There is a lot going on in Father John Misty’s new “Total Entertainment Forever” video. George Washington eats some Viagra and throws on a VR headset in an effort to “hack the Constitution.” Then, inside the virtual world, he witnesses a 1990s fever dream—Kurt Cobain (played by none other than Macaulay Culkin) is arrested by McDonald’s-themed fascists and flagellated. Then, at the orders of their hook-handed leader (Josh Tillman, naturally), Culkin/Cobain is crucified. All the sets and props are made of papier-mâché, there’s an incomprehensible appearance from “Garfield” character Jon Arbuckle (also crucified), and it ends with a little girl visiting Washington’s charred body.
This is the chaotic vision of four men who call themselves Four Gods and a Baby: Culkin, Adam Green, Thomas Bayne, and Toby Goodshank. Green is arguably most well known for his work with the Moldy Peaches, but for the “Total Entertainment Forever” video, he created the spiritual follow-up to his outsider film Adam Green’s Aladdin. That movie—which starred Green, Culkin, Natasha Lyonne, Alia Shawkat, Devendra Banhart, and others—was a longform, absurdist, musical papier-mâché opus. In a blurb for that film, Tillman called Green “our [Alejandro] Jodorowsky.” The two are natural co-conspirators. When Green suggested Culkin play Cobain Christ in the video, Tillman was immediately game.
The clip was filmed in Culkin’s Manhattan apartment, and Green invited other musicians to fill out the ensemble: the Moldy Peaches’ Jack Dishel is the fascist whipping Cobain, Tei Shi is the Mary Magdalene protestor, and radio DJ David Garland plays George Washington. In an attempt to better understand what, exactly, is going on in the video, Pitchfork spoke to Green about the video’s origins and iconography, the Richard Spencer reference, and the night Josh Tillman came to Macaulay Culkin’s apartment. He also offers an update on the new Pizza Underground album.
Pitchfork: What was the conversation that led to this video?
Adam Green: Basically Josh came to me and he wanted a video, but I think he most wanted almost like Father John Misty’s Aladdin. When I first told him the treatment for this video, I was just expecting that the answer would be “no.” But the answer was instantly like, “Sure. Yeah, let’s go make it. Great.” I was surprised. I think it was two weeks later and the whole video was shot and made.
How do you prepare for a video like this?
Well, Aladdin we shot in a warehouse in Brooklyn. This video was actually shot in Macaulay Culkin’s apartment. We built walls of the same specs and dimensions using the same plans as we used for the original construction. We sourced everything the same way. Macaulay Culkin lives in a really big apartment in Manhattan, so we built the set in there. We had a team of volunteer friends that helped us construct all the props really quickly. We had late night pizza party sessions.
Whose idea was it was to have Macaulay Culkin play Kurt Cobain?
That part was my original concept of the video—we’d have Macaulay Culkin as Kurt Cobain and be crucified by fascists. From there, once we knew they were actually down with this treatment, it became a brainstorming session. I remember Toby [Goodshank], for example, came up with the idea that Josh would have a mini Kuato character that lived inside of his stomach—the Total Recall guy. Josh himself actually requested that Jon Arbuckle be up there on the cross along with Kurt Cobain. I don’t know why.
Oh and the Richard Spencer thing—where he got punched in front of the camera—had just happened, so that was fresh in our minds. Thomas [Bayne], he would do all the special effects on Aladdin—he came up with this idea that at the end we would see this burnt up Washington, that he would auto-immolate himself. And that’s actually my real daughter at the end, Zeba. She’s been in a couple of videos. I think you can see when the skeleton falls that she was genuinely kind of scared of it.
“Total Entertainment Forever” made headlines for the Taylor Swift line, but her likeness doesn’t appear in the video. Was that ever discussed?
Yeah, it was discussed. We vetoed that. We were following this philosophy where if you show somebody something that you’re already telling them with the lyrics, you’re kind of telling them twice. My hope is that the video really enhances the song. The video is a really pure expression of the emotional feeling that we felt he was trying to say with the song. I really think, in this case, we hit upon something that is the feeling of the song.
Obviously, the video very quickly has a “celebrity controversy” headline of its own.
