Big in Denmark

A long time ago back in the early to mid nineties when I used to do photo shoots and whatnot, I met a person by the name of Pierre Winther. Pierre had seen me working as a bartender in the Coffee Shop, and wanted to work with me on some projects, and so left a message with my coworkers one night after he had come back to see if I was there (but was not). When I next arrived at work, my friends said “Some guy came in to see you about some modeling gig.” So I took the number the guy had left behind and gave him a call.

Pierre told me that he was interested in hiring me for a Diesel jeans ad campaign (which was especially exciting to hear), but wanted to see if we clicked first (interesting), and asked me to do a video shoot with him for a band from Denmark called Sort Sol (‘black sun’ is what it translates to) for their balled “Let Your Fingers Do The Walking.” The video was shot on a particularly frigid day in New York City, in which my outfit was a cheap, polyester, undersized James Bond wannabe outfit which did little to provide warmth on that day.

Around the city –primarily the East Village, Noho, Tribeca, and Chinatown– we went, shooting on subways, near cemetaries, in restaurants in Chinatown, and in alleys. Some of the time I was dressed as is, with my then-platinum blonde hair matching the white suit, and other times Pierre would have me wear this rubber frog mask (don’t ask), especially for one scene in which I am holding up a check cashing center.

After we shot the footage for this video (in which I apparently met some of the band members, although I don’t recall it being that obvious that these guys I was interacting with briefly were in the band) Pierre’s staff told me they’d send me a copy of this video, which they never did, which I attribute to absent-mindedness and nothing more. But this being the pre-Internet age, it would take a while to edit all the footage and create the video, and then transfer it to VHS, since most of this stuff was recorded at higher levels of fidelity for broadcasting. Anyway, after much searching for Sort Sol-related video stuff (even when I was in Denmark last year), I finally tracked this video down when Googling the words “Pierre Winther” and “Sort Sol.” A Youtube link showed that Pierre had his own channel, and it was only when I clicked on the video titled –not “Sort Sol” or “Let Your Fingers Do The Walking” (someone needs to teach Pierre about search engine optimization)– “Pierre Winther,” did I realize that this video was the one we’d shot all those years ago.

I guess Pierre liked working with me, as he then called me up to do a shoot with the Beastie Boys, at an apartment on the west side of Chinatown on Canal Street. The Beastie Boys were super cool, friendly, and laid back, and not snobbish like you might expect some music superstars in their peak to be. They actually offered me a hit of their joint, which I politely declined, but it was the thought that counts, right?

Ultimately, these two experiences were rewarded with a round-trip flight to South Beach, Florida (and a week’s stay at the Hotel Bartholomew), where me and a couple dozen other young people would shoot the majority of the following year’s Diesel Jeans ad campaigns, some of which were quite controversial. All I remember is that they day we shot that Diesel campaign was as hot as the day was cold for the video shoot. I wish I were 24 again. Those were good times.