The Script, will.i.am – “Hall Of Fame”

  We start out with a brief shot of some boxer apparently doing something award worthy at a match, then we cut to a really loud mom waking up her son in their crappy dwelling. Zip over to an image of a really fancy ballerina getting a busload of roses throw at her, then we have a much-quieter dad waking up his daughter in their really fancy digs. Okay, it appears that this video is going to be about the universal theme of parents destroying their children’s dreams, regardless of your socio-economic background. Got it.

  We get a few additional shots to let us know that the young woman is at least somewhat deaf and has to wear a hearing aid, which is no laughing matter so we’ll leave that alone. She gets dressed and then gives her dad a smooch as she heads out the door to do whatever little princesses do when they are mobile and unescorted. Then we’re back at the crappy house, where harridan mom is smoking at the breakfast table, still hollering and being unpleasant and wearing an ugly outfit while the young man prepares to leave for his day. Her parting words are: “Don’t forget the trash!” (How can he? She’s sitting right there and won’t shut up.)

  Now we have some unknown hands playing the opening notes of the song on a piano. It’s very pretty and all, but I hope those hands are actually attached to a person and that this isn’t going to turn into a slasher movie about severed body parts that come alive and prevent you from going to the senior prom. We get a glimpse of Young Man taking out that much-discussed trash (as far as I can tell, Mom’s not in the can) and a shot of Young Woman marching off to some place that requires her to accessorize with a stylish gym bag and a blouse that is so short it might as well be a bra.

  Back to the piano, where we are greatly relieved to discover that the potentially-lethal hands are indeed attached to a human form, with that form being Danny, lead singer for The Script. He’s apparently giving one of those impromptu concerts in an otherwise vacant warehouse, something that only happens in music videos and movies that win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. We get shots of Young Man running along the urban streets of his town (the best way to get away from Hollering Mama, yes?) as he has more visions about being that triumphant boxer. Or getting to wear silky shorts in public. Something about that roped-off square appeals to him.

  Then we’re back in the art-house warehouse, where will.i.am has wandered in because it’s time for he and Danny to start singing or this will just be an instrumental track. Danny goes first, accentuating his words with some street moves that perhaps he should have practiced a little bit more. will.i.am does a bit better with the hand choreography during his parts, probably because he’s had so much practice trying to keep Fergie’s breasts from upstaging him during concerts.

  While these two toss the lyrics at one another, we check up on Young Man. It seems he wasn’t paying any attention to where his nimble feet where carrying him, and he’s now on a street  where three shady guys want nothing more than to chase after Young Man, and I doubt if they just want to ask him to join their glee club. We now have a car-chase segment without any cars, as they all race along, rushing past Young Woman, who briefly pauses to review their immaturity, then she and her half-shirt continue to wherever.

  We get another montage, this one of Danny and will.i.am performing for the audience that doesn’t exist, and the Three Thugs pounding on Young Man behind a dumpster. (We get a shot of someone watching the pounding from a nearby window without bothering to intervene, so we must be in New York City.) Then we have Young Woman arriving at a dance studio, where everyone is really pretty and they all weigh about two pounds each. One of the other dancers (an ice-blonde prototype) makes a face about Young Woman wearing hearing aids, so we instantly hate her and hope she falls down an elevator shaft.

  Next we have Young Man, face bruised and cut after his encounter with the Rethuglicans, arriving at a gym where lots of people are boxing and looking wet. Meanwhile, Young Woman is twirling away over at the studio, full of the spirit. Then I guess the spirit goes on break, because Young Woman does something that she shouldn’t have and falls to the floor, causing Evil Blondie to smirk at her because that’s what bitches do. Young Woman gets back to her feet with determination in her heart, conviction in her soul, and the phone number of a yuppie hit-man in her satchel.

  Back to the warehouse, where will.i.am and Danny are still doing their thing, which is starting to get a tiny bit boring. They’re singers, and they’re singing. No real surprises here. But at least they’re having a good time, especially Danny, who gets so emotionally-invested during the chorus that he appears to throw a punch at the camera and then does a manly twirl in celebration. (Which, in my book, sort of makes him a suspect in the street-mugging that just went down a few minutes ago, but we’ll let the police handle it.)

