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MTV has a great story of Lindsay Lohan and directing her newest music video – “Confessions of a Broken Heart”
The video set starts of with Lindsay Lohan in a bathroom, next to a set of a livingroom and little girls’ bedroom – all open to the public eye in the Chelsea district of New York – right in a storefront window! Actors walk by watching Lindsay lip synch to the music, and she stops it cold – why? Because people can’t hear her music. So, she pumps it out there so her actors really are her audience.
Finally, and most importantly: “My breast popped out! They may have just gotten a shot!”
Lohan’s people scurry off on their various missions: to get playback sound outside, to check monitors and sightlines, and to get the paparazzi to delete any wardrobe-malfunction shots — now!
Now, Lindsay Lohan is the boss of this video. And she had to be. It was not just some whimsical song. It was a tale of her family and what she went through in the last year. And it comes straight from her heart. Only she could tell it.
“I told her, ‘No one can direct this video better than you,’ ” says Tommy Mottola, head of Casablanca Records, Lohan’s label. ” ‘No one knows this song better than you, no one knows this situation better than you.’ It’s a lot to take on, but I told her she’s ready, and we’ll give her all the support she needs.”
Directing this video is a lot to take on, not just technically, but emotionally as well: The song and the clip are about the much-publicized Lohan family drama of the last year, which has landed her parents in a heated divorce and custody battle (her father is currently in prison following an unrelated incident). The lyrics to the song, which Lohan wrote with Kara DioGuardi, read in part, “Daughter to father/ I don’t know you, but I still want to … Tell me the truth/ Did you ever love me?”
The video depicts her father, Michael Lohan (portrayed in the video by actor Drake Andrew), coming home to find Lohan’s mother, Dina (played by British actress Victoria Hay), reading a magazine while the TV blares the news of his most recent arrest for drunk driving. Enraged, he knocks Dina to the floor, drags her across the room by her hair and throws her against the wall.
This vicious fight draws the attention of the onlookers outside, who stop and stare through the storefront windows. Cops arrive too, but they seem more interested in dispersing the crowd than in helping. The scene’s message is this: Lindsay’s world is falling apart, and all anyone will do is watch. “[The video is set] in a storefront, on display, because my life is on display,” she says. “This is all real, by the way — it happened.”
During the fight, Lindsay is in the bathroom — “I’m hiding and writing [the song's lyrics] in the bathroom,” she explains — and her 11-year-old sister, Aliana (who, like Lindsay, appears in the video as herself), is in her bedroom. Both of them listen to the shouting match in the living room, reacting — Lindsay by throwing things around the bathroom, Ali by crying and calling for help.
Lindsay admits that doing the video was hard. She had to stop from doing more takes near the end. It was very emotionally draining.
“As glamorous as this life looks,” she says, “it’s not always.
“I had a lot of personal things going on and my life was out of order. I needed to take control of what was going on. I feel like the past year has been a whirlwind and I’ve just grown up so much.”
In the video, Lindsay is all dolled up, wearing clothes more appropriate for an awards show than an eruption of domestic violence. It’s to signify that she’s “all dressed up [with] nowhere to go,” she says. “We have great clothes. I wanted to do something that was kind of extravagant up top so when we go back and edit, I can catch the light and sparkle.”
It’s not just Lindsay in the video. Her sister comes in too, playing herself. Not many musicians, or actors, take such a literal translation of their lives into their works, and reply what must be horrible moments. I’m impressed.
“Ali, bang on the door!” the assistant director barks. “Make them stop! Go to the phone, Ali! Go to the bed, Ali! Hold the teddy!” Ali is supposed to have just returned home from a ballet class (she’s wearing a tutu) and is running around her bedroom in a frenzy as her “parents” fight in the next room. She’s the spitting image of Lindsay, but still very much a child — occasionally she runs around the set calling, “Mommy, Mommy!”
Ali is cheerful when asked about appearing in this video — she doesn’t mind staying up late, this is fun! But isn’t it bringing back bad memories? She looks down, nods, and mumbles, “Sorta, yeah.”
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Technorati Tags: lindsay lohan
