When Ryan got back from her little hiatus, she had a meeting with me, Jas, and Serge, the film producer we’d hired to do her music videos forFirebird. We’d done a very simple one after releasing “Shoes on the Dash,” just a two-location shoot with Ryan playing her banjo on an Austin rooftop and standing next to an old Buick—close-ups, lots of hair flips, early 2000s oversaturation. You know the kind.
But our budget for this sort of thing had grown. And so had Ryan’s ambition.
We had five singles planned forFirebird, and videos to go along with each: “Neon Dreams,” “Blue Jean Baby,” “Didn’t You Realize,” “Whiskey and Wine,” and finally, “Alcatraz.” There was a lot of creative opportunity there—Ryan asked if she could be more involved this time around, and I said of course.
She came ready to that first meeting.
“‘Shoes on the Dash’ was good,” she said. “But what if we did more storytelling? All these songs would be really great for a short film format.”
I was already seeing dollar signs—but in our expenses, not our bottom line. “What do you have in mind?” I said.
Ryan raised her eyebrows at me. “What’s our budget?”
I shook my head. “How about you write a proposal first. Then we’ll see what’s possible.”
Well, shit. Little did I expect her to pull out this huge manila folder, all fat with notes and screen directions and these crazy collages made out of magazine clippings.
I remember just looking over at Serge—this very serious, cerebral, well-respected director who had clawed his way up to the VMAs from Staten Island, where he’d spent his childhood filming the neighborhood with a Super 8 camera—and I wondered,What the hell could he be thinking?
Serge Chirkov,film director and auteur
She had grit. I remember watching her lay out all these, well, scrapbook pages, essentially, and hearing her talk through her ideas for each video.
A young girl her age, I would have expected them to be just that—ideas, and nothing more. But Ryan Holding had envisioned the piece from beginning to end.
People see a difference between cinema and music videos. Perhaps they think of the type of music video that is simply a stand-in for a live performance, such as Ryan’s first foray, or the many videos of the ’80s and ’90s in which the artists sing to the camera and do little else. But Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Madonna—I think Ryan took great inspiration from these. “Material Girl” was most certainly included in her printouts.
The music videoshouldbe a little gem of cinema.
And no, Ryan was not an expert in what she was trying to convey. I know there has been criticism that she was never formally trained in film, yet she received writing and directing credits for some of these videos, culminating, of course in the magnum opus that was “Hear Me Now.”
But racking focus, depth of field, mise-en-scène—this is not what matters for a successful piece of media. Ryan was a storyteller.
“What if the video for ‘Neon Dreams’ features two lovers?” she said. “They’ve come to Las Vegas together—maybe back in the ’60s, so we can have all this originalOcean’s Elevenglamour—but their fate changes, and they have to leave separately.”
Her eyes had this light to them as she spoke. It was the look of someone who truly believed in what she was selling.
“What causes this change?” I asked.
“Maybe he loses all his money and can’t bear to face her,” she said. “And she wins big, but before she has the chance to tell him, he’s gone.”
“Ah,” I said. “Very tragic. So they have both lost, in the end.”
“Yes!” Ryan seemed to be pleased I understood.
She was able to convey the feeling, the thrust, the patina of the story that she wanted to bring to life, which is much harder to teach than technical skill. And that is why her music videos were beloved.
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With Serge’s buy-in, we were able to strategize. To keep costs manageable, “Blue Jean Baby” and “Didn’t You Realize” would be these sort of fun, homegrown videos. Ryan was on a soundstage for “Blue Jean Baby,” with a set that we could put together by hand; we ordered a few pallets of fake silk flowers and had her sing against a really colorful background. “Didn’t You Realize” was a cakewalk: just a video montage of Ryan’s performances to date with shots from fan meet and greets and exclusive backstage footage of her having fun with folks in the VIP lounge, goofing around with Dust and Roses and Montana Line.
This meant that the remaining three videos would receive a very polished, high-production-value treatment with all the stops pulled out: “Neon Dreams,” “Whiskey and Wine,” and “Alcatraz.” In fact, Ryan had an overarching vision for these three, a trilogy, if you will: They’d follow the same couple from their fallout in Vegas. It wouldn’t be overt, but she wanted fans to be able to figure out the throughline if they were paying attention. “Whiskey and Wine” would feature the manin a dingy piano bar in LA, where he’d run away to work after losing everything in Vegas. His paramour or what have you, the woman from “Neon Dreams,” finally finds him there, but it’s too late—he’s planned a robbery in an attempt to regain some of his former financial stability, and he’s going through with it.
I mean, you know where this is going. He gets caught, and “Alcatraz” is the final installment. His lover leads a daring jailbreak, and they ride off into the sunset. I’ve gotta hand it to Ryan, though—she nailed that ambiguous ending.
Jasmine
I loved that final shot of “Alcatraz.” You have this action-packed story arc, these star-crossed lovers that you’re just rooting for—and this badass female character who turns the whole damsel-in-distress trope on its head.