  Another montage, this one of Young Man training at the gym while thickly-muscled trainers show him some tough love about learning the dark arts, making us feel like we’re watching a promo for Rocky 17: The Luck of the Irish.  We also have footage of Young Woman, as she works really hard in the studio so she can one day be as good as Jennifer Beals’ body-double in Flashdance. (And yes, Ice Blondie continues to smirk at Young Woman’s efforts, proving that Ann Coulter is not the only one with a massive stick up her ass.)

  The training montage goes on for a long time, with lots of punching and sweating and standing on your toes, reminding us that you have to work really hard to be good at what you do. Unless you’re a Kardashian. Or a Fox News reporter.

  But we know that our young starlets will eventually succeed, especially with Danny and will.i.am continually reminding us on the soundtrack to “be champy-uns”. Young Man prepares for an important fight, with another Rocky-tribute series of scenes, and Young Woman happily trots off to audition for a dance company, where a stern-faced group of people  on the review panel look like they just got back from the proctologist.

  Of course, we have to have a little bit of drama before they triumph, mainly because there’s still a minute left in the song. Young Man is a little wobbly in his bout at first, so he has to be yelled at by Poppa Bear trainer while a blood-thirsty crowd roars in the background. (I’ve never understood boxing as a spectator sport. You want to pay money to watch people beat the hell out of each other? Really? But at least boxing is better than the WWF, where grown men dry-hump each other while wearing bikini briefs on national television.)

  And Young Woman has her own troubles, with her initially jacking-up her audition and falling down once again. (No reaction shot from Blondie, so maybe she’s at the bottom of that elevator shaft. Or at the proctologist’s office, where both of them are in for a surprise.) Luckily, Young Woman just has to run place her hands on a conveniently-nearby speaker (she can’t hear, remember, you might have forgotten that during the 112 times that Danny or will.i.am struck another pose) so she can get the rhythm back, and then she’s all good. (This is actually a very nicely done bit, with the song becoming muted while her hand is touching the speaker. I wish I had a button that could mute the world like that.)

  Eventually, Young Man presumably wins his fight, with him (or somebody, might be the dream boxer) hoisting one of those massive title belts. (Where are you actually supposed to wear that thing? At a manhole-cover convention?) And I guess Young Woman triumphs as well, because she gets all smiley. We don’t actually see her getting her own locker or whatever happens when you get accepted by a dance troupe, but we do have another image of the dream dancer being pelted by roses, so I’m taking that as a positive sign.

  The video ends with Danny, all alone again in that warehouse, as he walks toward the camera and our last image is of his darkened crotch. I’m thinking that shot probably should have been in a different type of video, but maybe that’s Danny’s signature sign off, like Carol Burnett with her ear tug…

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The Script – “For The First Time”

  We start out with shots of a lovely young lass filling out a postcard. Apparently she’s living in New York City, but has a hankering to follow that postcard back across the water to Dublin. Something about missing her some brown bread. I suppose this is a really important thing that one can yearn for, but I don’t really know and it didn’t seem an appropriate time to ask questions. The woman (we’ll call her Katie, that sounds Irish enough) finishes up her dissatisfied missive  and then stares forlornly around the room at things that are obviously not the brown bread that she wants.

  This is the cue for lead singer Danny (more of the Irish fest!) to kick off the sad beginning lyrics where we don’t know how “we got into this mad situation”. (Poor recreational drug usage decisions? A really high wireless bill? That really horrid woman at the corner deli who always gives you the crappy corned beef?) While Danny warbles in the black-and-white part of the video where the band lives, Katie turns to gaze upon her boyfriend, who is probably also sad because he doesn’t appear to own a shirt. He’s rushing around and getting ready in a hurried manner that indicates some fool hit the snooze bar too many times. (Probably Katie, mad that it wasn’t a loaf of brown bread making the noise.)

