{"id":975098,"date":"2020-02-14T12:20:40","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T19:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=951899"},"modified":"2020-02-14T12:20:40","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T19:20:40","slug":"rodeo-heres-why-lil-nas-xs-video-mashed-up-vampires-and-the-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/rodeo-heres-why-lil-nas-xs-video-mashed-up-vampires-and-the-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rodeo\u2019: Here\u2019s Why Lil Nas X\u2019s Video Mashed Up Vampires and \u2018The Matrix\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When \u201cOld Town Road\u201d rapper Lil Nas X<\/a> asked Bradley and Pablo<\/a> to direct his video for \u201cRodeo,\u201d<\/a> the Los Angeles directors were ecstatic. The duo had directed music videos for Rosal\u00eda<\/a>, Mark Ronson,<\/a> and Charli XCX<\/a>, but they had never been approached with an idea as bonkers as this: a hybrid vampire-Matrix<\/em> plot.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had written a vampire-bite story last year and had been impatiently waiting for the right opportunity to use it,\u201d the directors tell Rolling Stone <\/em>via email. \u201cThe<\/em> Matrix<\/em> swing on it took it to a whole new world that we fell in love with right away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Released earlier this month, \u201cRodeo\u201d opens with Lil Nas X in a phone booth, receiving a haunting phone call. He gets bitten by a vampire, and things take a turn for the worse. \u201cBig Nas\u201d also appears, as he and Lil Nas X rap together inside an eerie pharmacy \u2014 an homage to Natural Born Killers.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe found bridges to draw a lot of the references together to make a super assemblage,\u201d the directors say. \u201cFor example, the intro was an adaptation of a phone call from Scream 2<\/em> blended with Saw\/The Miracle Worker,<\/em> and the phone booths are used to get transported out of the Matrix. Nas brought key points to us like the Hulk jumping over the cars at the end, and the movie Belly<\/em> as a lighting and glowing-pupil reference.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Other nods include Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cThriller,\u201d Mulholland Drive, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nightmare on Elm Street,<\/em> and anything else directed by Wes Craven. \u201cHis movies were particularly influential when we were thinking about the look of the film,\u201d Bradley and Pablo say. \u201cWe are really inspired by \u2018super genre\u2019 movies that mash up genres and don\u2019t play by the rules. Literally anything goes. Tarantino is [also] a great example of this. That was very much the approach we wanted to take.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRodeo\u201d was filmed in East Los Angeles over the course of two days in January. They shot in a supermarket as well as underneath a bridge. It was completed and delivered two weeks later. \u201cAs with most music videos, we are ambitious with what we want to shoot ,so the days are full-on, nonstop fast decision-making and problem-solving,\u201d they say. \u201c<\/span>It was hard and fast! But we do secretly enjoy the pace and intensity.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The directors note that the end result was a modern twist on these classic films, with a diverse cast and the hip-hop cowboy superstar at the center. \u201cWe think the references work because they are blended together like a cosmic explosion of pop culture that creates a fabulous unique universe,\u201d they say. \u201cWe wanted to rewrite the references with a 2020 inclusive vision of what these magical worlds can look and feel like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When \u201cOld Town Road\u201d rapper Lil Nas X asked Bradley and Pablo to direct his video for \u201cRodeo,\u201d the Los Angeles directors were ecstatic. The duo had directed music videos for Rosal\u00eda, Mark Ronson, and Charli XCX, but they had never been approached with an idea as bonkers as this: a hybrid vampire-Matrix plot. \u201cWe had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-975098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-28 05:54:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}