Mark Romanek

Mark Romanek (/roʊˈmænɪk/;[1] born September 18, 1959) is an American filmmaker whose directing work includes feature films, television, music videos and commercials. Romanek wrote and directed the 2002 film One Hour Photo and directed the 2010 film Never Let Me Go. His most notable music videos include "Hurt" (Johnny Cash), "Closer" (Nine Inch Nails), "Can't Stop" (Red Hot Chili Peppers), "Rain" (Madonna), "Bedtime Story" (Madonna), "Scream" (Michael & Janet Jackson), "Criminal" (Fiona Apple), and "Shake It Off" (Taylor Swift). He also co-directed "Sandcastles" from Beyoncé’s Lemonade album. Romanek's music videos have won 20 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Direction for Jay-Z's "99 Problems", and he has won three Grammy Awards for Best Short Form Music Video - more than any other director.

Mark Romanek
Romanek in 2010
Born (1959-09-18) September 18, 1959
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
OccupationDirector, screenwriter, producer
Years active1985–present
Spouse(s)Brigette McWilliams

Background

Romanek was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Shirlee and Marvin Romanek.[2] He is Jewish.[3] He credits seeing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of nine with inspiring him to become a film director.[4][5] He experimented with Super 8 and 16mm film as a teenager while attending New Trier High School. There, he studied first with Kevin Dole, a local filmmaker who was already creating a form of music video on his own in the mid-1970s, and then with Peter Kingsbury, a filmmaker who had studied with experimentalists Owen Land, John Luther Schofill, and Stan Brakhage at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Both teachers exposed students to works by significant figures of the American avant-garde cinema, such as Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Paul Sharits.

Romanek subsequently attended Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, and graduated from its Roy H. Park School of Communications with a degree in cinema and photography. He served as second assistant director for Brian De Palma on Home Movies, an autobiographical film De Palma conceived as an exercise for his students at Sarah Lawrence College (having returned to his alma mater as an instructor of film production). On set, Romanek met Keith Gordon, playing De Palma's alter ego. Gordon remembers Romanek's entrance into film production:

I actually met a lot of people who became important in my life, but Mark being one of the people who was really huge. Mark wasn't even officially one of the students in the class. Mark was kind of like me – he was a film geek. He was from Chicago. And he had followed Brian around on the set of The Fury and gotten a job as a production assistant on that movie. And when he heard that Brian was doing this project, he basically contacted him and said, 'Listen, can I come to New York and basically be like one of the students, even though I'm not technically in the class?' And Brian said, 'Fine.' So Mark became the second assistant director on the film. And he and I just hit it off pretty quickly. We had a similar passion for Stanley Kubrick. He showed me his short films, which I thought were really good and showed a lot of visual flair.

Romanek released his first film, Static, in 1985. It was co-written with Gordon and starred Gordon as a man who claimed he had invented a television set capable of showing a live picture of Heaven. The film achieved something of a cult following in London and led to Romanek's first job at the helm of a music video for the British new wave group The The, who featured on the soundtrack for Static, in 1986.

Career

Music videos

After a few years writing screenplays, Romanek decided to focus on music videos and signed on with Satellite Films, a division of Propaganda Films. His subsequent work has come to be regarded as among the best of the medium. He has worked with many top-selling recording artists from different genres of popular music, and his videos have been given credit for making stars out of some. One of his notable videos was for the Nine Inch Nails song "Closer". Its critical acclaim was only matched by its controversy, with many accusing the video as being disturbing and demonic (a big reason why the video was so popular among fans). Romanek would again work with Nine Inch Nails for the song "The Perfect Drug".

Romanek was given his first Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video in 1996 for "Scream", a collaboration between the pop superstar siblings Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. The video, which cost $7 million to make, is cited as one of the most expensive ever made. Romanek won his second Grammy two years later, again with Janet Jackson, for her video "Got 'Til It's Gone". In 2002, Romanek shot a video for Audioslave's "Cochise" in which the band performed in the midst of a prolonged pyrotechnic display of the intensity usually seen only during fireworks finales. The explosions were so loud during the night shoot in the San Fernando Valley that local police and fire departments received hundreds of calls from residents who feared that a terrorist attack was under way.

Romanek's 2002 music video for Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" has been hailed by many critics and fans alike as the most personal and moving music video ever made. The song expresses self-loathing and the futility of worldly accomplishments; this content took on a new poignancy when sung by Cash near the end of his life, quietly performing in his memorabilia-filled home, with shots of the flood-ravaged "House of Cash" museum and archival shots of a younger, cockier Cash edited in. The video was nominated for seven VMAs, winning one for cinematography, and also won Romanek his third Grammy.

