Seven Moments of Ross

Photo & Text CC 2012 by MJ Vilardi, Creative Commons – 
May be shared with attribution 

2. Take It To The Top 

by MJ Vilardi 

Marc Cherry was a musician with an an uncanny resemblance to Tony Orlando: a smooth swarthy look, 70's style mustache, white leisure suits, and an easy breezy singing style. His band played on a show at the station where I worked, and I chatted him up about doing a music video. They didn't have much money, so Oversight Productions agreed to do the video at cost, with a bonus if they signed a record deal and got some dough.

The song was "Take It To The Top," 
a jazzy ode to "going for it."

           

    So just Take It To The Top
 Cause if you lose your dream 

You lose the prize

            When you give it your best shot 
Give it all you've got

            Cause the only one who fails  
Is he who does not try... 

Of course in exchange for this great deal Marc agreed that we would have creative freedom, and we really pushed it. One might say we veered occasionally from the message of the song, but music videos were pretty new at the time, and nobody really tried to make sense of them. It was assumed that there might be cryptic images and non sequiturs. And so there were. 

Scenes included:

            • a crazy strip club with Ross as the sleazy MC, inciting the crowd

            • Marc rides through Georgetown in a vintage yellow Rolls Royce. In a wonderful synchronicity, at a stoplight another Rolls pulled up next to us! Delighted occupants of both cars rolled down their windows and inquired as to whether there were any Grey Poupon to be had.

            • Marc is portrayed as a bum, shuffling down an alley. We were lucky to catch a shot of someone throwing a bag of garbage out of a third floor window. Sweet!

            • At a disco party, shot at a nice hotel that (for reasons still unclear) agreed to let us use their dance floor, Marc cuts in on a rich old dude, and steals away his girl. The guy turns out to be super-rich and powerful.

            • Rich Guy phones Fidel Castro (played by a teenager with a chronic shaking condition, which actually helped) ... Fidel, puffing a genuine Cuban, in full revolutionary regalia, including a live chicken pecking around on his desk, agrees to help. "Si Señor, I will see to it immediately!" he mouths.

            • Marc Cherry, in his flashy white Tony Orlando outfit, struts down the street. He senses something, looks up.

            • An Oswaldesque figure wearing tele-specs leans out of a window. A rifle aimed at Marc! Zoom in on Marc's fearful face.

            • Marc awakens in a pile of garbage, a bum. Was it all a dream?

            The assassin at the end (played by yours truly) was a last minute inspiration, and Marc didn't know about it until we screened the video for the entire band. They loved it, and at the end when their leader got bumped off, they cheered! Ultimately a good sport, Marc looked confused for a moment but then laughed along with the rest of us. Thanks to my TV connections, the video aired twice in the DC-Baltimore markets on a Friday night video show. It's a cringe-worthy period piece now, but still fun to watch, especially if you look at it as a coded retelling of the Kennedy assassination.

           This project marked the zenith of the Ross-MJ Oversight Productions. We worked on a few other small projects, but tensions over sobriety, vision, and business practices caused things to unravel, and eventually Ross split for Russia. He came back to town for a while with his Russian "common law wife." They lived in a slummy apartment next to a coke dealer buddy, who shall remain nameless; the fellow got high one night and took a knife to his own girlfriend, who shall remain headless.