The forgotten story of Tom Waits’ animated music… | Little White Lies

Film Music

The for­got­ten sto­ry of Tom Waits’ ani­mat­ed music video

29 Nov 2016

Sketch of a person's face in red and white tones, with abstract lines and shapes.
Sketch of a person's face in red and white tones, with abstract lines and shapes.
Direc­tor John Lamb reflects on the mak­ing of his pio­neer­ing short film fea­tur­ing the singer-songwriter.

You might think that a music video direct­ed by an Acad­e­my Award win­ner, cre­at­ed by a team that includ­ed a chief ani­ma­tor and direc­tor on The Simp­sons, and star­ing Tom Waits, would be firm­ly cement­ed in pop cul­ture his­to­ry. But chances are you’ve nev­er heard of Tom Waits for No One, a pio­neer­ing short film in which the Amer­i­can singer-song­writer per­forms The One That Got Away’. That’s because it was released two years before the launch of MTV, and, owing to a run of rot­ten luck, has effec­tive­ly sat for­got­ten for over 30 years.

In 1977, Waits made an appear­ance on the par­o­dy talk show Fer­n­wood Tonight, host­ed by Mar­tin Mull and Fred Willard. His fin­gers skipped and glid­ed across the piano keys in wrig­gly flut­ters and he began to growl the line, The piano has been drink­ing”. The audi­ence broke out in laugh­ter, pre­sum­ing his ine­bri­at­ed, griz­zly ren­di­tion was part of a bit. After sit­ting down to be inter­viewed by the sar­cas­tic duo he glugs on a bot­tle of booze and Mull says, It’s kind of strange to have some­one sit­ting here with a bot­tle in front of them,” to which Waits responds, Well, I’d rather have a bot­tle in front of me than a frontal lobot­o­my.” Direc­tor John Lamb was watch­ing at home that night think­ing, Is this guy for real?’ Weeks lat­er, Lamb went to see Waits play at The Roxy The­atre in Los Ange­les to see for him­self. There were only about 30 peo­ple there,” he says, look­ing back, but after about 10 min­utes you knew this guy was for real, he was amaz­ing. It was like per­for­mance art.”

Lamb had recent­ly invent­ed a video roto­scope machine, which worked by tak­ing live action footage, indi­vid­u­al­ly trac­ing each frame then con­vert­ing them, by hand, into ani­ma­tion (an effect most famous­ly achieved decades lat­er by Richard Lin­klater on his digi­tised fea­tures Wak­ing Life and A Scan­ner Dark­ly). He need­ed a test sub­ject to see whether it was a viable prod­uct and Waits’ unfor­get­table per­for­mance at The Roxy – with his accen­tu­at­ed man­ner­isms and exag­ger­at­ed bod­i­ly move­ments – instant­ly sprang to mind.

After mak­ing the call to Waits’ agent, Lamb and his team began sto­ry­board­ing, with Waits occa­sion­al­ly check­ing in; he would sit and tin­kle away on a piano as they talked. He would bust out a few songs,” Lamb reflects, we would have been star struck but back then he was just like us, just beat­ing away on a piano in our stu­dio in west LA.” Lamb con­tin­ues, I remem­ber he would pull up in this 66 T‑Ford Thun­der­bird which said Blue Valen­tine’ [the name of Waits’ 1978 album] on the back rear pan­el. It was stacked floor to ceil­ing with news­pa­pers, there was only enough room in the entire vehi­cle for the dri­ver. I vis­it­ed his apart­ment some­time lat­er and it was much the same.”

Pencil sketch featuring sketchy drawings of faces and hats, with handwritten notes.

Jump­ing for­ward to the first day on set, Lamb recalls that Waits rocked up wear­ing an old wrin­kled suit and pork pie Stet­son hat.” The direc­tor was pray­ing that Waits would change into some­thing else, only to see him emerge from his dress­ing room min­utes lat­er wear­ing a dif­fer­ent but equal­ly tat­tered suit. He then request­ed a pack of Viceroy cig­a­rettes, and 45 min­utes lat­er, lit smoke in hand, Waits was ready to get to work. Once we got start­ed he pret­ty much direct­ed him­self,” remem­bers Lamb, it was just a case of reel­ing him back in at the end of each take. He was respon­sive, easy and very pro­fes­sion­al, he did exact­ly what was asked of him.”

After end­ing up with 13 hours of footage tak­en from five cam­eras, Lamb and his team began the ardu­ous task of ani­mat­ing a near-six-minute edit­ed film by hand, frame by frame. On a com­put­er now you could do the whole thing in about two days,” says Lamb, but back then it took 12 peo­ple six months to pull it off.”

Illustration of a man wearing a black hat and jacket, with a stern expression on his face.

Com­plet­ed in 1979, Lamb and co were too ear­ly to catch the MTV wave, and had suc­cess­ful­ly intro­duced a new form of tech­nol­o­gy that was quick­ly super­seded. By the time the film actu­al­ly came out the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion was in full swing, so the machine became obso­lete about six months after. It’s one of the only films ever done on the video rotoscope.”

Around the same time, Waits found love and quit the booze and the smokes and the women. The film was Tom’s swan­song of his old lifestyle,” sug­gests Lamb. He want­ed noth­ing to do with the warm beer and cold women peri­od of his life any­more.” After a hand­ful of promis­ing ini­tial screen­ings (includ­ing an award-win­ning pre­sen­ta­tion at the inau­gur­al Hol­ly­wood Erot­ic Film and Video Fes­ti­val), Tom Waits for No One was shelved, despite its star’s opti­mism about the film’s prospects: I think it’s got a lot of style and it has a nice fab­ric to it, I think it’s got a big future but mine is a lit­tle bleak at the moment.” Lamb laughs hearti­ly when recit­ing this quote, What he said was exact­ly the oppo­site, his future was huge and ours end­ed right after the film was out.”

Lamb kept a record of the film’s pro­duc­tion, new­ly released in the form of a lim­it­ed edi­tion scrap­book.

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