With all the attention focused on actors Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, I only recently discovered the most intriguing news about The Runaways -- the rock 'n' roll biopic is directed by one of Canada's most acclaimed music video directors, Floria Sigismondi.
Her clips aren't filled with the usual parade of boobalicious chicks and ripped boys. Her videos are dark, gothic and often surreal -- yet everyone from Christina Aguilera to The White Stripes wants to work with her. (Imagine what she might create if she teamed up with Lady Gaga!) I was lucky enough to interview Floria in 2004, when two of her clips were nominated for Juno Awards. (She won for Aguilera's Fighter.) Here's my story from The Journal's archives:
Edmonton Journal
Sat Mar 20 2004
Page: E1 / FRONT
Section: Culture
Byline: Sandra Sperounes
Dateline: EDMONTON
Source: The Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - Floria Sigismondi is changing her shirt when the phone rings in her New York apartment.
She answers it but finds herself in front of a huge bank of windows. Almost topless. Sigismondi, a Juno-nominated video director, asks the caller to hang on while she finishes getting dressed.
"It's like watching television," she laughs, referring to the voyeuristic nature of apartment life in the Big Apple.
Only her version of TV is not your average rerun of Friends, where Monica and Rachel point and giggle at their unsuspecting neighbour, Ugly Naked Guy. Sigismondi's images are stark, beautiful, disturbing, and perhaps, offensive -- like fairy tales filmed through the lens of a tortured soul. Instead of resorting to the usual sexy shots of bands playing their instruments or girls shaking their booties, Sigismondi messes with society's traditional concepts of beauty. Her videos are populated with creatures in gas masks, goth queens with metre-long pins stuck in their backs, dictators in ballet garb and severed heads.
"Nightmarish" and "surreal" are two of the most common descriptions of Sigismondi's work -- which is precisely why strong artists such as Christina Aguilera (Fighter), David Bowie (Little Wonder), Marilyn Manson (Beautiful People), Bjork (I Have Seen It All) and Leonard Cohen (In My Secret Life) want to work with the Italian-born, Hamilton-bred visual artist.
"I don't gravitate towards the boy-meets-girl, boy-dumps-girl story," says Sigismondi, who is in her late 30s. "I always gravitate towards the strong lyrics that say something about society, where you live, the people around you."
Sigismondi's esthetics aren't for everyone. Neither are her politics. Her latest endeavour, Megalomaniac by Incubus, is a daring attack on fascism, the U.S. administration and the war in Iraq, based on Brendan Boyd's vague lyrics ("Hey megalomaniac/You're no Jesus") and collage artist Hannah Hoch. Downtrodden American citizens guzzle oil for nourishment. A George Bush-like character stands at a gas tank. A preacher holds a Buy-Bull. Hitler prances about in a tutu.
Fans of Incubus, a bunch of usually mellow California rockers, aren't quite sure what to think of Sigismondi's video. Internet message boards are rife with debate, questioning the video's anti-patriotic images. That it hasn't caused a stink among U.S. politicians is perhaps only due to Janet Jackson's breast.
"I thought (Incubus) were either going to love it or hate it," says Sigismondi. "I was quite surprised they went for it when I said I was going to put Hitler in a tutu. They were like, 'Push it. Push it. Go for it!' Sometimes you have to punch yourself and go: 'Is this really happening?' So I just went full-force and thought, 'How could I make fun of these megalomaniacs?' "
Sigismondi's inspirations often come from her own life or the images she sees when listening to music. Sigur Ros' ( ), featuring sickly school kids prancing around in a playground of ash, dead birds and burnt-out cars, is her most personal work -- partially based on her experiences in New York after 9/11. Sigismondi also fell in love with the slow, otherworldly track months before she worked with the Icelandic group. ("It makes me cry, it's gut-wrenching," she says.) It's one of two Sigismondi videos nominated at this year's Juno Awards.
"I live a block-and-a-half from the World Trade Center and I had to wear a gas mask," she says. "I could just hear my breath. All these people were coming down from all over Manhattan and the world -- there were so many tourists that I'd be walking and my purse would be four people behind me and I'd have to yank it. It was that crowded, like you were at a crazy concert.
"It was the first time something like that happened in our part of the world. Obviously, things so devastating happen in other countries and I thought, 'What are the children like who live in these kinds of environments?' For us, to watch kids playing in black snow, it awakened apocalyptic possibilities. For them, it's fun, they've done it for a hundred years."
Sigismondi doesn't always need a personal connection to a song, but she must feel an artistic bond with the artist and vice versa. Such was the case with Christina Aguilera, the only pop diva to work with Sigismondi. She was one of several directors to pitch ideas for Fighter, but Aguilera was particularly smitten with Sigismondi's images of moths, butterflies and a trapped princess transforming into a strong woman. So were Juno voters -- it's also nominated for Best Video.
"When I spoke to Christina, she couldn't get these images out of her head," says Sigismondi.
"I think the main image was of her big hunchback with pins stuck in her back. There's a lot of backlash towards her and she really felt wounded, but her whole thing is getting up on her feet and surviving that. So she really quite loved the metamorphosis of that, taking something that hurts you and using it to make you stronger. I think it was really great of her to put it out for young girls."
Sigismondi didn't set out to direct videos, but she was destined to do so. Both her parents were opera singers and she was constantly surrounded by music in their Hamilton home. She initially pursued fashion photography -- after earning a degree from the Ontario College of Art in 1990 -- and worked as a freelancer for Toronto newspapers and magazines. Four years later, Sigismondi was persuaded to join the roster of Revolver Films as a video director. She now has more than 50 videos to her name, including Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's She Said, Interpol's obstacle 1, Tricky's Makes Me Wanna Die and Plant & Page's Most High.
Sigismondi would likely direct more if she wasn't working on her own personal projects. She's still an avid photographer -- she's about to release a second book of pictures -- and creates art installations often more disturbing than her videos. Her latest show, Come Part Mental, featured mannequins with four breasts, dinosaur-like spines, tails and no hands. It's Sigismondi's take on the manipulation of DNA and what shapes the human body could take in the future.
"My approach is basically, what happened if everything went wrong?" she laughs. "It's inevitable. It's not a statement on whether it's right or wrong. It's about the corruption of people, greed, corporations and what might happen to something that was invented to help people and gets distorted."
Like most video directors -- such as McG and Tarsem -- Sigismondi hopes to make the jump into feature films. (She has already shot a few commercials, including an Adidas ad with Kobe Bryant.) She's now working on a script about the biker world and "girls, girls, girls." She says it's also inspired by her bleak, industrial hometown of Hamilton, as is all of her work.
"It's such a harsh juxtaposition -- the arts, my family and opera in this little bubble in Hamilton," she says. "It's a very rough town to grow up in. I think it's definitely done something to me."
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