I should be clear: It\u2019s not a disaster. In fact, there\u2019s some pretty great stuff here. Overall, though, it\u2019s a little smug, and it isn\u2019t quite clever enough to support the smugness. The video is interspersed with scenes from the film\u2014specifically, the sequence where Roger Moore\u2019s Bond and Grace Jones chase each other all over the Eiffel Tower\u2014cobbled together to make it look as though the Duran Duran boys are interacting with the Bond characters. Fun concept, but it doesn\u2019t quite mesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Compounding the problem: The band was fractured at the time, reuniting briefly to make this video after splitting into two distinct camps earlier in the year. John and Andy had broken off to join the supergroup The Power Station<\/a>, while Nick, Simon, and Roger formed their own project, Arcadia<\/a>. Due to various intra-Duran conflicts, relationships within the band were strained, and as a result, each Duran filmed his scenes individually. In the entire video, no two Durans will directly interact with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The video opens on a catering van (\u201cChez Tayloire,\u201d heh) parked at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Roger, who is sitting in the driver\u2019s seat, teleports himself into the back of the van.<\/p>\n\n\n Yeah, Roger can teleport. Just shrug it off and move on. We\u2019ve got a lot of material to cover, and if I stop down to scrutinize every last example of nitwittery, we\u2019ll be here all day. Anyway, he\u2019s got a cool super-spy control room set up in his van, featuring lots of big, clunky artifacts of Eighties tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aw, no! What have they done to our fresh-faced, adorable Roger? Sure, it\u2019s just the unflattering lighting, but he looks haggard and unwell. Not long after this video came out, Roger quit Duran Duran and went into semi-reclusion until he was coaxed back into the spotlight some fifteen years later; I\u2019m not suggesting that seeing how ghastly he looks here drove him into hiding, but it surely couldn\u2019t have helped his mental state.<\/p>\n\n\n Roger sends a camcorder sailing out of a hatch on the roof of his van. It flies up the side of the Eiffel Tower and hovers in the air, monitoring the action on the upper decks. I will not be discussing the special effects in any detail. They haven\u2019t stood the test of time; I\u2019ll just leave it at that and move right along.<\/p>\n\n\n Simon leans against the wall on one of the observation decks and listens to his Walkman. With his striped shirt, white trench coat (collar popped), and beret (tilted at just the right jaunty angle), he looks like a million francs, the world-famous pop star disguised as a secret agent disguised as an everyday French tourist. All he needs to complete the image is a glass of red wine and a pack of Gitanes.<\/p>\n\n\n John saunters around the deck, trying to look casual and doing a terrible job of blending in with the other tourists. John is really, really beautiful. Has anyone ever noticed this before?<\/p>\n\n\n In strolls Andy, who is sporting dark glasses, a white cane, and a monstrous mane of gigantic, snarled, ratty hair. I\u2019d say the hair was just to lend credence to his role as a spy disguised as a blind accordion player, but I\u2019ve seen<\/em> the video for \u201cThe Reflex.\u201d Hair aside, I don\u2019t want to bag on Andy (I say blithely, having just bagged on Andy), because he\u2019s kind of awesome and hilarious here. When he has something concrete to do in a video, instead of just being The Guy Hanging Out in the Scaffolding (\u201cUnion of the Snake<\/a>\u201d) or The Guy Making Awkward Small Talk With Nick (\u201cHungry Like the Wolf<\/a>\u201d), he can steal scenes away from his glamorous show-pony bandmates.<\/p>\n\n\n Speaking of glamorous show ponies\u2026 Andy throws a covert glance over at fashion photographer\/spy Nick, who is snapping pictures of a gorgeous woman, played by model Gail Elliott, a close friend of Yasmin Le Bon. At this point, we only get a tantalizing glimpse of Nick\u2019s hair (spiky, streaky) and makeup (smoky), but it all looks very, very promising.<\/p>\n\n\n John skulks around the observation deck and watches through a telescope as Roger Moore and Grace Jones get into a big shootout on the upper deck. Gunshots ring out, but the tourists thronging about the tower don\u2019t seem to notice, which is exactly what I mean about the film footage not meshing well with the video footage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From his super awesome control room, Roger sends up three more cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n Simons whips out his Walkman. Inside, instead of a cassette, there\u2019s a little control panel with the word \u201cHELICOPTER\u201d flashing at the top. Simon pushes a button, and we see footage from the movie of a helicopter crashing and exploding in an arctic area. So Simon\u2019s just loitering around the Eiffel Tower, blowing up stuff halfway across the world. Simon is a menace to polite society.<\/p>\n\n\n Roger picks up his enormous phone and mutters something in a foreign language to Simon, who receives the message over his Walkman headphones.<\/p>\n\n\n Roger, honey, please take a hot bath and crawl into a warm, soft bed. You\u2019re scaring me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, wow. We finally get our first up-close look at lovely Nick, who is giving directions to his model while not-so-secretly snapping photos of Grace Jones and Roger Moore. This was worth the wait. A 1985 People<\/em> magazine article on the boys describes Nick\u2019s makeup job in this video thusly: \u201cplum blush, black eye pencil and liner by Clinique and coral lipstick by Christian Dior.\u201d Details are\u00a0important.