Adam Green, 'What Makes Him Act So Bad' -- Video Premiere

Posted on Feb 16th 2010 11:00AM by Linda Laban
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Adam Green took a trip down memory lane while filming the video for his latest single, 'What Makes Him Act So Bad,' at New York's infamous Chelsea Hotel. "I spent a lot of time there in my formative years. My record label used to be there. I had good times," Green tells Spinner. "We treated it like a fun party place, I guess. They encouraged it when we'd hang out in the office. I remember being there when the Libertines were there, the Kills were there. That was fun." You don't say.

"I'd always see people in the corridor, like Rufus Wainwright and Rene Ricard, people I'd never met," he says of the onetime home to beat poets, rock stars and more than a scandal or two. Ricard, a poet and pal of Andy Warhol, lived at the Chelsea and was among Warhol's self-anointed superstars who appeared in the pop art auteur's experimental film, 'Chelsea Girls,' which was shot at the hotel. Green found his own superstar in model girl-about-town Harley Viera-Newton, whom he cast as his video's femme fatale. "She's a little superstar. That's what I say when I look at her: 'You're a little superstar, aintcha? Well, come on aintcha,'" he coos.

The video premiere marks the release of 'Minor Love,' Green's sixth studio album since exiting the Moldy Peaches in 2002. The slow, sultry 'What Makes Him Act So Bad' puts Green in rock troubadour mode, fusing the provocative laissez faire of Serge Gainsbourg and the Velvet Underground with his own quirky insouciance.

"It has a tone to it like we're about to do something bad," he says of the video. "Not that anything bad happens. The idea is there." By bad, he means good. "Good-bad, yeah. I always wanted to write an autobiography titled 'How to Act Bad' but I'm not done researching it yet," he quips.