'Weird Al' Yankovic, 'Craigslist' -- Video Premiere
- Posted on Jun 15th 2009 11:00AM by Dan Reilly
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If you're wondering what Doors singer Jim Morrison has to do with Craigslist in "Weird Al" Yankovic's new video, the answer is nothing. "I thought it would be anachronistically weird to have me as Jim Morrison screaming about Craigslist," Yankovic tells Spinner. "That just seemed so completely wrong that I thought I had to do it."These days, many of Yankovic's parodies are Internet-themed and the online marketplace was a natural target. "It's a big part of my life personally and it's a very big part of pop culture," he says. "Craigslist is certainly one of the major portals and it was very inspirational to me." Though he's never bought or sold anything on the site personally, Yankovic spent plenty of time browsing it to find inspiration for his lyrics. "My research involved going through all the categories and finding some of the more bizarre entries and posts," he says. "There's the missed connections, the random obscure items, people who just want to rant about something. I tried to get a feeling of the whole Craigslist experience into the song."
The material eventually ended up in this hilariously bizarre video directed by Liam Lynch, whose credits include the Tenacious D movie, which Al calls "great" and "underrated," and Sarah Silverman's 'Jesus Is Magic.' "We had a miniscule budget but we thought we could do it like those cheesy '80s videos the Doors put out with a lot of random stock footage and art house effects," Yankovic says. "We literally shot it in Liam's garage, me in front of a green screen and put it together. We didn't have it in the budget to go into the desert and hire Native Americans to dance with us." The biggest hardship, it seems, was getting into the outfit. "I actually had to go on a bit of a diet to put on those leather pants," Yankovic says. "I wanted to drop a little weight to look like Jim Morrison at age 24, and I'm a little older so it's not as easy for me."
The only real downside to the song's debut would be the possible association to the infamous "Craigslist Killer," who is accused of murdering a woman he met through the site. "I would call that unfortunate timing," Yankovic says. "I obviously wrote and did the song before that all happened and wasn't too pleased to see that be part of the equation. That's kind of a negative." Luckily, the song still retains its absurdly funny charm.
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