Synopsis

Tom Petty opens a book and is swept into a surreal black-and-white dream world inspired by early newspaper comics. Riding through strange landscapes, he encounters oversized figures, bizarre creatures, giant insects, and a small companion resembling Flip from Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. The journey carries him through shifting dreamscapes and toward the Chrysler Building, where the action briefly evokes King Kong. As the song ends, Petty continues drifting through this fantastical universe, leaving the dream open-ended rather than resolving it.

Factoids & Trivia

• Released in 1989 alongside "Runnin' Down a Dream," the video was an unusually ambitious example of a nearly all-animated rock clip.

• Its visual style is based primarily on Winsor McCay's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran in American newspapers beginning in 1905.

• The giant mosquito sequence also recalls McCay's 1912 animated short How a Mosquito Operates, one of the earliest important works in animation history.

• The brief scene of Petty battling oversized insects from the top of the Chrysler Building is a clear visual nod to the 1933 film King Kong.

• The animation was produced by Pittsburgh-based Allan & Wilson Animation Studio and Anivision Ltd.

• The video helped give the song an identity separate from a conventional performance clip, turning a concise rock song into a miniature silent-era fantasy film.

• The clip was later incorporated into the 1991 home-video release Tom Petty: Full Moon Fever.