Russell Mulcahy

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Russell Mulcahy (born June 23, 1953 in Melbourne, Victoria) is an Australian short film, music video, feature film, commercial and television director.

  • Co-founded, with Lexi Godfrey and David Mallet, MGM Productions - 1980-1982
  • Co-founded, with manager Gerry Laffy, Le Bad Films - 1981-1992

Contents

[edit] Biography

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Please improve this article if you can. (March 2008)
  • Taken from "Russell Mulcahy - Contrived Mindflashes"

Everybody knows that Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" launched the start of MTV. But that video also launched the start of director Russell Mulcahy's music video career. "Technically, this video was pretty ropey... But the ideas and the energy were there - after this video, record labels came to me for my 'look' and pretty much gave me a free conceptual rein."

It wasn't always this way for Mr. Mulcahy. Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Russell started his film career at the ripe old age of 14 shooting Super-8 films. At 17 he moved to Sydney, landing a job as Channel 7 News' film editor. With all that editing equipment around, and a bit of financing, he made two experimental films: Contrived Mindflashes and Delicious Dreams To Survive Depression, starting him down the road of imagery and pictorial compositioning for which he is known. It was with these films that he began experimenting with techniques that would later show up in his music videos, such as using inks on bodies as in Duran Duran's "Rio." With both films taking first place at subsequent Sydney Film Festivals (1972 and 1973), Russell Mulcahy began to get noticed.

Pop promos were a regular part of the European marketing scene and were beginning to infiltrate the American market also. Australia, which had one of the earliest rock video shows, had no home grown music videos to speak of. Host Graham Webb rang up Russell Mulcahy and convinced him to start making videos for Australian bands. Armed with an old car, a camera, and a partner, Russell drove around the country making cheap videos of the local groups. By 1976 he had built up an impressive reel and was invited to shoot a punk band over in England. This "short stay" turned into a permanent one, with Virgin Record's Richard Branson asking him to do a "few weeks" film for a Peter Cook/Dudley Moore Derek and Clive feature, a project which ended up taking six months. He continued to work with Virgin Records and later Jon Roseman, averaging a clip a week for a time.

By 1980, he had taken up permanent residency in London and had started MGM Productions with David Mallet and Lexi Godfrey. Their reputation had been steadily growing, and when EMI decided to pull out the big bucks ($200,000, a princely sum in those days) for three Duran Duran videos, Russell Mulcahy was the man they chose. The subsequent videos, "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Save a Prayer," and "Lonely In Your Nightmare," were all shot in Sri Lanka. "Hungry Like the Wolf" showed the power of MTV, turning up in heavy rotation on the station followed by heavy radio airplay and the album quickly moving into the Top Ten in the U.S.

Mr. Mulcahy's style tends to fall into two camps: the Hollywood epic portrayed in videos such as The Motels' "Only the Lonely"; and the pictorially composed photographic style as in Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know" which takes its cue from the paintings of Magritte. Many of his techniques were copied by subsequent music video directors to the extent that they became music video cliches. He was the first to introduce the black border on the top and bottom of the image, his way of making the television screen look like a Cinemascope. The art of sequential split-screen and triple-screen edits was perfected by Russell. He even pioneered a style of mixing film cuts, some on the beat some against. His music videos are full of references to feature films, like Ultravox's "The Thin Wall" with the arms emerging from the wall ala Roman Polanski's Repulsion or the boy trapped in the TV Poltergeist style in Billy Joel's "Pressure." Other trademark Mulcahyisms are slow flowing water, strobe lights, slow motion shattering objects, and back lit sets with opaque images in the front.

1984 saw Mr. Mulcahy turning his camera toward feature work, filming Razorback, a film about a mutant razorback like creature terrorizing the Australian outback. His next film, Highlander (1986), was a romping, amusing fantasy enjoyed by many, but the sequels to this film were below par. Most of his other films since then have not been box office successes either, although his first foray into the television arena, On the Beach (2000) received good press. Since Highlander, he has made only seven more music videos, most for Elton John, and hasn't made one since 1994's "Original Sin" for Taylor Dayne.

[edit] On working with him

"I started managing Russell in DEC 1982 really but helped out from a year or so before...although i am credited as 'Directors Assist.' on these vids, I was more useful in helping the DD managers give Russell more money to turn a live show, ' AS THE LIGHTS GO DOWN', into ARENA, a DD Movie. Simon in particular wanted to do something with THE WILD BOYS, A William Burrough's book that Russell had the rights for. I helped put the deal together that let the guys keep the song and Russell to have $500,000 (and a large fee) to shoot a stylised 10 Min. Version of roughly what he would do for a WILD BOYS movie. As it turns out he maxed out the project over that 10 Mins".

