Newly signed to ZTT, we were
given a much more substantial budget for this video - but had to fight
long and hard to get our Manchester directors, The Future Brothers, back.
Weturned up at the studio to find that they'd built us
a set looking like a spaceship interior from the 70s Tomorrow People
series, complete with glowing psychedelic wall 'breasts.' The finished
piece is like two videos in one - half science fiction, half kitchen sink.It's supposed
to be like the start
of 'The Member of the Wedding' by Carson McCullers - the young
protagonist is 'an unjoined person who hung around in doorways' and 'a
member of nothing in the world.' He can only identify with the people he
likes in pop groups.
There are movie references.We filmed at
Alfredo's (now the S&M cafe in Islington), the
Mods' hangout in Quadrophenia, where we had a vintage jukebox offering
only the same two Sexus tracks..ZTT
rejected the video before most of the planned special effects could be
added. A string of people there each tried re-editing it from the raw
footage, till the clips used became almost random, including obvious
outtakes. This is a clip from the original version.
Paul
The Official End of it All was shot
on 19th January 1996 in Wembley and Islington, north London. The budget for the video was £25000. There was a huge clash of egos on
and off set; ZTT tried to foist the Warner's in-house video maker on us, but
his idea of using bouncing red balls was as rubbish as he was, so we turned him down in favour of
our edenites directors. David storyboarded the whole thing and was in constant
battle with both them and ZTT. The interior shoot was continually interrupted by our
manager and A&R people who were worried that our clothes weren't commercial
enough, but we did have a very pretty Indian make-up girl called Maria who wasn't averse to using
the concealer. When ZTT saw the offline edit, they thought it
wasn't 'up' enough, so they re-edited it for commercial release and, not
surprisingly, missed out
all the good
bits.