Synopsis

Dire Straits are recast as Thunderbirds-style marionettes in a playful rescue mission. As the band performs, the puppets scramble through a world of futuristic vehicles, control rooms, and emergency operations, aided by familiar characters from Gerry Anderson's television universe. Live-action footage of the musicians is intercut with the Supermarionation sequences, creating a deliberately eccentric blend of rock performance and vintage television adventure. The visual joke matches the song's comic portrait of an unreachable Elvis fan trying repeatedly to make contact.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video features Dire Straits as marionette versions of themselves, combining newly filmed puppet material with footage and characters from the original Thunderbirds series.

• The Thunderbirds material reportedly took twelve weeks to make, making the clip an unusually elaborate production for a music video.

• The clip uses the Supermarionation style associated with Gerry Anderson's productions, including miniature sets, puppets, futuristic vehicles, and staged emergency-action sequences.

• The song was the first single from Dire Straits' 1991 album On Every Street.

• Mark Knopfler said the song's title came from a family joke: after difficulty reaching him by telephone, his brother-in-law compared calling him with trying to call Elvis.

• The video followed the highly successful animated style of "Money for Nothing," but replaced computer-generated imagery with handcrafted puppetry and Thunderbirds-inspired effects.