Other Romanek videos that have received accolades and awards include the VMA winners "Free Your Mind" (En Vogue), "Are You Gonna Go My Way" (Lenny Kravitz), "Rain" (Madonna), "Devil's Haircut" (Beck), "99 Problems" (Jay-Z), and "Criminal" (Fiona Apple). Many others have also received nominations. In 1997, Romanek received the VMA Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for his contribution to the medium. Two of his music videos, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails and "Bedtime Story" by Madonna, have been made part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Romanek directed Jay-Z's performance art video for the song "Picasso Baby", which aired on HBO on August 2, 2013. The video was shot inside the Pace Gallery in New York and featured a group of personalities from the world of art, including Marina Abramović, whose 2010 performance art work "The Artist is Present" inspired the video.[6][7] This marked Romanek's first music video in eight years, his last being Coldplay's video for "Speed of Sound" in 2005.

Romanek then directed "Filthy" by Justin Timberlake and "Rescue Me" by Thirty Seconds to Mars, which both premiered in 2018.

Feature films

In 2002, Romanek wrote and directed his second feature film, One Hour Photo, about a department store photo processor (performed by Robin Williams) who becomes obsessed with a family through their snapshots. The film proved to be only a moderate hit, but still established Romanek as a respected film director. Rumors spread that the studio, Fox Searchlight, had forced changes on Romanek that seriously altered the film from how he had intended it. He has dismissed this story, however, stating that there never was a "director's cut" of One Hour Photo and that the studio did not exercise any editorial control.

In 2005, Romanek was scheduled to direct a film adaptation of the book A Cold Case, but the project languished in development hell. In December 2005, it was announced that he would direct A Million Little Pieces, the film adaptation of the book of the same name, but due to events regarding the authenticity of the book's content, the film was not made. On February 8, 2007, he signed on to direct The Wolfman, but dropped out. He also signed on to direct The Strangers, but also dropped out due to not receiving a bigger budget.

Romanek's third feature was the 2010 British dystopian drama Never Let Me Go. In October 2011, he was planning on taking over from director Ron Howard on the film adaptation of Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Lost Symbol.[8] However, the film was eventually scrapped in favor of making Brown's fourth novel, Inferno, into a feature film instead.

Filmography
Main article: Mark Romanek videography
Year Title Director Writer Notes
1985 Static Yes Yes Directorial Debut
2002 One Hour Photo Yes Yes Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Breakthrough Filmmaker
Nominated- Saturn Award for Best Writing
2010 Never Let Me Go Yes No Nominated- British Independent Film Awards for Best Director

Further reading
  • Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena: Video Thrills The Radio Star. Musikvideos: Geschichte, Themen, Analysen. Bielefeld 2005, p. 335ss., p. 344ss.
  • "`(...) an unforgettable emotional impact´ - Jay-Z/Mark Romanek: `99 Problems´", in: Klaus Herding/Antje Krause Wahl (Eds.), Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen - Emotionen in Nahsicht, Taunusstein: Driesen 2007, p. 321 - 342
gollark: Cool, do that.
gollark: This is an easy problem if you simply communicate your guess to LyricLy and they tell you if it's right. Of course, they could be lying, and you may not want to reveal your guess publicly.
gollark: I was also thinking that it would be useful if we could give someone all the points ever after they somehow commit to revealing the information Host gives them to everyone who gave them all the points ever, but I don't think that's possible.
gollark: We'd need some kind of protocol where you actively exchange information to stop you from just "verifying" that you know it's 1, 2, 3, 4, ....
gollark: It is, yes.

References
  1. "NIN: The Making of the "Closer" Video". Nine Inch Nails. March 16, 2009. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
  2. "Ithaca College Quarterly, 2003/No. 1". Ithaca.edu. 2003-04-28. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  3. dmichaels (4 June 2013). "Out in the Cold - Jewish Exponent". Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  4. Archived February 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Archived December 12, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  6. Buchanan, Kyle (2014-08-19). "The Inside Story of Jay Z's 'Picasso Baby' Video". Vulture. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  7. JAY Z's Life+Times (2013-08-02). "JAY Z "Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film" - YouTube". M.youtube.com. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  8. Fleming, Mike (October 19, 2011). "Mark Romanek Frontrunner for Sony's 'The Lost Symbol'". Deadline.
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