Video: "Wicked Game"

Music: "Wicked Game" (lyrics)
Music artist: Chris Isaak (website)
Watch on YouTube

Hands down, bar none, no questions asked, this is my favorite song ever ever ever used for Jack and Jennifer. It's just one of my favorite songs, period, and the fact that it was used for Jack and Jennifer squees me out to no end. After a year of firetruck wedding escapes, shipwrecks, cave love, and high couture embassy balls, they really needed to get back to the dark side of Jack Deveraux (cue crashing cymbals), and I can't think of a song more suited than the brooding, longing, and incredibly sexually tense "Wicked Game".

Not that they really ever dropped the ball with Jack's past, mind you, at least not at this point. But they really hadn't -- and needed to have -- brought it all back to full-force angst mode, so that Jennifer's rose-colored glasses could come off, and so that we could be reminded that fairy tale adventures don't change reality (it was this interplay between the far-off romantic adventures and the pervasive realities back home that made early J/J rock so hard).

Enter, Angstmas (what the post-Alamania stuff is fondly known as in J/J Nation). This video's almost all Angstmas clips, and I had a great time picking out and ordering the clips this time around because so many ideas came out about how to structure it. I bookended it with clips of the red rose Jack has (and crushes) in his limo after the rape slap, and half way through the video is an overlay Jack crushing Kayla's yellow rose after her rape (cool little note: I didn't realize it at the time, but this was laid over the part in the argument of that scene where he points out that they are right there at the "scene of the crime" ... I liked how it worked out that way, with the overlay being of the morning after said crime, and emblematic of the rage that motivated it). To me the rose was the symbol of romantic love, in the classic sense of the word "romantic", that sense that makes you believe that love can carry you away to another world where everything is perfect. And from that it's clear what the connotations of Jack crushing those roses are. Also because of the "World was on fire" lyric, I had to include, first, the Christmas Eve clip where they try to make love in Jennifer's loft in front of the fireplace, and second, a clip of the first time they make love, by the fire in the cave. I really liked putting that cave clip after the scene where Jennifer tearfully holds up her shell ring, because of course Jack gave her that shell ring shortly after they made love in that cave. In that gesture you could imagine her recollecting all the passion and love was seemingly lost, so to me it made sense that the next clip show that passion and love. That cave was also where Jack first took the leap and believed that a relationship could work out, and endure, so that's kind of where the "wicked game", as he now sees it, started. I liked putting it near the end of the song, for some reason it clicked for me that way, especially coming right before Jack taking the engagement ring back. And speaking of, those rings (the shell ring and the engagement ring, which he presents in the rooftop proposal clip) are also (duh!) a symbol of commitment and, relatedly, the belief that love will last. Since Jennifer's calling Jack a rapist basically meant to Jack that this dream of commitment could be nothing more than a dream, I thought it was important to show those rings.

I also tried to use the settings to "say" something in the video. Early on are a lot of indoor scenes, especially in the loft, the "scene of the crime" as Jack calls it. They are intimate there, they fight there, they cry there, and there is that recollection of Kayla's rape that happened there, so a lot of the story is told in that loft. At the end are a few outdoor shots, which I thought worked to convey a coldness in the relationship, given that the time period is winter of 1990/1991. And to that effect I also tried to begin with more close-up shots onto faces, contrasted with the end where there are some more distanced shots of more of the body.

One other big thing I tried to do was not use many clips of them talking, but instead find meaningful gestures: kisses, embraces, touching of faces, hair and hands, glances and long looks, shutting of doors, the raising of rings, the crushings of the roses, walking away. Two exceptions that I liked was, first, during the line "What a wicked thing to say", the clip is of Jennifer saying "(No matter what you think) I love you", which is precisely what Jack can no longer believe, what he thinks is "wicked" to say, and second, the argument during the part where I overlaid the scene where Jack crushes the yellow rose. At that part, Jack is telling Jennifer that they are standing right there at the "scene of the crime", and I liked how that occurs at the same time Jack does that action that is so emblematic of the rage that motivated that crime. I felt that conveyed the shame now felt at the intensity of that rage, and sort of visually explained why Jack feels he just cannot give into Jennifer's tears as she pleads with him to not give up on them. Other than those two instances, it's just about all body language, and I thought that fit the sensuality and mood of the song. Because that mood was kind of ruined for me whenever I used clips of jarring actions, I also tried to make the transitions smooth, sometimes going from face to face, sometimes from symbol to symbol, or symbol to meaning, or setting to similar setting, etc.

Last thing I wanted to mention was the overlays I used. In the first one, Jack argues with Jennifer in the loft as a "memory" of the morning after Kayla's rape (where he crushes the yellow rose) occurs. I faded the "memory" in and ultimately had it become opaque as the argument faded away. If I really wanted to overanalyze ( too late?!) I'd say that this shows how the memory of this action that inspires so much guilt in Jack "won out", turning opaque to visually convey how it took over his thoughts and became his motivation in interacting with Jennifer. Contrast this with the second overlay, where Jack is sitting on the pier, watching Jennifer walk away, and I show a "memory" of their dance in the stateroom of the cruise ship S. S. Loretta. The cruise was the fun, romantically adventurous storyline where their relationship really officially started, so I thought that provided a good contrast with the rift they were currently experiencing, to show how far away from the optimistic times they'd fallen. I also just love Jennifer's smile/laugh as they dance, I think it's just beautiful and it has that pureness and sweetness that makes you see why Jack fell so deeply in love with her. I thought it would tweak the regretful emotions showing something like that. And the contrast with the first overlay lies in the fact that in this one, the memory of better times does not become opaque, but fades away. It is not powerful enough to gain control over his actions like the bad memory of Kayla's rape was.

That was probably more than you ever wanted to know! I just had a great time thinking about how to put this one together. What do you think?