Summer Cannibals

1996 5 min

In this punkish, puckish music video for a song from Patti Smith’s 1996 album Gone Again, Frank borrows Catholic signifiers from past films like Sin of Jesus and Last Supper, including a kitsch rendering of Jesus and his apostles, a Caravaggesque closeup of Smith’s naked, dirty foot, and a discarded rosary. The producer of Summer Cannibals, Michael Schamberg, was a persuasive guy with consummate good taste, having also recruited Chris Marker, Kathryn Bigelow, Jonathan Demme, Robert Longo, and William Wegman to work on various music videos for New Order, R.E.M., Grace Jones, Talking Heads, and the B-52’s. — Museum of Modern Art

director Robert Frank