Watch Billy Corgan’s Surreal 40-Minute Silent Film Pillbox
You can trace Billy Corgan’s fascination with silent film all the way back to the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 video for “Tonight Tonight,” with all its homages to Georges Méliès’s A Trip To The Moon. And now Corgan has pushed that a whole lot further. His latest undertaking is Pillbox, a new “silent film” set entirely to music from Corgan’s new Rick Rubin-produced solo album Ogilala. Corgan co-directed Pillbox with Linda Strawberry. It lasts 40 minutes, and it goes from black-and-white pastiche to lush, colorful psychedelic surrealism to kaleidoscopic animation. In a press release, Corgan says, “”I thought it was a different approach to listening to an album, to watch it in essence with a related, albeit non-linear, silent movie. Art is art. And together the two pieces create a work unto itself.” You can watch the whole thing below.
Ogilala is out now on BMG.