M.Shawn Crahan Interview About Making of Snuff

M. Shawn Crahan Discusses “Snuff” From Behind The Camera
By Jen Guyre

As Slipknot’s 4th single from their #1 album All Hope is Gone sonically demonstrates a departure from the Iowa contingent’s staple heaviosity, showcasing a more emotional side with a profound message, it couldn’t be a better moment for M. Shawn Crahan – the percussionist better known as Clown, but the director better known by his given name – to take his filmography to the next level as well. Turning Corey Taylor’s conflicted verse “Snuff” into a heart rendering and head-scratching short film, Crahan describes the work as “a love story… It’s not transvestite stuff or Hollywood hookers, this is just a completely detached love story.” Read on to find out more about Crahan’s cinematic vision, personal attachment to the song, and what went into the making of the film.

How did you come up with the concept for this short film?
I think everybody was feeling the pressure of this video because of the caliber of the song and what the song could do and what it makes people feel -- I think everybody was worried. And I knew that my treatment was going to be a hard sell. If they don’t really see it and taste it and deem it something that can be worthwhile, you’re not going to get a chance to do it. So it was very important that I write something that was not going to justify the word ‘snuff’ in what the literal word [means], because I don’t support that, and I’m not going to make something that would support that. I had to go [deep], and a lot of it just came around this story that Corey has written and these lyrics about, more or less, this person who’s so gone and will not return, that she’s basically dead, but he becomes her and that became more or less the definition of ‘snuff.’ So it was important that I tried to give Corey as much integrity behind what he was doing, because I was in his house, he played it as a demo, and it affected me then, and I’ve been writing it ever since. I wanted to do something that was a love story that could be that moment that all of us get to where we don’t realize that we could get to that place, but then time slows down and we might have a moment of just rage or depression or fits of anxiety, and life changes, and we just never knew we could actually step into those boundaries -- that’s more or less what this is about. It’s not transvestite stuff or Hollywood hookers, this is just a completely detached love story.


Is the heavy subject-matter of the song ultimately why you decided to make it narrative-based and not performance-based?
I’d say I’m in the top one percentage of people that understand how important live performance is, but what I will challenge you with is this – being one of the people always reinventing that, we’ve kept it interesting, and I always want to keep it interesting, and it’s good to have a little break from things. I don’t feel I’m denying anybody the world of live performance, it’s not deliberate, it’s like a breath of fresh air. There will likely be a live performance for the next video. This is a journey, and the ride doesn’t ever just stop, it’s not predictable, but I do like to get away from things that become comfortable, and the idea of us nine playing live together, it is something we do well, it’s something that people like, and we appreciate that people like that, but let’s not get sick of that, because I’m fucking sick of it!

Slipknot have managed to show their faces twice so far in this album cycle. How did that transition come about?
It’s simple. Our art form was the highest of integrity, and you can feel everyone in the beginning, all the magazines, all the guys -- you saw everybody going for it. They tried everything they could to pin us up against anything. Guys went out and wrote books, and it was a bunch of cheese. As an artist, I sit back and listen to all the, “Oh, you should be ashamed of how you do things,” but here I am, 10 years later, all original members, four great pieces of work, and we want to hold everybody accountable for it. So protecting the vision was really just protecting it from all these liars, and what’s important is that people know we’ll never take our masks off while we play live, and that’s where it’s always been.

I waited until a time that was appropriate to start becoming a human and putting a face with the philosophy, but I wanted to do it when it didn’t matter - “I don’t really care what he looks like, just listen”- and that happened on Volume 3: Subliminal Verses. When we did the interviews, we had crazy shit going on, and then we did interviews on the second disk with all of our faces. You just see that no one cares, why would they? We’ve been around so long that there’s nothing to prove us wrong on. So what if you see my face, so do the people at the venue when I’m getting catering, so do 2,000 kids outside watching me going from my bus, so do the people that just snap pictures of my face and put it on the Internet, no secret, we’ve never tried to keep it a secret. We weren’t doing what KISS did or what other people did, we simply were protecting ourselves and our image in the beginning, because it was evident that everyone was trying to destroy what we were creating. And it was easy for us, because we just sat back and laughed at everybody and said, “Let’s do this chess game, but we’re going to win,” and we won a long time ago. So this is all for us now.

What I’ve always said and what I’ll always say is that I will never [perform without a mask], I have no reason to and it’s so easy not to. Whatever is off the stage is free of limits, but live, there’s no questions there. I won’t be in the band if that ever happens. It’s never been discussed, we’ve never even thought about it, it’s not even something that bothers us anymore, we enjoy it. Whatever we do in our free time off of the stage, our church, is up to us. I want to bring kids into the experience of Slipknot, I want to bring everybody in real, real close, and the only way to do that is to open up a window, and that’s what we’ve done.

