Run

About

As with the production of Foo Fighters’ 2005 music video for ‘Best Of You’ the location selected for principal photography of ‘Run’, the first single from ‘Concrete & Gold’, was an abandoned hospital in California. This time the band and crew headed to the former St. Luke Medical Center in Pasadena, a hospital which had closed in 2002 after 70 years in operation. Like the facility used for the earlier video, this one too became a popular filming location after closure, with movies such as ‘Kill Bill: Volume 1 and La La Land recording scenes there.

The video was directed by Dave Grohl with a treatment which was set to see an ageing Foo Fighters appearing in a nursing home, based on a comment Taylor made just after finishing recording of the album. “We’re getting old. What are we gonna do about promo photos we’re so ugly now?” the drummer asked jovially. He then suggested that their next music video should see them as 100-year-olds, thrashing to ‘Run’.

Dave produced the treatment based exactly on that concept and working out the logistics and determining costs of production the video was given the green light, Dave recalling it became “a crazy melee of pulling off the craziest fiasco ever.”

The band went through an extensive makeup process, Dave forced to shave his beard so that a cast of his face could be created, an experience he described as “claustrophobic”. Each band member went through the same process, with prosthetics created and wigs attached to give them the desired aged appearance.

The primary artist behind the makeup was Tony Gardner, a special effects artist who worked on the iconic Thriller music video by Michael Jackson, also having a cameo role in the video itself as one of the zombies whose arm falls off.

According to Grohl the band all sent in suggestions for what their individual makeup appearances should look like, with Pat sending in an image of Frederick Douglass, a social reformer in the United States in the 1800s, Dave noting an uncanny resemblance.

It was decided that Taylor should have a skullet (A mullet hairstyle except with no hair on top) whilst Chris ended up with an “angry” appearance. Grohl joked that Nate’s appearance was “pretty pathetic, looking more ill than old and with not much time left”.

After a quick shot of the hospital with a sign above the door now establishing it as St. Daniels Nursing Home the video begins with actress Missi Pyle (Dodgeball, Gone Girl) playing a nurse at the home, delivering food and medicine to one of its residents. She refers to the character as Mr. Bayer, an assumed nod to Samuel Bayer, most known to Foo Fighters fans as director of the video for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Bayer was not the man under the prosthetics however, the role played by actor Seth Walker.

The video then cuts to the band performing in the chapel, booked as the night’s “musical entertainment” according to a voice on the intercom system. The crowd are a mixture of genuine older actors playing extras and younger actors in prosthetics, for reasons that soon become obvious.

Mr. Bayer is emboldened by the track being played, rising out of his seat and climbing the pulpit to the horror and rage of Pyle’s character. As the song explodes into life Bayer dives into the crowd below and chaos ensues, some of the younger actors attacking the staff, performing chest bumps and generally going wild whilst the band continues to play.

Several humorous moments ensue with one of the actors lifting their shirt to reveal comedic saggy prosthetic breasts, whilst the Mr Bayer character mimics ‘teabagging’ a member of staff.

The residents of the home soon overpower the staff and break out of the facility into the parking lot area which has a car full of cliché “hipster” youngsters, complete with Coachella VIP passes hanging from the mirror, smoking their vapes.

The pensioners surround the car, throw them out and Mr Bayer inhales the vape then exhales and fills the area with smoke. In a nod to make-up artist Gardner the video then ends with the younger actors performing a choreographed dance taken from part of the Thriller video, whilst the others escape in the car.

The video was released to the surprise of fans on 1st June 2017, at the exact same time the song itself was also released without warning or build-up.