STORY BEHIND A VIDEO: Taste in men

Today we'll have a closer look at one of my favourite Placebo videos.
According to Brian “Taste in men“ is a song that was “meant to confuse“ and so also the music clip leaves the watcher with more questions than answers.
It plays a lot with Brian's androgyny and and with his ambiguous sexual orientation and preferences. The video shows Brian involved in a strange love triangle with a rowing couple but in the end everything about their encounter is questionable and you don't know if it was real.

Listen to the song here: ♫ TASTE IN MEN ♫

Placebo hired Barbara McDonough as video director because of a MTV advert she made where she used ‘Nancy Boy’ as the music. “We thought that she’d done it specially and decided to employ her to do ‘Taste in men’“, Steve Hewitt explained.Barbara said that the band wanted a narrative video without them performing and the label wanted one that deals with Brian's androgyny. For her the lyrics suggested some kind of relationship and the final inspiration for the plot came from the film “L'Année dernière à Marienbad” ('Last year at Marienbad').

In the first place “Taste in men” should be shot in a hotel but due to the fact that most hotels don't want to disrupt paying guests, they didn't find one that would let a film crew take over. “We were on a modest budget, so we hadn't much to offer for those few hotels that might have been swayed to close off a floor”, Barbara McDonough explained.

Finally the video was recorded in the registry office in central London where JohnLennon and Yoko Ono got hitched. “It’s the rock’n’roll registry office, where music industry people get married“, Brian joked in the “Once more with feeling” DVD. “And where me and Steve spent a 22 hours shooting. 21 hours doing nothing and spent half an hour filming,“ Stefan added. Originally the recording session was planned for two days but as the crew had to change the location from a hotel to the registry office they could only film on the one day when it was closed, and so it became one very long shooting.

Brian's female partner for the video was found in a casting. Then Barbara and the band thought it would be great if the male “Taste in men” counterpart had a similar appearance. The young man they choose was out of the country during the casting, so they had to pick him based on a tape and his portfolio. “Unfortunately his agent didn't tell him not to cut his hair so by the time he made it to set it was no longer the same length as hers or Brian's”, the video director revealed. 

By the way: Brian said that the reason why he likes this video so much is that “I think my hair looks extremely good in it” (“Once more with feelin” DVD). In retrospect Barbare McDonough said that Brian, Stefan and Steve were all lovely to work with on the set. “The band was good natured and Brian was a real trooper. But we filmed the bed scene last and I'm sure by that point he was thrilled to be curled up in bed”.


Sources: Placebo Story Project, Once more with feeling DVD
Photo credit: Screenshots of the video / edit by me
Post by Silke