How do you compare making “Snuff” vs. making the “Psychosocial” and “Sulfur” videos?
I demanded to be a part of every single move that I possibly could, because I wanted “Snuff” to be what “Snuff” became, and it was effortless, and the reason was because I’ve been very honored and lucky that my band trusts me and allows me to get in there, so I’ve got their blessing. But more importantly, the label, they’ve been in the long-run with us, so they don’t worry about what it is we’re doing or portraying, but after getting on the phone with them and walking them through all kinds of things that they think about, once they see the passion, they let me be a part of everything: I got to do casting – I more or less looked at 25 girls, and I was like, “Silky, this chick, she’s the one.” And I got to meet the cinematographer earlier in the week and pick his mind. Then we picked the location, and got another day where we walked in the location and talked about the shots and creating lights on the outside of the windows -- all this Hollywood stuff, and this is stuff you want to utilize, because when you’re using a production company, they bring in all the lights and the shit can either sit in a truck or it can come in and be a part of this experiment known as art, right? This difference [was] because I didn’t have to be in the video, which was an absolute pleasure, and I got to work on everything artistic before it went down. Usually, I get to co-direct and I get to show up the day of and all this stuff has gone down. Even if somebody sent me pictures of the props, unless you’re tasting it, smelling it and touching it, you can’t make right decisions for the vision, so what differs is that I was involved in everything that I could be involved in, and the only step now is to write a treatment and do a video on my own with my own production company and present that, and I’ll be off and running -- that’s my next step.

How did you start working with Paul Brown?
Paul is great, he’s been like a mentor to me and understands that I couldn’t do any of what I’ve done learning-wise without him. He brings a whole other set of ideas that are visible in the videos and that are, in my opinion, genius. With me, it’s all about what kind of artist you are. I was brought up by one great guy in particular, who, when I asked him some of his tricks, he gave them to me and I really respected him because he looked at me and said even though he showed me the tricks, it didn’t mean that I would do the tricks like he would do them, and he was exactly right. He didn’t invent the tricks, he learned from someone; great poets always said that everything in our head has already been said, and it’s so true -- we’re all just writing this familiar dream. Paul’s a great artist, and I really respect him, he’s got no ego, and a lot of people can learn from him about what it means to be ego-less. At the same time, he knows how to stand up for what he’s doing and be a badass about, and that’s what I need to work with: confident people that will trust in my vision and allow me to create art, to let it out. To trust when I say, “I’m not feeling the green walls, they should be brown,” and when they see the outcome, they see the things I do -- I got that trust with him. I work with Paul Brown because he’s a pleasure to work with as an artist, and he wants the vision to get out, that’s his thing.

One of the main things about “Snuff” as a short film is that it has a cinematic look. How did you accomplish that?
The very first thing that I had to fight for that you hit right on the head here is that I wanted to shoot it on film. I’m like, “This is a story. This is going to be my David Lynch, my fucking Twilight Zone, Outer Limits; this is a short film and you need to feel the wrinkles and the breaths and the eyes -- digital will never express it; it will be cold and it won’t work, it needs to be on fire.” And first thing the label said to me was, “You know you don’t need to use film…” and that started the conversation right there. We went into it, and the further we went, I got more details about what I wanted to do, and we chose film. And I’ll tell you what, “Snuff” would not be what it is today if it was not done on film, period. It would not have had that reaction, the feeling, the depth. We were able to use great lenses. We actually used these lenses that were used for the movie Saving Private Ryan, and it was just a different way the contrast and the lightness and things react with these lenses differently. I’m not an expert with the technicality, but I just know that the lighting coming in reacts differently, because of the coating on the inside of the lens -- things bounce in the lens and the camera reacts to it, and you get this real sharp, crazy kind of feeling in there. “Snuff” is a video that right from the get-go, you got this uneasiness, and you don’t know what it is, is it the video or is it the fucking band? And it never quite releases you, and you get done and you’re like, “He didn’t kill her -- there was no blood, no one’s been killed, Slipknot’s as crazy as I thought, and that was like a love story…what the fuck just happened?” That’s the look you’re talking about: film, and catering to what looks good on film -- the right location, what’s going to saturate the right red, the right brown, the right hallways, the intricacies and keeping things consistent. What’s great was we used the hallway and the room for the security guard, Malcolm [McDowell], in the same building that we had the room. We didn’t have to change locations; the themes are all part of that feeling. Keeping all the dots connected to the whole picture and making sure everything felt like the scene before it were mainly film and lenses and old school techniques. The cinematographer that we used for “Snuff,” he just had a different grasp on the color of this art project. I was able to go deep with him on color, like, “Yeah, man, this is a deep, deep purple, moving real slow, like the ocean,” and he was like, “Yeah, yeah,” and we were talking shutter speed and shit, and that’s the kind of team you want. We’re the luckiest little kids in the world when we get to play on a playground like that.

