Synopsis

Okkervil River perform in and around a shabby motel room as the song's restless narrative unfolds through images of cigarette smoke, anonymous interiors, and lonely stretches of highway. The band members gather around a motel bed, delivering the track with increasing intensity while the visual setting suggests the exhausted, transient life of a touring group. Rather than presenting a conventional storyline, the video builds a fragmented, deliberately unglamorous portrait of lives moving through scenes that never resolve like a movie.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made to promote "The Stage Names," which was released on August 7, 2007. The song opens the album and establishes its recurring interest in performance, storytelling, fame, and the gap between artifice and ordinary life.

• Its visual language deliberately avoids polished rock-video glamour. Motel rooms, cigarette smoke, and highway imagery echo the song's fixation on bad movies, editing, travel, and emotional dislocation.

• The central performance was staged around a motel bed, giving the band a cramped, immediate setting rather than a concert-stage presentation. The result emphasizes the song's force while retaining its sense of fatigue and isolation.

• An early version of the video leaked online through TV Guide Broadband on August 27, 2007. Jagjaguwar subsequently responded by making the final version available officially.

• The song was performed on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" on August 28, 2007, shortly after the video leak and during the promotional campaign for "The Stage Names."

• "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe" later ranked No. 81 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 best songs of 2007.