Intelligencer

Gondry’s Deadly Sting

By Jada Yuan
Published May 3, 2009

(Photo: Barbara Sax/Getty Images)

“I have the shit touch,” Michel Gondry says. “When I touch a song, it plummets.” Gondry, who just released “Michel Gondry 2,” a second DVD collection of his music videos, is only partly joking. “Every time an artist asks me to do a video, I want to warn, ‘If you do the video with me, it will be a failure.’ ” For example? “I did seven videos for Björk, and the only one she ever did that was a huge hit, Spike Jonze directed it,” says Gondry. “And with the White Stripes, I did six videos with them and the only video they did that was a huge hit, I didn’t do it. It was ‘Seven Army Nation,’ and that was some other French guys.” His effect on the Rolling Stones was even more devastating. “I did a video for them and then they turned 60,” he said. Gondry’s next project is Seth Rogen’s adaptation of The Green Hornet; movie observers have raised an eyebrow about giving a big-budget superhero action flick to a director whose last two movies, The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind, featured papier-mâché props and cardboard sets. “It makes me think, ‘Okay, I will never do a single thing with cardboard. Ever again,’ ” says Gondry, who is tight-lipped about the Hornet project, admitting only, under heavy questioning, that it will be “very green and very hornet.”