Music Video Task 1 - Video Three

JOHNNY CASH - HURT

 

 

I have always heard about Johnny Cash but never really heard any of his songs until I watched this video. I never thought that the first song I hear from this man would be the last song he had ever done. Although it is a cover that he has re-worded the video makes me tearful every time I see it and the same with the song as it just shows how cruel reality can truly be.

 

 

BACKGROUND

 

 

 

This song is originally written and recorded by a band called Nine Inch Nails. Johnny Cash re-worded some of the lyrics, for example one line says "crown of shit" was changed to "crown of thorns" to the fact that Johnny Cash was a devout Christian.

The music video was directed by former NIN-collaborator Mark Romanek who sought to capture the essence of Johnny Cash, both in his youth and in his older years as he is a longtime of Johnny Cash. He wanted to do a music video for this song so much that he begged the album producer Rick Rubin to shoot it and even offered to do it for free as long as he got to work with Johnny Cash.


In a montage of shots of Johnny Cash’s early years, twisted imagery of fruit and flowers in various states of decay, seem to capture both his legendary past and the stark and seemingly cruel reality of the present. Mark Romanek quotes: "I wanted to do two things," he said. "I wanted to celebrate this legend and his achievements but also be very candid about what Johnny's life is like right now."


Mark Romanek also said about his decision to focus on the House of Cash museum in Nashville.


“It had been closed for a long time; the place was in such a state of dereliction. That's when I got the idea that maybe we could be extremely candid about the state of Johnny's health, as candid as Johnny has always been in his songs.”


Johnny Cash was 71 years of age at the time of filming back in February 2003. At that point he had serious health problems and his frailty is starkly evident in the video.  June Carter Cash, who participated in the video, died three months after filming and Johnny Cash died not too long after her – seven months after the video was filmed. The house where the music video was filmed was Johnny Cash's home for nearly 30 years but was tragically destroyed in a fire on April 10, 2007.

For the music video itself, in 2003 the video was nominated six times in the MTV Video Awards, the video only won one of them: Best Cinematography in a Video.

 

It was also ranked as CMT's top video for 2003, #1 on CMT's 100 Greatest Country Music Videos the following year, and #1 on the Top 40 Most Memorable Music Videos on MuchMoreMusic's Listed in October 2007.

 

 

It The music video won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. In May 2010, 'Hurt' was voted the fifth most influential video of all time by MySpace.

 

As of January 2011, the single is currently number one spot on Rate Your Music's Top Singles of the 2000s.  In July 2011, the music video was named one of "The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos" by Time and NME.

 

PROMOTIONAL TOOL

 

Many music videos tend to be about escape and illusion — the illusion of fame, wealth, sex, glamour and fantasy, to make it like you should what they do. Eye candy, youth and energy are what music videos are usually about but “Hurt” isn't about any of those things. It deals with a theme not so common in music videos: reality as this one is about someone moving toward the twilight of man’s career, this powerful, legendary figure who is dealing with issues and emotions you're not used to encountering in videos.

This is what makes this video special as illusions about reality is never a good thing and leaves you second guessing. It points out so clearly for Johnny Cash who at the time is slowly dying and there's no point in denying the inevitable.

 

Originally Mark Romanek wanted to film this video in L.A. but because of Johnny Cash health, he couldn’t and he was pressed for time as Johnny Cash was to leave for his annual health sabbatical in Jamaica.

 

In some ways this is much more better than what he had planned originally because by using the locations of his house, the House of Cash museum and using footage from Johnny Cash’s private collection of home movies which was lent to Mark Romanek, who spent weeks combing through hundreds of hours of tape – it actually shows Johnny surrounded by everything that is personal and all that is him. To where is he lives, the guitar he has in his hands, his wife June appearing in the video, everything he owned in the house even the clothes that he was wearing in the video was personal as it was one of those outfits that he must have worn back in the day.

 

The lighting is very grainy almost old fashioned in the way it has been edited to look, even though it was 2002 at the time. This gives it a dark look to signify that Johnny Cash is in a dark place because of his ever decreasing state of health and that he was in an unstable state emotionally in the past.

 

This video could be pulled off for today however Johnny Cash passed away seven months after this video was made so in many ways it can’t.

 

SYNERGY

Christianity was Johnny Cash’s belief when it comes to religion and he was a devoted Christian at that. Throughout the  video there were a lot of signs of Christianity as a message to saying he was repenting for sins he has done in the past: the feast on the table – The Last Supper, His wife June standing halfway on the staircase like an angelic presence looking over him and clips of a movie where Jesus is taking the cross to die.

 

The point where Johnny Cash lifts a goblet of wine and pouring it over the table definitely fits the lyric “And you can have it all/My empire of dirt” and for me it is the memorable point of the whole video not because of how frail he was becoming - but it shows that even though he is ill, he's like "I maybe ill but I ain't quiting out just yet" and he is not ashamed to show that THIS is part of life.

 

 

When the words “Everyone I know/Goes away in the end” shows along with images of his mother and his wife, it refers to the fact he didn’t take the death of his mother very well nor did anyone think that he would long without his wife who died not long before him.

Christianity was also how he straightened up his life again so what’s way a lot of references were about God. A lot of people considered 'Hurt' to be Cash's epitaph.

 

He kept a lot of the other lyrics like “I hurt myself today/To see if I still feel” because Johnny Cash took amphetamines (a pill used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and barbiturates (drugs that act as depressants). It was one of the reasons why his first wife divorced him.

In the video there also a short line of a film which he stared in called A Gunfight (1971) where he says "You stay the hell away from me, ya hear?" which refers to that Johnny Cash is a country-western singer and that he is THE man in black as he always dresses in black as it also shows in the music video. There are also clips of him singing “Folsom Prison Blues” at Folsom Prison which points out that he went to prison seven times and sang in prison during his time there.

 

FAN REACTION/CRITICS REPECTION

 

When Trent Reznor, the writer of the song and band member was asked if Cash could cover his song, Trent Reznor said he was "flattered" but worried that "the idea sounded a bit gimmicky”

 

Trent Reznor became a fan of Cash's version however when he saw the music video as he quotes:

 

“I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. Somehow that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure.”

 

As for the fans and critics – from an MTV website article, Mark Romanek has got letters from many fans saying how much they love the video:

 

"I've gotten letter after letter from people saying that the video made them weep and they can't stop watching it.

 I'm most proud of the fact that it's causing this visceral, emotional reaction. That's the whole reason to make any sort of film. You don't often have the opportunity to do that with a music video because that's not usually what you're being asked to accomplish."

 

From what Johnny Cash said before he passed away in an interview, he said that he didn’t get direct criticism about “Hurt” or thought that making this video was any way “painful” as he says this:

 

"I don't especially like making videos. It's just work. Sometimes it's really fun and I enjoy it very much, but the getting there and all that usually just isn't.

I enjoyed doing the 'Hurt' video because I felt we were doing something worthwhile, that it was something kind of special. ... I was there right in the middle of the thing. So after it was put together, I watched with a critical eye to see what I could find wrong with it. And I didn't find much wrong with it."

 

 

AVAILABILTIY

 

The video can be seen on a lot of website – most notable YouTube. Other websites you can find this video are: Musicjesus.com, theinspirationroom.com and clip.dj.

 

From the looks of Amazon U.K. there isn’t really a way to get the music video as there are a lot of DVD about Johnny Cash or his T.V. show.

There is also a way to buy the music video but it can only be bought on Amazon US and it can only be watch on NTSC DVD devices but luckily there is such thing as the Internet.