Nirvana – Heart-Shaped Box
1993 · Directed by Anton Corbijn
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Best comments
1.“If Die Hard is a Christmas movie, this is a Christmas song.”
More comments
- 2.“Fun fact: 23 years after this video came out, Dave was asked to play 'Blackbird' at the Oscars, and they assigned him a stylist – a young woman with blond hair and big blue eyes. The first thing she told him was, 'We've met before.' He couldn't place her. Then she said, 'I was the little girl in Nirvana's Heart-Shaped Box video.'”
- 3.“My 15-year-old son was going through dark times, not helped by the pandemic – and you inspired him to pick up my acoustic guitar. I bought him an electric. He plays Nirvana every day now, and it's Kurt's poster on his wall. My son was a lost soul, but now he's smiling again. He plays for me almost every day to show me his progress. I am so proud. Kurt, I salute you, wherever you are.”
The story
Kurt Cobain wanted Technicolor. By 1993 that was outdated and way too expensive, so Anton Corbijn faked it. He shot the video in color, transferred it to black and white, then had every frame colored by hand, which took about four weeks. That's why it looks like a fever dream printed on an old postcard.
Cobain wrote most of it himself, a couple of pages of notes and drawings. A thin old man on an IV drip in a hospital bed. A poppy field with a big cross and creepy trees, borrowed from The Wizard of Oz. The old man in a Santa hat climbing the cross while crows sit on it. A little girl in a KKK-style robe reaching for fetuses hanging in a tree. A heavyset woman in a bodysuit of organs with angel wings, straight off the In Utero cover. Corbijn figured he added about 15 percent, including the mechanical birds and the road through the poppies. Blue for the soft verses, red for the loud choruses.
The shoot at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles was rough. William S. Burroughs turned down the old man, and the actor who took the part fell ill on set and needed an ambulance. Kevin Kerslake, who had pitched treatments first, later sued over the ideas, and it settled out of court.
It was the last video Cobain made. It won Best Alternative Video and Best Art Direction at the 1994 MTV VMAs, accepted by the rest of the band after his death, and Time put it on its list of the 30 best music videos ever. Kurt said it came closer to what he saw in his head than any video he had made.
