Windowlicker

United States

1999

10 Min

Color

2.35:1

English

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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EXEC Rob Mitchell, Steve Beckett

CAST Aphex Twin, Marcus Morris, Gary Cruz, Marcy Turner, Chiquita Martin, Brian Friedman

The music video for “Windowlicker” is a ten-minute long parody of contemporary American gangsta hip-hop music videos. In the video, two foul-mouthed young men (a Latino and an African American) in Los Angeles are window shopping for prostitutes (referred to in the end credits as hoochies); the French term for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine, which literally translates to licking the windows. Suddenly, a ridiculously long white limousine (38 windows in length, including driver’s window, which takes 20 seconds to fully display) crashes into the two men’s black Mazda Miata NA (MX5) convertible, and a “pimped-out” Richard D. James, displaying a surreal amount of wealth and power, emerges with his signature fixed grin. The two women, among others, accompany James in his limousine while their faces morph into James’ own likeness, and are later joined by a woman with horrifically ugly, buck-toothed, deformed face, which is a likeness of a sketch by Swiss artist H.R. Giger titled “The Windowlickers”. The video was directed by Chris Cunningham, who also directed the infamous music video of Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” in 1997.

There are 127 uses of profanity in the dialogue segment of the video (which is under 4 minutes), including 44 uses of the word fuck. This averages to more than one use of profanity every two seconds.

The video was released as a VHS single, containing both uncut and censored versions (the latter being referred to as the “Bleep Version”).

The promo was nominated for the Best Video award at the BRIT Awards 2000, alongside videos by Supergrass, The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, and eventual winner Robbie Williams.

The full “Windowlicker” video is restricted to being broadcast only during the nighttime on most music television channels. A bleeped-out version of the video exists, and MTV Two even made a daytime version, with all the opening dialogue removed (the censored version starts with the arrival of the limousine) and some of the video’s more shocking images are also removed. In 2008, MTV Networks Europe was fined by media regulator Ofcom for several breaches of its broadcasting code, including airing the uncensored version of the “Windowlicker” video before the 9PM watershed.

The cast for the dialogue intro of the clip are Marcus Morris, Gary Cruz, Marcy Turner and Chiquita Martin. —Wikipedia

Director

Chris Cunningham

In 1989, Cunningham worked at Spitting Image, building animatronic robot arms and sculpting caricatures for the TV series. In 1990 he worked on sculpture and animatronics for the film Alien 3.

After seeing Cunningham’s work on the 1994 film version Judge Dredd, Stanley Kubrick head hunted Cunningham to design and supervise animatronic tests of the central robot child character in his version of the film A.I. Cunningham worked for over a year on the film A.I., before leaving to pursue a career as a director.

Earlier work in film included model making, prosthetic make-up and concept illustrations for Hardware and Dust Devil with director Richard Stanley, as well as Nightbreed. In 1990–1992 he contributed the occasional cover painting and strip for Judge Dredd Megazine, working under the pseudonym Chris Halls, the surname of his stepfather.

Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records since his first production for Autechre. Videos… read more

In 1989, Cunningham worked at Spitting Image, building animatronic robot arms and sculpting caricatures for the TV series. In 1990 he worked on sculpture and animatronics for the film Alien 3.

After seeing Cunningham’s work on the 1994 film version Judge Dredd, Stanley Kubrick head hunted Cunningham to design and supervise animatronic tests of the central robot child character in his version of the film A.I. Cunningham worked for over a year on the film A.I., before leaving to pursue a career as a director.

Earlier work in film included model making, prosthetic make-up and concept illustrations for Hardware and Dust Devil with director Richard Stanley, as well as Nightbreed. In 1990–1992 he contributed the occasional cover painting and strip for Judge Dredd Megazine, working under the pseudonym Chris Halls, the surname of his stepfather.

Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records since his first production for Autechre. Videos for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” and “Windowlicker” are perhaps his best known. His video for Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” won multiple awards, including an MTV music video award for Breakthrough Video and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. It was also the first ever music video to win a Gold Pencil at the D&AD Awards. It can still be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His video for Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” was nominated for the “Best Video” award at the Brit Awards 2000. He also directed Madonna’s “Frozen” video.

His video installation Flex was first shown in 2000 at the Royal Academy of Arts, and subsequently at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery and other art galleries. Flex was commissioned by the Anthony d’Offay Gallery for the Apocalypse: Beauty & Horror in Contemporary Art exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal and Max Wigram at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2000.

The Anthony d’Offay Gallery also commissioned Monkey Drummer, a 2 1/2 minute piece intended for exhibition as a companion to Flex at the 2000 Apocalypse exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, however the piece was not finished in time. In it an automaton with nine appendages and the head of a monkey plays the drums to “Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount”, the 10th track on Aphex Twin’s 2001 album drukqs. Monkey Drummer debuted as part of Cunningham’s installation at the 49th International Exhibition of Art at the 2001 Venice Bienalle, which consisted of a loop of Monkey Drummer, Flex, and his video for Björk’s “All Is Full of Love”.

In 2005, Cunningham released the short film Rubber Johnny as a DVD accompanied by a book of photographs and drawings. Rubber Johnny, a six-minute experimental short film cut to a soundtrack by Aphex Twin, remixed by Cunningham was shot between 2001 and 2004. Shot on DV night-vision, it was made in Cunningham’s own time as a home movie of sorts, and took three and half years of weekends to complete. The Telegraph called it “like a Looney Tunes short for a generation raised on video nasties and rave music”.

During this period Cunningham also made another short film for Warp Films, Spectral Musicians, which remains unreleased. The short film was edited to music by Squarepusher, My Fucking Sound, from the album Go Plastic and a piece called Mutilation Colony, which was written especially for the short and was released on the EP Do You Know Squarepusher.

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