What else works within the film from your perspective?
I feel like communication is always just the key. There are a lot of people that made the video happen -- it was just a great crew. I had a blast, it was awesome, everybody was into it, everybody was having fun. I had worked with Paul for “Psychosocial,” “Dead Memories” and “Sulfur,” so we had the band for all of those, and that’s always a headache. I do the headache every day of my life, but it was nice just to give the band a break, it was nice to be able to put together a piece of art for the band, with the band’s philosophy. It’s something we’ve been waiting to do, and that’s how it worked best for this caliber of song -- to have this sort of dynamic, this sort of film. And yeah, Corey’s in it, and I wanted to express to everybody, this is a really personal thing for Corey, and I did feel personally like this would be some really good closure for something he’s been holding onto. I remember when he played me this song, it was just singing he did on a tape recorder, and I wanted him to get it out, and in our career, every member’s going to have something like that, there’s no favoritism, there’s no reason, there’s just what feels right.

You keep going back to the first time you heard the song as inspiration. Can you describe that moment a little more?
When it came to thinking about [the film] I had to think about all the things “Snuff” had done to me. When I was asked to go over to Corey’s house and he played it for me in his living room, and he was like, “This is a serious song.” He asked me what I thought about it, and I said, “Well, it sounds like Stone Sour,” and he looked at me and said, “OK, I knew that you were going to say that, but I wrote this for Slipknot,” and I said, “Bring it the fuck on, man. That’s awesome.” He asked me what I thought, and I had to go through some serious artistic worrying, because it’s like my ignorance came out. “It sounds like Stone Sour,” that’s all I could come up with, then I got dragged into the words. Then my musical part takes it even deeper for me, because that’s what I came up with for the song, and it’s a pretty heavy part; it got me really intoxicated with the song emotionally and spiritually, and it just started getting heavier and heavier and my mind started going further and further. Some people I was watching the video with were like, “He’s gonna kill that blonde chick!” and I just say, “Jesus, is this what people just think of us?” Come on, there’s way more dynamic going, it’s almost stuff to downplay…it’s just two people that lived together and he can’t have her, so he becomes her for a moment, just for a second, he disappears, and when he’s leaving, he gives Malcolm that little smile, like, “Yeah, I’m out of my fucking mind, take this shit off.” It’s a story, and it gets you. You know how hard that is to do in under four minutes?

What are some of the other reactions you’ve gotten to what you’ve created?
Everyone has really liked it, and I’m like an old wizard, I’m tucked in the hills, and I don’t really make it easy for people to get a hold of me. But everything I’ve heard, people really like it. I had a friend just text out of nowhere saying he finally saw it, then after he watched it five times he wrote back, “Sick, sick sick.” So everybody’s been real positive. The biggest thing was my family, my daughter and my sons, just everybody, really like, “Wow, dad,” my oldest daughter’s got a real grip on my art, and she saw it, and when she saw Malcolm, she turned to me and said, “How did you get him?” and I said, “We’re fucking rock stars.” You never get to say shit like that! She just laughed and I laughed; it’s been all positive.

You mentioned how this is part of the evolution, so as far as converting new Slipknot fans goes, how do you think people are reacting to it in that way?
I think it’s interesting, the fact that new fans will be drawn in, and they’re going to find the nearest future here – they’re not going to seek 10 years ago that much. I think they see “Snuff” and they search Slipknot, and they’re going to see more video and things that are related to All Hope is Gone, and they’ll find some old things, but they won’t really understand that. I just find it interesting that the further we get away from ’98, it’s almost the safer we are to the world, but everyone knows what’s underneath that. If you’ve been with us since ’98, you know what the disease is. It’s irreversible, it’s not curable, we’re diagnosed with Slipknot. You’re fucking terminal. And our goal is always for worldwide infection, worldwide domination -- we want everybody to check us out, and if that means somebody who likes country but can check us out through a film, like, “Well, I don’t care for the music, but man, great idea, cool stuff, that band’s got it going on,” that’s fantastic, and I think we are going to be doing that a lot. I’m always trying to open the door, getting further into the percentage of people that watch and feel and understand the sickness of Slipknot.

What do you ultimately hope that people take away from this?
I just think I’m lucky as hell to wake up every single day at 40 years of age and just be able to make my job be what I love, and what I love to do is art, and this recent thing that we’ve made that’s called “Snuff,” it takes a lot to make something in your head come out to life, and for one of the very first times in my life, I actually captured something in my head and got it out, and that’s an amazing thing to do, whether you’re a dentist or a teacher, when it’s swimming around your head, and you can actually bring it out into what is known as reality, the thought process known as the human condition…I hope they just take away the idea that you can really be happy in life doing what you love, and I’m very blessed to be able to have people trust me to make these visions that people can enjoy, so thank you.

From:http://www.slipknot1.com/news