By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Yo La Tengo’s “I’ll Be Around” (4’49″), as seen in Bon Appetit
Video by Phil Morrison.
From Bon Appetit:
Why did you decide to put the recipe, and the rest of the text, over the video?
Ira Kaplan: It was the director’s idea, and we liked it. I think the first thought was that we liked the idea of information–there’s lyrics, there’s lyrics that aren’t part of the song, and there’s the recipe onscreen. I think it’s at a point where the text provides information, but it also obfuscates as well. I don’t think anyone knew until they saw it if it was going to work, but conceptually, it had the capacity of touching on a couple of bases that would otherwise be hard to show visually.
Why the eating scene?
IK: I’m not dying to talk about the meaning of the song, but we felt that it was appropriate to the spirit of the song, and I don’t think in particularly obscure ways… [Bass player] James McNew has made the tortilla before, but we hadn’t made the tortilla soup. So the tortilla was the first part of the menu, then we needed a complete meal.
And were you actually cooking it on-screen?
IK: Oh yeah. We’re not actors.
