Synopsis

At a diner, a woman breaks up with her boyfriend, who responds by literally tearing out his heart and placing it on her plate. He insists that the heart belongs to her, while she treats the gesture with uneasy practicality. The abandoned heart suddenly comes alive, sprouts limbs, and performs the song across the diner using broccoli as a microphone. Its melodramatic journey ends in another grotesque act of self-destruction, while the devastated man sits detached from the conversation around him.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video is built around an unusual amount of spoken dialogue, with much of the song playing underneath the conversation between the couple.

• Jorma Taccone plays the boyfriend, while Aasha Davis portrays the woman who ends their relationship.

• Gnarls Barkley members Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse appear briefly as chefs working in the diner.

• The photorealistic animated heart was created by Gradient Effects. Its body movement was based on motion capture, helping it move more like a human performer than a conventional cartoon character.

• Image Metrics captured Cee-Lo Green's mouth and lips from video footage and transferred that performance to the digital heart. The facial-animation work covered 15 shots and approximately 45 seconds of screen time.

• The production used specialized facial capture because ordinary motion-capture markers cannot be placed accurately on a performer's lips.

• The video was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video in 2008.

• Character animator Keith Sintay received a 2009 D&AD Yellow Pencil for the video's music-video animation.

• The song was released as the third and final single from The Odd Couple. In the United States, it was issued physically in a limited CD-and-DVD package that included the video and a making-of feature.