{"id":1216,"date":"2018-03-31T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-01T00:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2023-03-05T06:16:31","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T14:16:31","slug":"duran-duran-chauffeur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/duran-duran-chauffeur\/","title":{"rendered":"Duranalysis: The Chauffeur"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ll only watch you leave me further behind\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While \u201cThe Chauffeur,\u201d a track off of Duran Duran\u2019s\u00a0Rio<\/em>\u00a0album, was never released as a single, it\u2019s beloved by critics, die-hard Duranies, and dabblers alike, thanks to its sleekly melancholy tune and its enigmatic lyrics, which were reportedly written by Simon Le Bon while on a kibbutz in Israel in his pre-Duran days. \u201cThe Chauffeur\u201d is Simon at his most enigmatic and Lewis Carrollesque; surely\u00a0\u201cOut on the tar plains, the glides are moving\/All looking for a new place to drive\u201d<\/em>\u00a0is 1982\u2019s response to \u201cTwas brillig, and the slithy toves\/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.\u201d The video was directed by Birmingham artist\/filmmaker Ian Emes, who\u2019d already achieved a degree of fame for\u00a0his animated videos for Pink Floyd.\u00a0Much as \u201cThe Chauffeur\u201d is a beloved song, the video is equally beloved, for a few obvious reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. It\u2019s beautifully shot<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. It\u2019s stylish as hell<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. It has boobs in it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I\u2019m not talking about the in-your-face porn-film boobs of\u00a0the uncut version of \u201dGirls on Film.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Shot in black-and-white and dripping with luxurious style, like a\u00a0Helmut Newton photo shoot<\/a>\u00a0come to life, \u201cThe Chauffeur\u201d is filled with tasteful, sophisticated, art-film boobs. High-end perfume ad boobs.\u00a0Vogue Paris<\/em>\u00a0editorial-spread boobs. Classy stuff, in other words. Largely as a result of this video, \u201cThe Chauffeur\u201d has become inextricably linked with high fashion over the years, which is probably why it\u2019s a perennial pick to play as\u00a0background music at runway shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As the video opens, a beautiful dark-haired woman rides in the backseat of an elegant chauffeur-driven car gliding through the streets of London. Because someone out there will want to know, I can tell you that, according to Wikipedia, the car is an Austin Princess limousine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Austin<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The woman is (half-)dressed in jewels and what looks like expensive lingerie: corset, stockings, garter belt, elbow-length satin gloves, heels. Caught up in a fit of onanistic passion, she fondles her own stocking-clad thighs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    From the driver\u2019s seat, the chauffeur impassively watches her in his rearview mirror. Despite bearing a passing resemblance to a present-day Roger Taylor, the chauffeur is emphatically not a Duran. There are no Durans anywhere to be seen, in fact, which is why, in seven years of writing these Duranalyses, I\u2019m only just now getting around to addressing this video. It\u2019s a well-made video; I like it and appreciate it. Would I like it more if it featured a bevy of beautiful Durans to balance out the bevy of beautiful lingerie-clad women? Yes. Yes, I would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Still writhing around in barely-contained passion, the dark-haired woman gives her expensively corseted boobs a quick grope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    This is all intercut with footage of another beautiful and elegant young woman, this one blonde, waking up in a luxurious hotel suite. I have many pressing questions about her choice of sleepwear: mesh bodysuit, wide leather belt, nylons. At least she took off her teetering stiletto pumps, which are resting beside the bed, before curling up for a nap. Lost in her own barely-contained passion, she gropes her boobs a bit, then runs her hands along her thighs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    I can speak only for myself, but the women in this video seem to grope themselves in unrestrained passion more frequently than my personal experience would indicate is typical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThe Chauffeur,\u201d a story about a pair of grimly purposeful clandestine lovers locked in a secret passion, with the chauffeur serving as a mute third party to their m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois, takes itself very seriously. In 2011, an older, wiser, more relaxed version of Duran Duran would pay playful homage to this video with\u00a0\u201cGirl Panic!\u201d<\/a>, which kicks off with a beautiful woman\u2014Naomi Campbell, playing a gender-switched Simon Le Bon\u2014dressed in couture bondage gear waking up in a luxurious hotel suite. \u201cGirl Panic!