THE MAKING OF ICE CREAM FOR CROW
“INKY MITT SPUN”
'What a strange trip making this video in the Mojave Desert. The small crew included DP Daniel Pearl (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and grip Wayne Isham (Director of a ton of music videos) for $5,000. We wanted it to look like Terry Malick’s “Badlands.” We tried our best with such little budget and limited film stock. Wayne Hyde was amazing as editor and doing it in the wee wee hours for free.
Special thanks to Gary Lucas for bringing me on board.
Don Van Vliet was great to work with, as were the band members. He was very funny and had unique observations. I visited him two weeks before the video to plan it. We tried to do it by phone but Don didn’t like to pre-plan things. He liked to be spontaneous in all his artistic endeavors. But shooting a video with very limited funds needed to be mapped out a bit. So I flew out to L.A.and visited Don in his trailer near the Mohave. We drove around to find the locations, and spent a couple of all-nighters talking about the video.
He had incredible stories about Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, being on the set of a Bergman film where one of the actresses requested an “inky mitt spun.” He asked me if I knew what that was. I told him an inky is a very small light, and you can diffuse the intensity with spun glass, and that they were probably pointing inky mitt spun at the actress’s temples to hide wrinkles. Don howled. During the video he kept asking if I had an inky mitt spun.'
- Ken Schreiber, the producer on Captain Beefheart's 1982 video for Ice Cream For Crow.
India ink, gouache, gold pigment, silver pigment on paper
1 comment:
It's a long standing favourite of mine Jobe and they have cleaned up the sound quality. (I still have the original broadcast ion VHS tape!! HA ha ha ha ha ha huh?)
As ever, thanks for dropping by brother Jobe!
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