{"id":596,"date":"2013-12-03T14:40:41","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T22:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/?p=596"},"modified":"2023-03-09T13:54:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T21:54:28","slug":"duranalysis-duran-duran-falling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/duranalysis-duran-duran-falling\/","title":{"rendered":"Duranalysis: Falling Down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For something new and different, we\u2019re moving out of Duran Duran\u2019s golden era and heading all the way up to 2007 with a look at the video for \u201cFalling Down\u201d, the only single released off their Timbaland\/Justin Timberlake-produced Red Carpet Massacre<\/em> album. The song wasn\u2019t a hit, but the video, which was directed by Anthony Mandler, is stylish and sleazy and fun. Let\u2019s hit it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the backseat of a limousine, a father gives a pep talk to his beautiful teen daughter, whom he is dropping off at a rehabilitation hospital. He\u2019s trying to sell her on the whole rehab concept (\u201cIt\u2019s like school. It looks better<\/em> than your school!\u201d), but she\u2019s having none of it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The daughter is played by model Allie Crandell, formerly of MTV\u2019s scripted reality series The City<\/em>. She\u2019s lovely, but really, she looks like a kid. It\u2019s right for the role, don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014after all, in an article for People<\/em>, the Durans claimed they loosely based her character on Britney Spears (this would have been more topical in 2007)\u2014but I\u2019m old enough and curmudgeonly enough not to want to see kids in Duran Duran videos. Duran videos have long been known for their gorgeous, worldly women, many of whom seem far too adult and sophisticated for the guys to handle\u2014think Shelia Ming clawing the hell out of Simon in \u201cHungry Like the Wolf\u201d, or Patricia Barzyk zipping around the French countryside on a motorcycle before cheerfully betraying the boys to the occupying forces in \u201cNew Moon on Monday\u201d, or Reema Ruspoli kicking Roger into the surf in \u201cRio.\u201d Here, we get Allie whining to her dad that she can\u2019t bring champagne into rehab. Oh, how times have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allie staggers up to the hospital entrance, half-dragged by a pair of orderlies, stilettos falling off her feet. This video was shot at the long-abandoned Linda Vista Community Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. It\u2019s a great building<\/a>, old and decaying and rumored to be haunted (from the Travel Channel\u2019s Ghost Adventures website: \u201cThree spirits in particular have been sighted on multiple occasions: a little girl lurks in the surgical room; a young woman paces the hallways of the third floor; and the spirit of an orderly still makes his daily rounds\u201d). Not that the presence of a little non-corporeal activity would bother Duran Duran in the slightest; I\u2019m pretty certain Nick Rhodes drinks the blood of various supernatural creatures each morning for breakfast in lieu of coffee. Or he would, at least, if he could be bothered to get out of bed early enough.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The hospital is staffed by all the Durans. There\u2019s Doctor Simon in his office, surrounded by files, looking adorably brainy in his white coat and spectacles. Because he is Simon Le Bon, he\u2019s perpetually flanked by a sexy nurse sporting tons of visible cleavage.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Doctor Simon leads the rehab patients, all of whom are languid young beauties in feathers and sequins and underwear and strange hats and stilettos, in a group therapy session. Popular rehab leisure-time activities at this facility include chain-smoking, knitting, tearing up fashion magazines, bathing while clothed, and posing for selfies with Simon\u2019s sexy nurse. This video could be pretty unsavory\u2014a gaggle of half-dressed, drugged-out, vulnerable young women are trapped in a grim, creepy, asylum-like hospital in the care of a bunch of older men\u2014but, hell, this is Duran Duran we\u2019re talking about. Even now that they\u2019re all safely ensconced in middle age, they still<\/em> have more in common with the patients than the doctors: the beauty, the glamour, the outlandish fashions, the dissolute behavior, the constant state of chaos\u2026 They may be playing doctors, but they\u2019re identifying with the patients.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