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Simon whips out his Walkman again and uses it to blow up a blimp that\u2019s floating over the Golden Gate Bridge, and really, I still don\u2019t have any idea why he has to do this from the Eiffel Tower<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n From his control room, Roger gets on the phone and barks orders to Nick, who receives them through an earpiece. Much as this video makes me wince in parts, I dig the idea of shy, enigmatic Roger turning out to be the shadowy behind-the-scenes mastermind of Duran Duran.<\/p>\n\n\n (I recently browsed through some reviews of Steve Malins\u2019s unauthorized biography of Duran Duran over on Amazon\u2014one reviewer complains that the book contains \u201c\u2026too many weird descriptions of Nick Rhodes as some kind of alabaster-skinned alien.\u201d While at first this seems like a very valid and reasonable criticism, after watching this video, I\u2019m not sure one can ever make the point too many times about Nick looking like an alabaster-skinned alien. A very pretty<\/em> alabaster-skinned alien.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nick then starts secretly photographing John. Presumably Nick is following Roger\u2019s orders, but really, if I spotted someone who looked like John Taylor and I had a camera handy, I\u2019d probably start snapping away, too. I gravitate toward pretty things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John inserts coins into the slot at the base of the telescope. A gun barrel slides out. He swivels it around and starts firing up toward the top of the tower, where Roger Moore and Grace Jones are still battling it out. Oh, dear. Whose brilliant idea was it to arm<\/em> Duran Duran? This will end in tears. John manages to shoot down one of Roger\u2019s cameras, which he seems far too pleased about.<\/p>\n\n\n Let\u2019s sort out some loyalties: Simon and Nick are taking orders from Roger, and John, if he\u2019s aiming at Roger\u2019s cameras, is definitely their foe. And Andy? Why, surely he\u2019s nothing more than a harmless blind accordion player! Andy looks around in apparent confusion as tourists scurry in panic at the gunfire.<\/p>\n\n\n Nick snaps a photo of Andy. Bad move. Andy, who is very plainly Not Really Blind, spots Nick and goes for the kill.<\/p>\n\n\n He plays his accordion, which turns out to be an Accordion of Death. When Andy presses a special red button, Nick screams in pain. His camera glows ominously, then explodes in a burst of flame, killing him.<\/p>\n\n\n Oh, Andy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sheesh. Nick might\u2019ve been an enemy spy, but after all, he was just taking a few harmless snapshots. It\u2019s not like he was blowing up helicopters and blimps, Simon<\/em>. Murdering Nick\u2014tiny, pretty, glittery Nick\u2014is beyond the pale. It\u2019s like stepping on Tinker Bell (here, my literate and high-minded sister would be quick to point out that, in the original J.M. Barrie books, Tinker Bell was a vicious and vindictive little sprite. I maintain the analogy still holds. Despite his dainty appearance, Nick has always seemed like the Duran most likely to wreak terrible vengeance against anyone who crosses him).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel like I just watched a Duran Duran snuff film. Oh, sure, there\u2019s been a Duran body count in other videos\u2014all the boys except for Roger meet a bad fate at the hands of zombies in \u201cNight Boat<\/a>,\u201d and it\u2019s up in the air whether Andy and Nick make it out of the exploding underground fortress alive in \u201cUnion of the Snake<\/a>\u201d\u2014but this video marks the sole foray into the disturbing realm of Duran-on-Duran violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Andy has never looked happier.<\/p>\n\n\n Andy packs up his accordion and triumphantly saunters off over the final chords of the song. There\u2019s still twenty seconds left in the video, but do yourself a favor and stop watching right here. It\u2019s just better that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026Still watching? Okay, let\u2019s get this over with: A beautiful blonde strolls up to Simon and tugs on his arm. \u201cExcuse me. Aren\u2019t you..?\u201d she asks. With an unsettling mixture of smug and goofy, Simon responds, \u201cBon. Simon Le Bon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n It gets worse. Simon glances down at his Walkman and sees that it\u2019s now flashing \u201cEIFFEL TOWER.\u201d He grows alarmed (in a goofy way), but there\u2019s no need for panic\u2014on a rack at a souvenir kiosk at the base of the Tower, a postcard of the Eiffel Tower explodes. Fade out.<\/p>\n\n\n I\u2019ve had many years now to mull over why that ending lands with such a thud, and I think it boils down to those traces of smugness. One of the reasons Duran Duran videos have held up so extraordinarily well throughout the decades is that the Durans take them seriously. Even in the \u201cRio<\/a>\u201d video, which is a giddy celebration of physical comedy, the Durans all throw themselves into their roles. They commit, <\/em>damn it. The commitment wobbles here, which is understandable\u2014at this dangerously high and precarious point of their careers, they\u2019re exhausted, they\u2019re overexposed, they\u2019re squabbling with each other, they\u2019re desperate to find some purpose to their lives apart from Being a Duran\u2014and as a result, they don\u2019t stick the landing. Simon smirks, the Eiffel Tower burns, and the original five members of Duran Duran won\u2019t film another video together for almost twenty years.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in 1985, when I was young and the world was dazzling and new, I thought Duran Duran\u2019s video for their hit single \u201cA View to a Kill,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duran-duran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1638,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/1638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"View](\"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/View-To-a-Kill-Duran-Duran-2-Chez-Tayloire.jpg\")
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