Synopsis

The Cars turn romantic pursuit into a surreal visual chase. Ric Ocasek repeatedly appears in the life of a woman played by model Susan Gallagher, materializing in mirrors, bathtubs, photographs, alarm clocks and even as a giant insect. The band members pop into the action through playful transformations, movie references and impossible scale changes. Blending live action with primitive computer-generated effects, the video presents infatuation as a stream of intrusive, cartoon-like fantasies that are strange, funny and deliberately over-the-top.

Factoids & Trivia

• Released in March 1984, the video was one of the earliest prominent music clips to combine live action with computer graphics.

• The production used the Quantel Paintbox, a pioneering digital graphics system that allowed artists to manipulate video images directly on screen. In one example, the artists built an alarm clock into a scene and animated Ocasek as its hands.

• The video reportedly cost $80,000, nearly three times the average music-video budget at the time.

• At the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards on September 14, 1984, "You Might Think" won Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Best Concept Video, Best Special Effects, Best Art Direction, Viewer's Choice and Most Experimental Video.

• The movie-theater sequence includes a clip from the 1953 science-fiction film "Robot Monster." Ocasek's later transformation into the film's creature extends the joke.

• An alternate version omits the closing gag in which Ocasek's face comes off and the fly version of him splatters onto the words "The End."

• Susan Gallagher, who plays the woman at the center of the video, is sometimes confused with Paulina Porizkova. Porizkova appeared in the later Cars video for "Drive," not "You Might Think."