The Prodigy - Firestarter music video

Director: Walter Stern
Producer: ?

I'm sure that everyone knows that video but... The scene is an abandoned London subway. The main focus of attention is on Keith, who runs around with an angle grinder trying to wreck the train tracks, while the rest of the band look on in approval. After this we see Keith hanging on to his life by a few bicycle tubes in a lift shaft, 60 feet off the ground. When you watch the video you can actually see Leeroy hurling towards the TV screen swaying around. The reason is that he got drunk whilst recording the set for Firestarter because he had nothing to do except drinking. Keith wears Tommy Hilfiger "stars and stripes" jumper and that's why many new fans thought that Prodigy was an american band. This also boosted they success in america. Anyway that jumper is real rarity nowadays and many fans are trying to get one from eBay.

The video caused big uproar in the UK. Questions in the House of Commons, bad pressand a record number of complaints to 'Top of the Pops' for showing the video. When the video for Firestarter was aired on 'Top of the Pops' for the first time, the BBC received more complaints than they had received for any other act. 'Top of the Pops' actually asked the band to remake the video, offering to pay the expenses, but were told quit bluntly to "f*** off". Great stuff. Interestingly enough, there are two videos for Firestarter. The original one was directed by the bloke who made the Diesel Jeans advertisement. But it turned out to be a real modern arty type video and the band were hardly in it so they scrapped it and hired their long time friend Walter Stern to direct new one. The budget was really low only 20k pounds. That's why they had to use cheap black and white film.

Taken from Martin James, Prodigy book: The original video for "Firestarter" was directed by a team chosen for their work on a Diesel Jeans TV advert that the band had though was amazing. Their vision for the track had Keith bound up in ropes; the focus was on a huge tyre that had been filmed in negative, and every time the bass dropped, the tyre bounced. However, although the promo proved to be quite slick, the band decided it just didn't represent them as a band. Keith was far too restricted - instead of the images unleashing his personality, as the music had done, his performance was held back.

On a show on MTV titled "Top Ten: Scariest Videos of All Time", Firestarter came in as third scariest video of all time! Suprising how many people consider this video scary.

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