Synopsis

Superchunk ask for a straightforward performance video, but the directors assigned to the job have much grander ideas. Played by David Cross and Janeane Garofalo, the pair promise a simple shoot before transforming the footage into an absurd parade of effects and visual concepts. The band is recast through blue-screen tricks, fantasy imagery, horror-style edits, explosions, masks, and other deliberately cheap-looking devices. As the musicians watch the finished cut, their bemusement turns to horror at the directors' runaway creative decisions.

Factoids & Trivia

• "Watery Hands" was released in 1997 as part of Superchunk's sixth studio album, "Indoor Living," and was also issued as a Merge Records single.

• David Cross and Janeane Garofalo play the self-satisfied filmmakers responsible for the video-within-the-video.

• The clip is a parody of expensive, high-concept music videos. Its comedy comes from contrasting the band's request for a basic performance piece with the directors' insistence on increasingly ridiculous visual effects.

• Production took place in Queens, New York, according to a 1997 music-industry report.

• Mac McCaughan is turned into both a puppet-like figure and a yellow Labrador, while drummer Jon Wurster appears to fly through a mushroom cloud.

• The video was later included on Superchunk's "Crowding Up Your Visual Field" DVD.

• The surviving production credits list Eric Moynier for cinematography and Michael Mees for editing.