Higgins was a man in his early forties, and he liked to think he’d learned all there was to know about video production by the time he was thirty. Convincing the foreigners gathered around him was a simple task. He concentrated instead on trying to sell his savvy to a young black girl wearing what appeared to be nothing but three chain links and a diamond earring, sitting on a hassock alongside their man from London.
“Your cheapest video to shoot is what I call your ‘Pool Party’ video,” Higgins said, trying to catch the black girl’s eye, but she seemed absorbed in her chocolate pâté, which was the exact color of her barely covered breasts, topped with a pair of red raspberries, the dessert, not her breasts. “One of the execs at any label is sure to have a house with a swimming pool. You go to that house, you set up your cameras around the pool, you decorate the premises with girls in bikinis and guys in thongs, and then shoot your artist against a backdrop of all these half-naked young people writhing in time to the music. You don’t have to worry too much about lighting because you’re shooting in broad daylight. Only thing you have to worry about is airplanes flying overhead. But that’s the same as on any daytime shoot.”
Higgins didn’t know what it was he’d said that suddenly captured the black girl’s attention. Maybe she was interested in auditioning for the role of one of those half-naked young people writhing. She was half-naked herself right now, albeit not writhing. Higgins plunged on regardless.
“Your second cheapest video is what I call the ‘Disco Party’ video, which is a variation on the poolside theme. You rent a disco for the night, you pack it with those same young people from the swimming pool, except the guys are in tight jeans and tank tops and the girls are in halter tops and hip huggers that show their bellybuttons. You use the club’s own strobe lighting except for your star, who’s performing in their midst and needs special lighting to show her own bellybutton or however much else of herself you’d like her to show,” he said, and turned his steely blue-eyed gaze full force on the black girl, who licked chocolate pâté from her fork, and smiled at him. “You’ve got to remember,” he said directly to her, “that there’s absolutely nowhere your artist can go after she’s stark naked.”
Everyone laughed. The man from London had a sort of horsy laugh. The man from Paris sounded like he was choking on a Gauloise. Higgins figured he was both amusing and instructing these two stereotypes. Encouraged, he continued with his thesis, which he would try to get published in
“A little more expensive is what I call your ‘Back to the Hood’ video. This only works with black or Latino artists,” he said, and winked at the black girl, “since your white performers don’t come fum no hood, sistuh,” and winked again. The black girl winked back. Higgins figured he was home free. “This is a video you shoot outdoors, with your male or female artist roaming the old neighborhood and feeling sentimental about it. You see shots of old black guys playing cards on an upturned garbage can, you see shots of little girls jumping rope and teenage dudes shooting baskets in the school yard, you see shots of what look like dope buys going down, this is like a documentary that says, ‘Look where I came from, boys and girls, and now I’m a big rock star, ain’t that something?’ And your artist is roaming through all this like a hidden camera, with a soulful look on her face, singing her little heart out while she remembers what it was like to be a kid in this hood.”
The black girl was nodding dreamily now, remembering what it was like to be a kid in the shitty hood where she herself was born, but look at her tonight, man, here on a million-dollar yacht, wearing chains and a diamond and flirting with a veep from a big-time label, oh lordy!
“The song doesn’t have to have anything at all to do with the hood or memories of the hood. The song can have a lyric any twelve-year-old can remember in six seconds flat, ‘I’ll love you till the day I die,’ something like that, ‘I’ll love you till the day I die, I’ll love you till the day I die, I’ll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,’ like that. Nothing at all to do with growing up poor, the growing-up-poor is only the sub-plot. What the video does is tell all those kids out there who bought the album that here in this America—or for that matter any of
Higgins smiled. They all smiled with him.
The black girl wasn’t too sure Higgins wasn’t dissing the sort of hood she grew up in, but she smiled, too, what the hell, and grabbed a glass of white wine from a waiter passing a tray.
