the Michelin Man," says Elliott. "I was like, 'Excuse me?' And he was like, 'Trust me. It's going to be hot.'" Try scorching. The Williams-directed music video for The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly), the first single off Elliott's debut album, Supa Dupa Fly, features the singer in that weird, bulbous leather suit, as well as surreally distorted camera shots and dancers prancing in shiny yellow raincoats. MTV has been playing it steadily, propelling the previously little-known Elliott to the top of the charts. Last year music videos seemed to be an exhausted form. Shows like MTV's Beavis and Butt-head (which was recently canceled) made ironic sport of them; programs like VH-1's sporadically clever Pop-Up Video (which displays trivia-filled text about videos as they play) seemed to suggest that they were too tiresome to endure without supplementary information. Still, last winter MTV, which had begun to tilt toward Jenny McCarthy-helmed nonmusic programs, announced that it was recommitting itself to videos and would play 10 to 20 additional hours of music programming every week. MTV's ratings are still going down (they slipped 7% in the second quarter of this year), but thanks to the increased play videos are receiving, there's a new wave of directors on the way up. The network has been de-emphasizing alternative rock recently and searching for other forms to replace it, creating an opportunity for directors with a strong, clear vision to bring performers from other genres to widespread attention. The world of videos is high stakes. Gina Harrell, head of video production at Elektra Records, says her label spends about $300,000 to $600,000 a video for major acts; and since MTV began tagging the names of directors on videos four years ago, competition among filmmakers to produce the most inventive work has heated up. Several newcomers, most notably Williams (who did Mary J. Blige's lush clip Everything), Paul Hunter (Erykah Badu, Sean "Puffy" Combs), Jonathan Glazer (Radiohead, Jamiroquai) and Floria Sigismondi (Marilyn Manson, Tricky), have risen to the challenge. As a result, the directors themselves are becoming MTV stars. Williams and Hunter have almost become brand names; each has a colorful, highly recognizable style, and hip-hop stars--and even some alternative bands--are rushing to work with them. All four of these directors are up for multiple awards at next week's MTV Music Video Awards, and all four are starting to hear from Hollywood as well. Interestingly, some of the directors are contemptuous of the field in which they've risen to the top. "Music videos are largely rubbish," says Glazer, whose video Virtual Insanity, for the trippy Euro-dance group Jamiroquai, is nominated for a record 10 MTV awards. Says Sigismondi: "I don't watch [MTV]. I'm really not up on what's trendy. I'm in my own little world." Williams, 28, who grew up in Queens, New York, wanted to be a painter. "That's what probably stimulated my interest in color now," he says. "I wanted to be Basquiat or Keith Haring." Hunter, 31, started his career as a photographer but decided to study film at California State University at Northridge after visiting a movie set when his brother, an aspiring actor, got a part in a small indie film. Hunter later dropped out, and says now, "I learned that I had to go out and hustle if I was going to make it, [that] I was going to have to go out and make films by whatever means I could." A scrappy intelligence makes the work of all four of these directors stand out even when the songs they are visualizing aren't all that strong. Hip-hop king Combs' It's All About the Benjamins is a slight affair on record, but in Hunter's video it bursts into life. We see Combs, with his white-suited posse, running through a forest; the scene shifts to a stone quarry, drenched in floodlights and filled with revelers; then we see Combs again, in black, rapping onstage as the film slips and slides in the projector--and that's all in the first 10 seconds. Glazer's video for Jamiroquai is less flashy but nonetheless eye catching. The band is mostly unknown in the States; its current album, Traveling Without Moving, is a mere echo of stronger, tighter, better American R. and B. from the '70s. Virtual Insanity, a rant against technology that draws heavily, if not entirely successfully, on Stevie Wonder for musical inspiration, is the only truly catchy song on the album. In the video we see Jamiroquai's singer, Jay Kay, standing alone in a mostly empty room. The floor seems to move as he dances, sings and poses; furniture appears and vanishes. The clip is somewhat dry, but it keeps us watching as we try to figure out the physics of this weird space. "If you're simple, you're effective," says Glazer, 31, who majored in theater arts at London's Middlesex Polytechnic College. Sigismondi, 31, who was born in Italy and lives in Canada, says she never aims to shock, though she usually strikes a nerve: "I try and look for beauty in darkness, to make some kind of harmony in the images." In her video for shock-rocker Manson's Tourniquet, we are treated to the sight of Manson shaving his own armpit; in Sigismondi's clip for The Beautiful People, we see writhing worms, rows of stomping fascistic boots and Manson's mouth pushed open by some cruel dental device. The songs themselves are dumb and brutal, but the videos have a ghastly playfulness that evokes David Lynch and Federico Fellini. So, of course, Hollywood is calling. In the past few years other video directors have made the jump from MTV to feature films; David Fincher, who created videos for Madonna, went on to direct Seven and the forthcoming thriller The Game. Sigismondi says movie scripts have been "flooding in," but that she hasn't chosen a project. Williams is developing a live-action Fat Albert feature for Bill Cosby. Hunter has signed to direct a film for HBO, and Glazer is working on the movie Gangsta Number One. But none of them have yet decided to leave videos for movies permanently. Says Glazer: "I don't believe you graduate from one to another." Meeting rock stars, attending awards shows--who would want to leave a film school like this anyway?