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Berzerk:
I got a call from Paul Rosenberg, Em's manager. He's like, “Em's ready for the visual. I want to play you this song and then just vibe on it.” They [Eminem’s team] work so crazy. They don't do anything digital. So I went to a Staples parking lot, and I had to sit shotgun in one of the A&R’s cars to listen to it. I wrote down a couple notes and left—it was like a drug deal or something. [Laughs]
The first thing I thought was, this is totally Beasties and old Def Jam. I was always a big Billy Squire fan, so it was rad. I heard the song, chopped it up with Paul and he’s like, here’s the deal: Em always has a base outline of what he wants to do. In this case, he’s like, “I [want] to be very specific to early ’90s hip-hop, but I don’t want it to be like Hype Williams shit. I want to go Beasties and more of that kind of indie style.”
The other thing they said was that Rick [Rubin] was going to be in the video, which freaked me out in the coolest possible way. I’m like, “Really? Fuck.” So then I was starting to think about “Going Back to Cali” and was like, “Let’s use Rick fucking 25 years later in the same scene.” We were trying to get LL [Cool J], but he was in L.A. and we shot in Queens.
This was a Sunday, and we had to shoot that Thursday. We built the boom box in 48 hours. It was crazy. And that scale, with the riser and the handle, it’s 20 by 20 feet, so I mean, it was massive, and it totally functions. It doesn’t play but the tape deck opens, buttons work and you see a little LED equalizer.
It was nerve-wracking, because [we] had Paul and Em walked out on set and not liked it, we would have been screwed. But fortunately they saw it and were like, “Oh, that's great.”
3 A.M.
This was the second time we worked with Em. The first thing we did was “Crack a Bottle,” but he was not in that video. So it’s the same sort of thing [as “Berzerk”]. They were like, you should probably hear the song, so I go with his bodyguard in a Cadillac, and he drives me around and just blares the song. It definitely had this serial killer vibe.
Em’s one thing was, “I just want to be in a pool of blood.” We shot in Detroit, at an actual mental hospital. So we had to be cognizant of where we shot, because some of the walls were thin and we couldn't interrupt or distract any of the patients. It definitely had all the energy and everything about it was completely authentic.
That was my first real encounter with Em as far as how he works, which is really insane. Every take that he does, he watches back right then, so he'll do a take, watch it, do a tape, watch it. So if you have him scheduled for four hours in one setup, you should think of it more like, seven or eight hours, because he’s going to watch every take back. He’s going to give notes, so it’s important to have a script supervisor.
At the same time, he’s razor sharp and has a very, very great memory, especially about his performance. He’ll remember things, like, “Hey man, did you take that ten-frame shot out right after I say the second line in verse two?” He's real into it like that. But if you’re really smart and pay attention, you can pretty much leave an Eminem shoot with your rough cut done.
To me personally as a director, it was one of those moments where an artist really challenges you to bring your A-game. I think that was the one that kind of solidified us [with Eminem], and I think that’s what has kept us going with him.
