Cops Shut Down Ben Lee
Things haven't gone too well for Ben Lee on his recent trip to NYC. The fun started for the singer-songwriter when he "arrived in midtown amidst cries of 'terrorist attack!'." After a half-hour spring toward downtown, he finally caught word with the rest of us that the explosion was due to a faulty steam pipe, and so the next day in the life of Lee proceeded as scheduled: shoot the video for "Love Me Like The World Is Ending," which is what he thought was happening just a few hours before. But even that wasn't gonna go off without a hitch. Via Ben Lee's blog:
The concept was basically a one-shot video based around people doing what they would do on the last day of earth. This was a finally [sic] tuned piece of choreography that involved hours of rehearsal to get the sequence of characters to interact at the right time. People were making out, dancing, crying, a business man and a homeless guy were sharing a sandwich, a rabbi and a muslim were sharing a prayer, there was a unicorn (why not?), and there were some teenagers skateboarding nude through Soho. Now, in reference to these particular skateboarders, the idea was that they would wear nude-coloured underwear, and be blurred out to give the effect of them being naked. Well... something must have gotten lost in the translation, a direction must have been misheard, because as we went for our first take of the day, the skateboarders evidently dropped their shorts and skated down Crosby St fully exposed! This would not have been a problem except that some of New York City's Finest saw the display, and pretty quickly stepped in to stop filming. Our shooting permit was then revoked, leaving us with an unusable half a take of a very expensive video shoot!Ben says they're gonna scrap this shoot entirely and film another video next week "with an entirely different concept." Which is, as they say, a blessing in disguise. But in the age of YouTube, if it's been set to film, it's gonna be set to 'Public.' After the jump, the aborted clip for "Love Me," complete with an unexpected cameo from NYC's finest.
After a spin or two of Ripe, we can say that, honestly, the record's not bad. Though this is a poor choice for a single. Really, what's the excuse for not spending your NYC vid shoot money on "What Would Jay-Z Do?"
Posted at 12:38 PM
Tags: Ben Lee
I saw this guy open for Elliott Smith in Portland a LONG time ago (10 years? fuck.). Now, as then, he looks like Alfred E. Newman to me.
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That's hysterical. The pop tune is pretty catchy.
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Haha. The look on Ben's face is priceless. But it's really sad they shut it down. It was a mistake, and it wasn't done nastily or anything.
That shoot would be in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands at that point, and to throw it all away is terrible. I think they could've salvaged it with a different angle at the end, although it would've ruined the whole one-shot, one-take thing they're going for.
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Tens, if not hundreds of thousands? What video were you watching?
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yikes. ben is quickly starting to look like dr. joel fleishman from tv's "northern exposure."
that link's dead; try this one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5y4nc-BzIIg
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none of the videos on Youtube work
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Dustin Charlton
I am the naked skateboarder
www.rockstarbearings.com
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Hello! Help solve the problem.
Very often try to enter the forum, but says that the password is not correct.
Regrettably use of remembering. Give like to be?
Thank you!
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