\u201d also features a chauffeur played by John Taylor, who is driving around a beautiful dark-haired woman played by Cindy Crawford, who is playing a gender-switched John Taylor, because \u201cGirl Panic!\u201d is a cavalcade of glamorous and glorious whimsy. Point being, if \u201cThe Chauffeur\u201d had just had the foresight to recruit John Taylor to play the role of the chauffeur, it would\u2019ve established the groundwork for a gag that would\u2019ve reaped\u00a0amazing<\/em>\u00a0dividends thirty years down the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"John<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Seriously, \u201cThe Chauffeur\u201d should\u2019ve found a way to squeeze a Duran or two into it. I miss the boys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the back of the limousine, an array of spherical objects\u2014beads? ball bearings? gumballs?\u2014roll around the floor. Even though the dark-haired woman is the only passenger, there are two already-poured cut-crystal coupe glasses filled with champagne on a low table beside her. Either she\u2019s impatient for someone to join her, or she\u2019s a two-fisted champagne drinker. There are no wrong answers here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The blonde woman in the hotel suite changes out of her impractical sleepwear into impractical lingerie\u2014bra, panties, stockings, lace gloves, garter belt\u2014and poses for too long while staring glumly at her reflection in the mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    You look fine, lady. Let\u2019s keep this video moving along, shall we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    She strides through London streets, clutching a Burberry trench coat tightly over her lingerie. She crosses a bridge, passing a couple lurking in the shadows, whereupon she gets accosted and briefly groped by a woman in sunglasses and a trench coat. This video is exposing me to a heretofore unexplored stereotype about Londoners: Wander around alone at night, and you run the risk of getting groped by stylish women in trench coats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The limousine parks in an empty parking structure. As the blonde woman approaches the car, the dark-haired woman slides out of the back seat and walks toward her, both women vibrating with frissons of barely-confined erotic passion. The brunette silently urges the blonde woman to remove her coat, whereupon they begin\u2026 dancing? Sort of? Both women are grim and utterly lethargic, so in lieu of actual dancing, they end up sort of shifting their hips and shoulders around a bit while playing a sexy version of pattycake with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The chauffeur gets out of the limousine, whereupon he transforms into a platinum bombshell, played by writer\/dancer\/Blitz Kid<\/a>\u00a0Perri Lister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Perri<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The chauffeur whips off her coat and cap. Now topless, but still wearing her leather driving gloves and a high-waisted leather cummerbund, she begins doing a bizarre, contortion-heavy dance. Lister is a trained dancer, so she pulls it off; while strange, her dance is gobs more interesting than the listless gyrations of the two solemn ladies in lingerie. A couple of years after this video, Lister will also appear in the extended version of\u00a0the \u201cWild Boys\u201d video\u00a0as the bare-chested Wild Girl amongst the bunch of feral mutants; while Lister is not the only actress to pop up in two separate Duran Duran videos\u2014she shares that honor with Vanya Seager (\u201cLonely in Your Nightmare\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cSave a Prayer\u201d) and Tess Daly (\u201cSerious\u201d and\u00a0\u201cViolence of Summer\u201d) and probably others I\u2019m forgetting\u2014she\u2019s surely the only one to flash her breasts in two separate Duran Duran videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Peri<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Lister\u2019s dance is an homage to an iconic scene in the stylish-but-sordid 1974 sadomasochistic psychodrama The Night Porter<\/em>, in which a topless Charlotte Rampling dances for Nazis while wearing a man\u2019s trousers, suspenders, and a cap from an SS uniform, which bears an unsettling resemblance to a chauffeur\u2019s cap.<\/p>\n\n\n

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

    The dancing in the parking garage goes on for a ridiculously long time, because if there\u2019s anything we\u2019ve learned from\u00a0\u201cNew Moon on Monday\u201d\u00a0and Arcadia\u2019s\u00a0\u201cElection Day,\u201d\u00a0it\u2019s this: Whenever Duran Duran can\u2019t figure out how to gracefully wrap up a video, they end it by throwing a long and weird dance party. We all have much to learn from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019ll only watch you leave me further behind\u2026 While \u201cThe Chauffeur,\u201d a track off of Duran Duran\u2019s\u00a0Rio\u00a0album, was never released as a single, it\u2019s beloved by critics, die-hard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duran-duran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1513,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}