  The boyfriend (we’ll call him Sean) finally manages to snag a shirt and he prepares to leave the apartment. But before he can head out to wherever it is that Seans go in NYC, he leans in to give Katie a little smooch. Instead of allowing this little peck of love, however, Katie makes a face and pulls back. (So she’s one of those kinds of girls, who get into a funk and wants everyone else around them to suffer as well. These are the same girls who are completely stunned when their husband/boyfriend/Soviet same-sex lover gets fed up with it all and starts trolling porn sites.)

  Anyway, Sean eventually gets away from Katie and her co-dependent blues, hopping on his motorcycle and zipping away to his workplace where he makes things or sells things or plays Angry Birds all day. As he travels, the building scenery in this part of town is kind of blurry, so we don’t know if the pollution has gotten seriously out of control or if Sean has lost a contact lens. Meanwhile, Danny and the band continue to play the song over in that place that looks like the first part of the movie Pleasantville. Their story is just not as interesting as the tale of the estranged lovers, so we can ignore them for a while and focus on the next episode of All My Irish Children.

  Now we’re at the part where they’re sucking down “cheap bottles of wine”, (I guess Sean’s job only lasts 7 seconds and then he’s home again) and it initially appears that Katie might be in a better mood, because she actually laughs and doesn’t seem to be looking for any of the questionable and missing bread. They share a tender moment where they gaze at one another lovingly while a soft light enhances the fact that neither of them have any body fat whatsoever. It’s very sweet, but we know that Katie is going to want a sandwich sooner or later.

  And there it is, with Katie back in her sulking room, fighting back tears as she ponders the painful drawbacks of moving from a city where relatively little happens to a city where absolutely everything happens, 24-7. She has a flashback to another drinking session where she was happy, and then she cries some more. (Is she missing the obvious point that she is much more fun to be around when alcohol is involved? Perhaps we should text her.)

  We roll into a montage of Sean rushing about town and doing presumably important things, shots of Katie possibly lying on the grass in a park and staring up at silent trees that refuse to assist her with the quest for special bread, and images of the band playing where we now have a bit of color seeping into the cinematography. (And they’ve turned up the lights a bit so we can realize there are other band members besides Danny, and not just quick glimpses of disembodied fingers strumming a guitar or banging on a drum.)

  Now Katie has managed to find a camera, and she’s wandering among the buildings and trying to get decent shots so she can show the folks back home what a skyscraper looks like. This leads to a confusing moment where Katie seems to be stuck on a chain-link fence but isn’t trying very hard to escape. (Girl has some serious issues.) This is followed by more frenzied images of Sean still rushing about for his job (some type of messenger service or drug courier, not clear), actually making a living instead of pining for baked goods while the laundry goes undone.

  Oh wait, we seem to have zipped back to happier times again, where we have Katie wearing a fetching hat and smiling while she and Sean pose in front of the Statue of Liberty across the bay, a picture angle that no one in the world has ever tried before, right? Sean also appears to be happy, wearing a festive stocking cap of his own, so he probably hasn’t yet learned that he’s living with a character from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  We take a short break from the drama so that Danny can do an interpretive dance on his little stage, an energetic bit of choreography that seems to involve the invention of the helicopter, sharp objects on the floor that you should avoid, the Running of the Bulls, and an unsupervised bottle of cooking sherry. The end of his performance signals another rolling montage, with more of the happy/sad imagery, the buildings that are still blurry, somebody driving a car down a busy street like a total dumbass, brief moments of bed aerobics, and Danny kicking over a piano bench that has displeased him in some way.

  Things slow down a bit as we watch Sean the boyfriend pausing at some shoreline to reflect on things like what to do with his life, where he might be able to find some decent sushi, and what the hell are we going to do about the missing bread. While the band plays out the last part of the song, Sean comes to a decision, and we see scenes of him selling his beloved motorcycle to a man who apparently can’t stand all the way up but likes to wave goodbye with one finger. (Is that man just really tired or what?)

