Music Video
The music video for the single, directed by Julien Temple, starred Johnny Depp as the protagonist named Eddie Rebel, Gabrielle Anwar as Eddie's girlfriend, Faye Dunaway as Eddie's manager and featured cameos by Tom Petty as the Roadie named Bart (as well as the tattoo artist and reporter), Terence Trent D'Arby, Petty's manager Tony Dimitriades, Chynna Phillips of Wilson Phillips and Matt LeBlanc, later of Friends. The video was shot during the filming of Arizona Dream, in which both Depp and Dunaway starred, was on hiatus as its director Emir Kusturica had suffered a nervous breakdown. The song was extended in order to include more of the 18 minutes of footage Temple had created.
The video starts like a storybook narration, as Eddie's story unfolds. Eddie arrives in Hollywood after graduating high school and joins the local scene. He finds a girl (Anwar) who has the same tattoo as he does; a heart impaled with a stiletto knife. As Eddie works as a doorman, his girlfriend teaches him to play guitar. Their landlady (Dunaway) turns out to be a cross between a fairy godmother and a svengali, managing his increasing success as a rock star.
Unfortunately the success goes to Eddie's head, as he becomes more indulgent (getting drunk and rude at an award ceremony and losing his temper in a music video shoot). Things come to a peak when he excludes his manager from a red carpet event. Infuriated, his manager (Dunaway) waves her wand and breaks the spell, with disastrous results. Eddie's career quickly fizzles, Anwar leaves him, and the heart in his tattoo fades away. The story closes with Eddie returning to the tattoo parlor, where he finds a newcomer (LeBlanc) getting the same tattoo from a new tattoo artist (Depp). Tom Petty then closes the video with the classic fairy tale ending that "they all lived happily ever after".
Tom Petty took the line "a rebel without a clue" from the 1989 single "I'll Be You" by Minneapolis rock band The Replacements with whom he toured.
The person presenting the award to Johnny toward the end of the video appears to be Mike Campbell, the guitarist on the track.
Read more about this topic: Into The Great Wide Open (song)
Famous quotes containing the words music and/or video:
“Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.”
—André Malraux (1901–1976)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)