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English Script Request

Equis
Complete / 2538 Words
by kee 0:00 - 0:50

Questioner: Now when you say that some of them don't get seen very much, there is a reason, one in particular, that was banned, Lullaby. And yet it won an award. How do you feel about the contrast?

Robert Smith: Well there have been two videos that we've made in the past six years that haven't expressly been banned. There's Close To Me when the wardrobe went off the cliff, that we were told that if we kept that in it wouldn't get shown on children's television, certainly in England anyway. And Lullaby, there were a lot of problems at first, in particular in America, where they thought, it was too frightening, for an age group it was aimed at. The two things, I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all, there's no logic behind it. But they're never expressly banned, they're just not shown. If they were banned it would probably be much better, we'd get twice the publicity.

by kee 0:50:00 - 0:02:55

Tim Pope: ....as we possibly can on him, and the others.

Q: Do you like that Robert?

RS: No I hate it. In some of the videos, there's a lot of imagery, which is far from what I'd call subtle, which I'm amazed that people don't pick up on. The videos that shouldn't be seen, are the ones that are shown the most.

Q: So what shouldn't be seen?

RS: I'm not going to tell you! If you watch this compilation it's a bit obvious.

TP: It does speak for itself. There are certain images on this. For example, one night I was in America and it came on the telly and I was thinking "No I didn't do that," you know? I think there are certain recurrent images and sometimes people don't see the wood for the trees, which is good fun.

But really, I mean, you know, I think you see a lot of videos, and I think the values put over in them, sort of girlies sprawled over red cars and everything, which is great in your personal life and everything, that's fine, you know I do that every day in my personal life, but I think actually in videos it is slightly offensive. I would be more offended by something like that than say, you know, a wardrobe going off a cliff. You know, who cares?

Q: OK, now if you watch the 'Picture Show' I think anyone would notice that every video is very radically different. They're very...

TP: Well, in a way that isn't true because actually, and I think what's really good about The Cure videos, is that, and we've been working together for ten years, you know, it's like ten years, scary, but we have. We don't see each other (RS noises off) yeah exactly, I haven't seen him for like, a month or so and that's why we get on. And erm, but erm, what was the question? About...?

Q: The videos being different?

TP: No, there are loads of recurrent images in all the videos and things that recur in all of them.

Q: Lots of different styles for each video?

TP: There's very different styles, but then that's because most video directors can't change their style. So one week we'll go out and shoot one a bit like this where we wobble the camera a bit and next week we'll shoot one a bit like a feature film, the next one we'll shoot like a pop video and stuff like that. And throw the camera around and everyone says oh aren't they wacky?

Q: Can we just talk about that video 'Why Can't I Be You?' Because I mean if you look at it, it's full of images. You've got lips and you've got eyes, and you've got hands and you've got mouths and there's lots of jumping around, different characters and different costumes. Robert, where did all that come from?

by kee 0:02:55 - 0:04:30

RS: Well, I think with every, with every video that we've made, I always sit down with Tim, and we, I tell him basically what the song's about, if it's about anything in particular. And then, we usually go away, and come back, like, pretty near to the time of the video, and talk about what the video should look like, what kind of imagery, what kind of feel, and I have a very basic idea, that I try and communicate, usually using reference points of a film, maybe, or just a piece of music or something, and I leave, like, all the detail to Pat.

And that's the way they're put together, we work out a view and the song was actually about the notion, it came from, someone actually said to me in a bar, we had this whole conversation about how you should never really wish to be anyone else. You should like make the most of what you do yourself. It got very sort of like convoluted and I went away and thought in there somewhere there's a really good idea for a pop song. It's like all the sort of things you want to be because it is part of human nature to sometimes, you know, not wish like maybe like dramatic but sometimes to think I really could do that even if it was just for a day.

And so I said to the others, well if we do a video would you be prepared to dress up in your favourite costumes, you know, and make fools of yourselves, and once I'd got their go ahead I went to Pat and then I left it all up to him. We arrived on the day and, discovered like crow costumes and realised that all our favourite characters had in fact been discarded and all the things we'd never asked for were actually on the set and it was too late to change them.

Q: You've got a Humpty Dumpty in there as well somewhere haven't you?

by kee 0:04:30 - 0:04:48

TP: We've got them all, all sorts of characters. But what was really funny, what was great was doing the choreography for that wasn't it? That was the great, that was when I actually literally wet myself that night, because we did it, we shot that in Ireland for various reasons and we're in this studio and erm, and we had this choreographer come along to help us.

by kee 0:04:48 - 0:06:29

RS: We'd heard the best choreographers were in Ireland at the time.

TP: Absolutely. That's why we actually went there, and some days you'd work with the Second Generation, do you remember the Second Generation? It was all that sort of stuff that we wanted to do, and everything, and I thought well we can whip them up into a bit of a frenzy overnight, so we did, we did this rehearsal in this hotel, with everyone with their pints of beer and their cigarettes and everything, and what was great the first ten minutes everyone was joking around, but after ten minutes everyone was taking it very seriously, and that's when it actually became very funny,

RS: I think we looked tight.

TP: I think you looked very tight, very tight indeed, very professional.

Q: I heard Robert say very Five Star as well.

On the Picture Show you got in between a lot of the videos, a lot of outtakes, film of you on tour, backstage, whatever. I want to know from Robert how spontaneous those outtakes were. Are they contrived?