You mean because Macaulay Culkin gets crucified as Kurt Cobain? [laughs] Fair enough. I would love to welcome anyone to watch the video, and so would Mac.
Do you think this video is too absurd to be considered controversial?
The way I see it, a lot of propaganda seeped into our heads as kids that grew up in the ’90s. In a way, Nintendo and stuff—copyrighted things—became the things that we dreamed about in our subconscious at night. For example, I remember my first wet dream was actually that I won “Super Mario Bros.,” I met the Princess, and I had an orgasm in my dream. It’s almost like the video game cartoon imagery became visceral and fleshy and part of the actual mechanism that’s human and processes information and in a way is romantic.
I think if you have a spirit that’s an artist or romantic or something, you have to reconcile that your brain is flooded with copyrighted images from corporations that you feel sentimental about, and you’ve grafted fleshy characteristics onto them as an aid of comprehending the universe. For me, it’s sort of like my own artwork exists in this pixelated realm that’s covered with flesh.
If anything, I like to see these things almost through a medieval lens. Let’s say we’re 1,000 years in the future and we’re uncovering these images of Kurt Cobain or Garfield or George Washington. They’re all unrecognizable as relics of a lost civilization. Maybe we uncover an image from a dusty closet or underneath a rock in a desert and we wonder what it is. My goal is to have something kind of modern feel like it’s from Medieval times.
Father John Misty is ostensibly the villain of the piece.
We found out while we were doing this video that Father John Misty is actually a pretty good actor! He totally was a natural, and I didn’t know that was going to happen at all. I was actually scared that he wouldn’t be down to get dressed up in all this crazy shit we made for him. Like double hook hands? You know, you can’t take a piss. I was worried he’d be like, “I don’t want to wear this.” But he wasn’t like that. He was very into it, and he was making everybody laugh. Josh, to me, is really the shit. He’s fucking really incredible as an artist.
Was his public persona at all a factor in making him the character who decides to crucify Kurt Cobain?
I think, in casting him, we thought he’d enjoy to play the villain. It’s a rare treat to get to play a sadistic prick in any piece of fiction. I’ve been enjoying him leaning into what other people would withdraw from. He leans into criticisms of himself, and he steps on critics’ toes in a way that appeals to me. He plays the internet a bit like an instrument, which is really neat.
— FEATHER JAM MINISTRY (@fatherjohnmisty) April 25, 2017
Why crucify Kurt Cobain?
He was someone who was incredibly special and sacred to all of us. Toby paid a sort of interesting tribute to him by doing a band called Nevermound. Basically, it was all Nirvana songs with everything sung in the past tense. He had already opened up this can of worms, and from there we had a photo shoot where we all dressed up like Kurt Cobain: me, Toby, and Mac, all as Kurt Cobain. I think Kurt Cobain became this rolodex of meat with which we decided we could make art from, so he became a rotation of guys we do art with. He became, I guess, like an avatar.
Do you know anything about the future of the Pizza Underground?
Well, the Pizza Underground recorded a full-length album that’s really ambitious. I don’t know when it’s going to come out, but it’s pretty serious. They did a full-on album with orchestration and it’s pretty intense, so I guess at some point people will hear from the Pizza Underground again.
Mac, he just does what he likes. I’m really lucky that he does my movies. He gets asked to do things all the time and says “no.” Our working together comes from an extension of our friendship. All the things that we end up doing is an extension of conversations that we have when we’re hanging out. So it’s not actually surprising to me that he’s doing this because it’s like the fifth time I’ve seen him dress like Kurt Cobain [laughs].
What else do you have in the works?
I’ve been working on writing a script for a war movie with my wife Yasmine, who produced Aladdin with me, and so we’ve been writing a futuristic war movie that we want to make. That’ll probably take us many, many years to complete. And I’m actually going to go to Los Angeles tomorrow and record a couple songs with Jonathan Rado from Foxygen.
Have you talked about doing anything other projects with Father John Misty?
We did speak a little bit about trying to write another film work, but I think then immediately following this shoot he was doing “Saturday Night Live” and we were completing this video, and it became a remnant of a late night hang talk. I feel like we haven’t crystallized what it would look like, but I would love to do something with him and I actually have a few good ideas for it.