Synopsis

David Bowie plays a troubled businessman whose increasingly paranoid behavior draws the attention of his colleagues. Watched through telescopes and subjected to mysterious medical experiments, he moves through a sterile corporate world where observation, conformity, and control replace ordinary human contact. The pressure builds as masked figures escort him through stark rooms and corridors, eventually taking him to the roof of the building. There, surrounded by an impassive audience, he is pushed toward the fatal jump demanded by the song's refrain.

Factoids & Trivia

• The song was inspired in part by Bowie's half-brother Terry Burns, who died by suicide in January 1985. Bowie connected the song not only to Terry's experience but also to his own feelings about taking a metaphysical leap into the unknown.

• The video's visual language draws on several films, including Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville," Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," Chris Marker's "La Jetee," and Orson Welles' "The Trial."

• The women watching Bowie through high-powered telescopes echo the uniformed stewardesses seen aboard the Pan Am space plane in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

• Cinematographer Harris Savides photographed the video, which runs for approximately four minutes and is held in the Museum of Modern Art's collection.

• "Jump They Say" became a UK Top Ten single in 1993 and received heavy rotation on MTV Europe.

• A 1994 release titled "Jump: The David Bowie Interactive CD-ROM" allowed users to create different mixes of the song and explore multiple versions of the video.