RS: No, there's a mixture of stuff that I've just taken off the telly. Idiot pop shows that we've done. I've been sent video cassettes, and I've just decided to use them, certain compilations of just us like in the dresses, in a helicopter, and playing each other's instruments, that sort of stuff. And then, just the things that we'd filmed. Just in the course of, you know, someone's usually got a camera. I mean it's as contrived as much as anyone's ever contrived when there's a camera about. The stuff that's really natural wouldn't get into the video, because it would be too horrible to look at. It's not contrived, you don't sort of think oh, and a lot of the bits weren't picked, a lot of the bits that are in there are actually, they're not particularly flattering or anything, I just thought they would be things that would illuminate the different characters, what I was trying to do was to get a sense, the people watching it that you'd actually build up of a sense of the characters in the group, outside of the videos, rather than just rely on the videos.

by kee 0:06:29 - 0:07:54

RS: Everyone thinks it looks really good as a whole, there are bits that everyone, including me, doesn't really like. I wanted certain bits, when I sort of saw them in context, I thought, oh no, that makes you look a bit dumb, but then, I am a bit dumb, a lot of the time. I think it's better to keep it in, it turns everything on its head. Because if you're too perfect, I've seen, not mentioning any names, but a couple of other things that have attempted to do this with backstage footage, and it's so contrived, that it's unwatchable.

Q: I mean obviously Madonna, 'Truth or Dare?' springs to mind, are we going to see a Cure video purely of backstage footage?

TP: I mean who's interested?

RS: No. It's dreary.

TP: Who's actually interested?

Q: I think a lot of people.

TP: I think what they've got in this instance, a lot of people will say it's like a home movie, which it actually is. And all this stuff, like, whenever I'm on a shoot, there's always someone with like a camera with a haircut over the top of it. And, you know, I hadn't seen that stuff, for like, some of it for years, and it's like really frightening, when you actually like sort of see it all. I think it's really good because I think very few people would have had the bottle, and as Robert said, like, being a person that actually makes videos, it's very difficult to put over the sort of joyous fun that one has making these videos and everything, and I think these bits of film really capture that. And it really puts, and it's very difficult also with the videos to put over everyone's characters because inevitably Robert sings.

RS: That's what I wanted to try and balance out.

TP: It doesn't necessarily come over as a group and I think what's really good is that you see everyone. You see Simon is like particularly funny and it is very difficult to get.

by kee 0:07:54 - 0:11:34

RS: The balance in the videos isn't the balance that's in real life. I take very much more of a back seat, when everyone's together, when everyone's socialising, I'm not the one with the loudest voice, by any means.

Q: Are you shy?

RS: Not really, I'm not particularly. I'm more reserved.

TP: Other people have got louder voices. I mean Simon's got a very loud voice.

RS: Simon and Boris will very often like, take control of what's going on, and I just sit back and watch, and I wanted to try and get some of that, because people would think, otherwise, in every single video I'm at the front, it's my face. It gets a bit, I get fed up with it, because people think it's just me and the others and this, in some ways, redresses the balance.

You come out of it, thinking, particularly with someone like Paul, who's been in the group for years and years, but is so quiet, generally, that you'd never even notice that he's there. But on this video, but at the end of it, he's actually speaking, in some parts, and, I mean, even he, when it's edited together, they saw it in rough cut form, he was really shocked, to see himself speaking on screen, it's probably the first time that he's ever spoken on screen.

Q: What are you like as a person, when you are not making a video, you're not doing a live concert or a TV interview like this, what are you really like?

RS: It's an impossible question. I'm normal.

Q: Is the image in the video, for example, that we see, is that you expressing yourself or?

TP: Videos are very contrived.

RS: I don't, I have to really act in the videos, but I don't act characters that I'm not, but I have to drag something out of me that's very reluctant. I'm a reluctant performer, but it is in me, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. But I don't walk about in real life, I don't walk about in real life in this much make-up, it's only because I've been doing photos. I would wipe it off, but I know it would just...

Q: What would you wear in the supermarket?

RS: I mean, I always have my hair up, and I wear exactly the same clothes as I've got on, but I wouldn't wear as much lipstick and eye make-up as I've got on, but I always wear a bit of make-up. It's just like, I don't know why, warpaint facing the world.

Q: From some of the videos that we could see in the Picture Show, are there any funny moments that you can think of, during the filming of the videos?

RS: He's laughing all the way through them.

TP: It's basically setting up as many situations to see.. There were great moments. Not many that we can talk about. There are always great moments. There are also very depressing moments aren't there? People always think that you must have such a laugh making them, and they are actually really tedious to do.

RS: The worst thing about making videos from our group's point of view is that you can never really relax. And a day might be eighteen hours long, and I've got to look the same basically at the end of that eighteen hours as I did for the first shot of the day. That kills me that. It means that I can't drink because it's always me. He always says at the last close-up, "Make sure your eyes aren't red".

That is the worst part of making videos for me, because I can't sort of.. The others don't seem to care so much about, because they don't have so many close-ups, so I think that they probably have more of a laugh than I do. It's good, but something in the 'Never Enough' video, and Chris Parry, we get Chris Parry to take helium, and he just keeps making him redo it, so he goes really out of his head.

TP: We have fun that sort of way, and in a funny sort of a way it shows up on the screen in the end. The funny thing was when we started making these videos, no-one was actually interested at all, we'd sort of make them in a garage and stuff like that, and now everyone likes them which is sort of funny isn't it? There you go.

Comments

kee
May 30, 2019

"like" and "you know" are just filler words but I left most of them in.

kee
June 3, 2019

"I mean" "sort of" "and everything" "actually" and "well" are other meaningless filler words I left in. In this context "tight" means proficient and "bottle" is British slang for courage.

Equis
June 4, 2019

Thanks! Comments are helpful, too.

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