Synopsis

Set in a brightly colored fast-food restaurant, Ed Robertson plays a disgruntled employee while the other band members appear as staff, customers, and performers. The ordinary drive-through quickly slips into a surreal loop: cars circle the building, customers freeze in place, and dancers move backward while the band plays forward. A giant thumbs-up mascot eventually bursts into the scene, helping restore the restaurant's cheery rhythm. The deliberately artificial setting turns the song's feelings of boredom, disconnection, and dreamlike unreality into broad physical comedy.

Factoids & Trivia

• Steven Page proposed the fast-food setting, with Ed Robertson playing multiple restaurant employees. The band, manager Pierre Bedard, and the production team developed the concept together.

• The oversized burger on the roof was a miniature added during post-production. It was filmed several weeks after the main shoot, and the camera movements had to be matched without motion-control equipment.

• The restaurant interior was built from a semicircle of panels. By changing the props, the same set served as the counter area, the band stage, and part of the exterior.

• The drive-through cars are AMC Pacers. Several were repainted in different colors after larger vehicles originally considered for the sequence proved too big for the set.

• The saturated look came from combining colorful production design with an old-school film-print process and bright, sunlit cinematography.

• The backward-moving dancers and forward-moving band were filmed as separate layers. The dancers performed against a blue screen before being combined with the performance footage.

• The frozen customers were created mostly as a practical effect. The extras were told to remain still while Robertson moved through them, with the sequence filmed several times. Robertson was shot in slow motion to make the scene feel more dreamlike.

• The main shoot lasted two days, followed by an additional day devoted to the miniature work. The post-production effects were handled by Pixel Farm in Minneapolis.

• Actor Eric McCormack, then known for "Will & Grace," appears as one of the restaurant customers.

• "Pinch Me" was the final song written for *Maroon*. Robertson and Page co-wrote it, and the band initially worried that its quick vocal delivery would make listeners compare it too closely with "One Week."