Textual Analysis 2 - Josh Cartwright

The second video i have chosen to do is another Foo Fighters one called 'Long Road to Ruin'. The director of this video was Jesse Peretz who has done other videos with the Foo Fighters such as, Big Me, Low, Learn to Fly and The One. Foo Fighters are known for their spoof videos e.g. Big Me, Long Road to Ruin and Learn to Fly, which means that they don't use the conventional rock music video.
This video is set in the 1970's and is a comedic spoof of a stereotypical hospital drama, but you see the actors in the TV drama in real life too. Each of the band members acting as different people. Dave Grohl plays "Davy Grolton", who stars as the main doctor, "Hansom Davidoff". Drummer Taylor Hawkins plays "Ty Hawkstone" ("Les Groper", Davidoff's womanizing colleague). Guitarist Chris Shiflett plays "Christopher Mishomotohama" ("Little Jimmy", a severely injured child). Bassist Nate Mendel plays "Ned Bender" ("Saul Goode", the show's shady antagonist). As always in their spoof videos there is a guest star and this is actress Rashida Jones as "Racinda Jules" ("Susan Belfontaine", the doctor's love interest).
The only relationship between the lyrics and visuals is that when Dave is singing the lyrics "long road to ruin" he is driving a car with the typical green screen behind, like they would in a 1970's TV drama.
There is a scene in the music video where you see Dave with his band, but they all look differently again because they would look like the actors that play in the soap opera. The band play in a shopping mall with loads of screaming girls around them.
There are close ups of all the band members. At the beginning of the video it shows the band members with their acting names and their role in the TV drama. Once again it is similar to the spoof videos they tend to do and change the look of the band members a lot.
There is a point where the notion of looking happens and is when Chris Shiflett watches Dave and Rashida kiss.
The main intertextual reference is that its a 1970's hospital drama taking the mick out of what could be General Hospital which was aired around the 1970's.
The video is performance based with the band acting only a short bit where they play their instruments. A narrative is used from the start which carries on all the way through the video, with a hospital drama in some parts and also showing an outside storyline to it. And it is also concept based with it being a "remake" of a 1970's hospital drama.