**Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam as seen in the Mark Pellington video for “Jeremy”**

MARK PELLINGTON | NADA SURF - “JUST WAIT” | Music FILM

Bio:

Mark Pellington became internationally recognized as one of the world’s premiere music video directors when his video for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” became one of the most popular in history, as well as one of the most honored. It earned him Best Director at the 1992 Billboard Video Music Awards, and picked up four 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Director and Video of the Year.

His videos for such noted rock, pop, and rap performers as U2, Pearl Jam, Michael Jackson, REM, Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen, Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, Dave Matthews Band, Demi Lovato, Public Enemy, INXS, The Flaming Lips, The Fray, Jason Mraz, Cage The Elephant, Band of Horses, Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Information Society, De La Soul, and many others form a prolific and often imitated body of work.

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If you ask, “What’s one word that comes to mind when you say ‘Pearl Jam,’” the answer may very well be “Jeremy.” This past summer, as reported by Variety, Pearl Jam officially released the uncensored version of their groundbreaking video, which MTV originally refused to air at the time of its release.

Directed and created by filmmaker Mark Pellington, the song’s music video is just one iconic clip that has established Pellington as not only an exacting artist’s artist, but arguably the most influential music video director of our time.

Note the word “created” used above, because, unlike anyone who may pump out a treatment and “do the thing,” Pellington’s vision for the pieces that he creates are visionary and complete.

Even though he has also has plenty of experience in everything from feature films (“Arlington Road,” “The Mothman Prophecies”), television (“Blindspot,” “Cold Case”) to commercial work, Pellington says, “When I listen to songs, I see. I am directly accessing a state of mind akin to a fever dream.”

Looking at some of his other notable music video work such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Lonesome Day” and Foo Fighters’ “Best of You,” it is clear that the through line (besides starring the biggest rock stars of the time) is Pellington’s eye and how it sees the sound.

The way he makes his subjects look is instantly recognizable and remarkably beautiful.

“I am addicted to images, and addicted to the creation of them,” Pellington says. “I adore the creation of imagery from imagination, allowing and accessing the subconscious to formulate the image created in collaboration with others. A music video is like a poem, a free form often-direct access to my subconscious.”

In 2020, Pellington continues to do just that with a new long-form video on tap for esteemed indie rock band Nada Surf, which has just wrapped post-production for a scheduled late October release. The 10-minute music film is the result of four months of work with the band’s Matthew Caws, and is another in a trademark music video form for Pellington, similar to the expansive 2018 work he created with Imagine Dragons for that band’s song “Next To Me.”

One exceedingly poetic piece in Pellington’s canon, literally one, is “One,” by U2. The clip is so memorable for what it is not. It is Pellington’s sepia-toned, powerful, slow-motion image – inspired by David Wojnarowicz’s “Falling Buffalo” photograph – of a buffalo running, and ultimately charging itself off of a cliff, that lingered in minds, stopping time as something that MTV viewers had likely never seen before or would see again. Pellington went on to create the essential video elements that contributed to making U2’s “Zoo TV” tour a memorable spectacle.

Speaking of MTV, this year, Pellington is interviewing artists for a documentary feature about his ahead-of-its-time show “Buzz,” which aired on MTV in 1990. The 13-episode series was hailed by critics as progressive, adventurous television and was MTV’s first internationally broadcast series.

While by no means ready to look back on a career that is still in motion – the Pellington-directed Quibi series “Survive” recently netted its star, Corey Hawkins, an Emmy® nomination – another current project for Pellington includes finishing up a book, “The Visualist,” a memoir to be released in late 2021, and described as “an experiential narrative, and tale that allows the pop culture fan, filmmaker to be, or budding academic a world view into a mind engaged.”