"From my time working at London Weekend TV as a graphic artist I had met a load of people who were working on music videos... one of them was Russell Mulcahy. He was Australian and had made a big name for himself directing videos for new bands like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, The Members, the Vapours, Sex Pistols, and XTC etc. He was Richard Branson’s pet and he was also lucky that a number of these bands took off. He did a woman called Kim Carnes who had an enormous hit with Bette Davis Eyes that launched him big style especially in USA. He also directed Video Killed The Radio Star the video that launched MTV. At that stage the Eltons, The Rods, The Stones, Fleetwood Macs all came out of the woodwork and we were as hot as the new MTV video business got. But he really wanted to make films, so he devised a plan to shoot mini films really to try to blag a big one. He was the first to use a cropped screen, he always shot on film, never video etc it worked as it was the Duran Duran Sri Lanka videos of Hungry Like A Wolf and Save a Prayer that got him his first $5 million budget film".

"We disbanded Le Bad Films in 1992. I set up another company called Laffy/Michaels Filmworks in 1994. We then set up and financed a movie ‘Vampire$’ but it got made by John Carpenters company eventually so I went home to the UK in late 1995 having been stung by Hollywood greed and treachery. It’s a merciless place Hollywood. I still managed Russell until July 1997 (that’s a 15 year stint). I had a young child and a new house outside of London, I had jetted between London and LA since I moved back in 1995 and that was OK but my contract was due to expire in July 1997 and Russell had intended to move back to Australia and that was not something I wanted so we both realized it had run its course. As they say nothing lasts forever. Just so happens though 2 weeks before that contract expired I had a phone call that would span one gig over the next 3 years.

"Usually my role was simply to get Russell as much money for a fee and for a budget. But by the nature of these mini films I was often utilised for production roles, I co-produced a few, as band liaison (schmoozing with rock stars. tough job), as an extra, as script writer, costume assistant, whatever was needed. Occasionally the deals would be intricate i.e. the Wild Boys for Duran Duran. Russell owned the film right to the William Burroughs book, so I set up the deal where he got to make a 10 minute stylised version of the film he intended to make so long as the boys were featured in it. The band retained all rights to the song. That became a 12 minute part of the Duran Duran ‘Arena - An Absurd Notion’ feature film".

"They had one kid coding [recording film that had been shot] -- that's all he did for 14 or 15 hours a day," Honess recalled. "I said, 'What are all those rolls of film over there?' And he said, 'Those are the 76 rolls I haven't got to yet. That's your scene tomorrow.' It helped him control my panic and fear of film. If you're going to be intimidated by the 100,000 feet coming your way for a two-minute battle scene, then you're in the wrong business".

[edit] Music videos

Russell Mulcahy's career began with making music videos. The videos he directed include:

He also directed videos for Taylor Dayne, Rod Stewart, Def Leppard, Boy George, Kenny Loggins, Arcadia, Falco, Go West, Cliff Richard, Supertramp, The Motels, Talk Talk, The Stranglers, 10cc, Comateens, The Human League, XTC, and AC/DC.

[edit] Filmography as director

[edit] Commercials

  • Ford Motor Company
  • British Petroleum
  • Doritos
  • Opel
  • Smirnoff
  • Miller Brewing
  • Universal Studios

[edit] Awards

  • Sydney Film Festival short film section 1st prize (1972)
  • Sydney Film Festival short film section 1st prize (1973)
  • Countdown Music & Video Awards
  • Mtv Video Awards
  • Mtv Video Vanguard Awards
  • Brit Awards
  • Grammy Awards
  • American Video Awards

[edit] Highlander series

In 1986, Mulcahy directed the cult classic film Highlander, starring Christopher Lambert and featuring music from Queen. He later directed the sequel, Highlander II: The Quickening, but disowned it after the producers interfered with production. Reportedly he wanted to have his credit changed to Alan Smithee, but as he wasn't a member of the Directors Guild of America, he had no way of forcing the producers to change the credit. He eventually took the opportunity to restore his vision for the film — to a large extent — with the video releases of Highlander II: The Renegade Version.

[edit] External links