  After an another dancing exhibition from singer Danny, we watch as Sean strolls up to Katie sitting on the stoop of their building, with her still looking sad despite wearing a clever little dress. They head into the building as the song fades, and Sean hands Katie an envelope. She stares at it suspiciously (probably because it’s not a loaf of bread) and then finally asks what it is. “It’s a plane ticket. I quit my job and I’m taking you home.”

  It’s very touching and somebody should probably make a Hallmark movie about it. But I can’t help but wonder if Sean realizes that, if it’s this hard keeping Katie happy in New York, it’s going to be even more so in Dublin when Katie is surrounded by her family and they ALL gang up against him when she gets blue over not being able to see the Statue of Liberty out her parlor window. (Irish families don’t play when one of their own is not happy.) Sean might have just made a poor life decision, especially if they get Tori Spelling to dye her hair and play the role of Katie…

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The Script - “Breakeven (Falling To Pieces)”

  We start out with the lead singer driving along in his car, destination unknown, while we hear a woman repeating herself in voiceover. We don’t know if it’s a flashback or a haunting. We get glimpses of the band performing while the lead singer (Danny) watches a big blue boat float past. He’s really sad, which probably has nothing to do with the “Where’s Waldo?” tower behind him. We also get brief shots of some presumably naked people having a swell time.

  Cut to Danny sitting all alone in the dark, fiddling with his cell phone, proving that society has issues if people need to check their text messages when they should be singing in a music video. He finally does start with the singing, triggering some more flashbacks where his girl is doing something with wheat as well as more intimate nap time. (There’s that tower again.) It appears that Nameless Girl really likes to have videos taken of her while she wears a coat, so she’s probably high-maintenance.

  Back to Danny sitting again, this time in what we’ll assume is his bedroom. He checks for head lice, but doesn’t find any. He’s still sad. I’m no counselor, but maybe if he got off that damn bed things might improve a little. Oh look, I guess he heard me because the band is performing once more. The guitar player seems pretty happy, so maybe Danny should have a few beers with his buddy and figure out the secret.

  But no, Danny instead has some more flashbacks, this time of Nameless Girl getting fed up with him and marching out his front door with one tiny suitcase, so either the relationship wasn’t that serious to begin with or she’s misplaced a lot of things. Danny just watches her go, already writing this song in his head and wondering if Fiona Apple is available for the tragic backing vocals. He runs back inside to get a pencil.

  And more of the band performing. The audience really seems to be enjoying the music, so maybe they don’t understand that it’s not exactly a joyous song. Danny likes to wave his hand at something in the upper balcony, so we’ll assume that he and Nameless had a good time or two up there. Of course, he’s still having flashbacks, this time of Nameless auditioning for a shampoo commercial. Or lipstick. Something that requires Nameless to gaze at the camera with barely controlled yearning for the latest beauty products.

  Extended montage of the couple being intimate again. Did these two do anything besides have sex and wear jackets on a cloudy day? Danny is singing on stage again, and he’s completely ignoring his keyboard, so this must be the most emotionally-wrenching part of the song for him and he can’t multi-task. (Another shot of the duo showing their fondness for L. L. Bean outerware.) Danny waves to the other balcony, so I’m guessing that second floor is a really happening place.

  Now we have Danny singing by that striped tower again, and I’m starting to think it might have something to do with the breakup. It’s always there, and everyone knows that three-way relationships are very difficult to maintain. No wonder Nameless finally packed her minimal things, she was tired of playing second fiddle to something that’s taller than her and doesn’t talk very much.

  Scene with Danny realizing that his keyboard isn’t even plugged in, while the audience waits for him to realize where they are. Another shot of the couple in bed, and Danny is wearing a shirt that probably didn’t help the relationship, either. Back to the stage, where something very bright just landed on the audience. Danny looks up and sings to the ceiling, so I guess he and nameless did it on the roof as well. They were very busy people back in the day.

  Another shot at the seashore, where Nameless thinks she’s on a high-fashion runway, followed by more footage of the couple walking in that wheat, and Danny checking his inbox. The song winds down as we see Danny brooding in various locales, and snippets of Nameless apparently already with another guy. Danny sighs, adjusts his coat collar, and then goes to see what the Waldo tower is doing for dinner…


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