(Part G) Armond White on Johnny Cash “Hurt” (Dir: Mark Romanek)

Following Text Cut and Pasted from YouTube Page

(Part G) July 25, 2003
CRITIC Armond White “VISUAL RADIO” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Musician: Johnny Cash
Song: “Hurt”
Director: Mark Romanek
Producer: Aris McGarry
Director of Photography: Jean Yves Escoffier
Editor: Robert Duffy
Production Designer: Ruby Guidara
Wardrobe Stylist: Peggy Knight

Excerpts of a 3/12/03 NYPress essay on the music video

ahhh, film. director mark romanek mixes staged footage, old documentary, hollywood clips and sundry movie excerpts into an emotional impasto for johnny cash’s music video for “hurt.” there is a conscious use of film as the repository of memory and feelings that seems a perfect expression of the song’s mournful nostalgia when, in fact, nostalgia is transcended (if that’s the right word) by the way romanek’s collated imagery burrows deep beneath it…

…flashing back through cash’s career, romanek also flashes through our pop lives—cashing-in on our memories or resolving newly created interest in the singer’s past. the “hurt” video operates as a johnny cash cinematheque; a career retrospective that recalls one of those michael jackson history-era montages only this time emphasizing the artist’s personal recoil and regret. it’s mighty unsettling when cash warbles, “you can have it all/my empire of dirt” and romanek then shows us a lifetime’s accumulated trophies — insubstantial tinsel including a framed gold record. as newcomer reznor sang the line, “dirt” was dirt. with cash it’s a heavy summation of the now-meaningless accolades the music industry and his fans have bestowed…