Vids › The Weirdness, Part 5

Cage the Elephant – Cigarette Daydreams

2014 · Directed by Mark Pellington

628K Likes

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Best comments

1.“This song means a lot to me because 12 years ago I went to the gas station for a Snickers, and the clerk told me they were all out.”

More comments

2.“So I got an anti-smoking ad on this video. Not sure what to say.”
3.“That's Matt's actual wife, Juliette.”

The story

Mark Pellington has made videos for Pearl Jam, U2 and Nine Inch Nails, and directed the movie The Mothman Prophecies, so don't expect a party. Cigarette Daydreams is a black-and-white short film, shot in Los Angeles, that tips its hat to the French New Wave. Pellington called it a fractured, hallucinatory love story he hatched with singer Matt Shultz. Murder mystery? Love story? Real-life madness? He let all three hang in the air.

Juliette Buchs, a Paris-trained actress, plays a young woman trying to make peace with her past and her future, and the film keeps cutting back to her running from something it never names. Innocence on one side, danger on the other. Fun twist: Buchs later married Shultz. The guy who wrote the song ended up with the girl in the video.

The song comes from Melophobia and turned into one of the band's biggest. It topped Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and has gone five times Platinum in the US. Not bad for a slow one.

In my playlists

The Weirdness, Part 5 · #78

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