(Duran Duran will take this concept to its logical conclusion a few years later in 2011\u2019s fabulous \u201cGirl Panic!<\/a>\u201d video, in which a quintet of glamorous, gorgeous, world-famous supermodels\u2014Naomi, Cindy, Helena, Eva and Yasmin\u2014portray the Durans, while the Durans themselves hover about in small supporting roles. As music journalist Rob Sheffield put it in his memoir, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran<\/em>, \u201c[Duran Duran] liked girls enough to want to look like girls.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, there\u2019s Our Nick, peeping through windows and running around with a camera and being admirably strange, as per usual. File this under Goes Without Saying: If you find yourself ambushed by a Super 8-wielding Nick Rhodes while you\u2019re just trying to detox and recuperate in peace, it\u2019s time to check yourself into a different hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The lovely John Taylor, meanwhile, administers pills to the patients. Man. John Taylor. All the Durans still look good, but John, man, John has aged beautifully<\/em>. Considering all he\u2019s been through over the past thirty years of hyper-celebrity, he should be a withered, desiccated husk of a Duran by now. That bone structure hasn\u2019t failed him yet.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

None of the band members, by the way, are at all plausible as medical professionals. I don\u2019t care how many clipboards you tote around, Simon, I still<\/em> don\u2019t buy you as a doctor. Mind you, the Durans have convincingly portrayed a wide variety of characters in their videos. Killer spies<\/a>? Sure. Post-apocalyptic warriors<\/a>? Yep. Weapons-smuggling revolutionaries<\/a>? No problem. Zombie bait<\/a>? Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctors? Nah. I don\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although\u2026 Partial credit to Roger here. Roger is somewhat plausible as a doctor. I wouldn\u2019t burst into giggles if he waved a stethoscope in my general direction, at least, so that counts for something.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Performance time! All the patients gather in the rec room to listen to the band. New patient Allie, who has been having some difficulties adjusting to rehab life, has to be wrestled to her seat by the orderlies. Naturally, this all happens while she\u2019s clad in nude underwear and a feathered shrug. The Department of Public Health might be verrrry<\/em> interested in learning about some of this facility\u2019s, ah, unconventional treatment practices.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

During the performance, we see several shots of Nick singing along, which\u2026 well, that\u2019s just wrong. I\u2019m pretty sure the band is just messing with us, because if there\u2019s one constant in this crazy and unstable universe, it\u2019s that Nick does not sing. Onstage, Nick plays his keyboards while looking icy and glamorous and otherworldly, and that\u2019s it. Seeing Nick singing his heart out seems vaguely unnatural, like seeing him without his makeup. Some things simply aren\u2019t done.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

(There\u2019s a little behind-the-scenes piece<\/a> about \u201cFalling Down\u201d on YouTube, in which a reporter visits the set and asks the guys about their personal interpretations of the video. Simon gets literal (\u201cThe concept of the video is models in rehab\u201d), Roger gets earnest (\u201cIt\u2019s all about people going through bad times and how they cope with it\u201d), and Nick gets straight to the heart of the matter (\u201cBasically, it\u2019s girls dressed up in nurse\u2019s uniforms and nice shoes\u201d). This sort of response is why Nick is still the unparalleled master of the Art of Being a Duran.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, finally, Allie leaves the hospital, looking confident and healthy. She crawls back into the limo with her dad, where she immediately pops a cork and swills some champagne.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This ending didn\u2019t sit well with John, who\u2019s been sober since going through rehab for alcoholism and addiction in 1994. As he told People<\/em>, \u201cI didn\u2019t like that at all. I wanted it to be a little more ambiguous at the end, because I\u2019m a believer in recovery.\u201d Huge props to John, by the way, because it can\u2019t be easy staying sober when you\u2019re a world-famous pop star. Staying sober when you\u2019re a world-famous pop star in Duran Duran<\/em>? That\u2019s got to be damn near impossible. Look, when these fabulous bitches go on tour, they travel with a custom-made portable wine cellar<\/a>. It holds 120 bottles! If anyone ever suggested that it might seem somewhat callous and inconsiderate to lug around 120 bottles of excellent wine when traveling with a recovering alcoholic who also happens to be one of your closest friends in the world, Simon would probably yawn and wander off, and Nick would roll his beautifully-lined eyes and patiently explain that, see, he likes traveling with a lot of wine, and the subject would never be raised again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as Allie\u2019s limo pulls away from the hospital over the opening bars of \u201cNotorious,\u201d the video draws to a close. Fine stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For something new and different, we\u2019re moving out of Duran Duran\u2019s golden era and heading all the way up to 2007 with a look at the video for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","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\/596","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=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1655,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/1655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}