In This Reality: A Second by Second Consideration of the Music Video "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty

By David Macpherson

Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's 1982 video "You Got Lucky" is considered one of the important early music videos. It blended this new form of film with science fiction.

This book is a second by second look at that video. It is serious, funny and irreverent. "In This Reality" is an examination of a four minute and thirty second movie. It is a chance to see how  the possibilities and variety a small narrative can offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Macpherson
• Release date: Dec 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386833031

Book preview

1

A road goes through the mountains. A highway at the bottom of a valley. The sky is painted orange and unhealthy. It is the sky of belching waste or the sky of a four year old’s crayon picture. Look, Mommy, I made you a picture. The sky is orange because my crayon is orange.

2

There is no one on the road. It is desolate and uninhabited. There is a sense of unease with the wrong sky and the vacant landscape.

3

There is no one in this video. This video has been on the TV for three seconds and nothing is happening. How is that possible? There is a sense of prickling flesh with the empty video. No one is playing music. There is no music being played. We have waited three seconds and still there is only a vacant video. A road through a valley. That is not anything to watch on MTV. That is not anything to dance to. That is nothing to scream along to with our headphones on and the rest of the world falling away.

4

The picture is the same. The road. The mountains. A sound is heard. It is the sound of glaciers falling off a shelf. It is the sound of large machines cycling through a shut down. It is the call of a metal whale singing old songs in a cyclical key.

5

The sound runs away. You can still hear it, but it is dying.

6

There is always the hope that the sound is picking up speed. That some visual will appear to take its place. Was it a harbinger of sounds to come? Was it the death knell of any hope that this video is not going to suck?

7

How long are we willing to watch a video before we christen it as suck? Do we wait until the first power chord? Do we watch the whole fucking thing? And that’s a commitment. That’s like almost five minutes. Five minutes before we can decide that it sucks? Are we not discerning viewers? Do we need such a long time before we declare this video useless and turn the channel? Or go off to the kitchen? Or walk to the phone and call a friend and say, Have you seen the new Tom Petty video? Yeah, it sucks. How much time do we need to say such things? To make such pronouncements? To make judgements from on high?

8

The sound returns. At least there is that. It is a tone. A surfacing. A depth charge sound check.

9

It’s an invasion of repetitive sound. It is always the same statement.. It is deja vu all over again. It is always a stretched out heart beat. A loss of perspective. The landscape is making the noise. The road is half heartedly roaring. The song of itself. The open road with no one to drive it.

10

At ten seconds, is there a chance that everyone is fed up and done? Are we excited for the future? Are we riddled with anticipation? They wouldn’t air this if they didn’t have something for us. What is the pact between viewer and broadcaster? How much trust must we barter?

11

From the lower left corner of the screen, dust appears. Something is approaching. Something is coming.

12

The space age vehicle appears. It comes in like the first sentence of a story. The car drove into view. We are always waiting for something to drive into blank places. We are waiting for a ride. For a delivery. For the ambassador of change. For the next damned sentence. A traveler, weary from the rode, approached and looked at all he saw and wondered what had occurred.

13

The vehicle is covered in an oval white. It is a lozenge of a car. The sounding goes off again. That is disappointing. We were hoping the keening sound would be done as soon as the wheels show up. Isn’t that usually the way? The car takes up all the air in the scene.

14

The car is stationary. The car is part of the landscape. The car still looks like a big pill with hidden exhaust. It better have an exhaust or the driver will be very light headed.

15

The dust spreads out and dissipates. The sound spreads out and dissipates.

16

Maybe the big pill will be taken by a large god of the empty, endless road.

17

The side of the car begins to raise up. On either side, the doors raise. It is like every Saturday afternoon double feature with aliens from outer space and their flying saucer. You might think of a different title for that movie, but it is the same flick. The same story. Sometimes it is the same prop. Fake UFOs don’t grow on trees. They come in peace. They come in a sleek ride with a stylish door.

18

As the doors continue to raise, while a high pitch tone sounds, it should be stated that this is a hover car. It doesn’t hover. It just pretends to hover. It is a hover car from another TV show. It pretended to hover in that show too.

19

There was a movie called Logan’s Run. It presented a world where everyone is young. When you get too old, you are killed. This was popular enough as a movie that it was willed into being as a TV show. One of the props was a hover car. The Logan’s Run TV show lasted only a year. No one was using the fake hover car. Why shouldn’t Tom Petty