For those not familiar with “Fairytale” the bizarre, stylized short-film was shot by West and Jonze earlier this year and was originally planned for release on iTunes in September. However, Kanye posted it on his website last Sunday and then took it down less than two days later with no explanation other than the cryptic message, “SORRY HAD TO TAKE IT DOWN :).”
In the piece, which features snippets of West’s “See You In My Nightmares” and Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” the rapper wanders through a nightclub growing increasingly intoxicated and agitated, annoys other clubgoers, makes out with a fantasy woman who turns out to be a pillow, projectile vomits, disembowels himself, removes what appears to be his inner demon from his insides and then forces it to commit suicide.
The Times reports Jonze revealed the project grew out of a phone conversation he and Kanye had about making a music video that would “challenge them creatively and let them take a break from larger projects.”
Although the director was completing his big-screen version of Marice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” at the time, he cleared two days from his schedule to shoot the raw footage for the film in a West Hollywood nightclub.
The goal of “Fairytale” was to “illustrate the themes of loss and isolation on 808s & Heartbreak.”
“We rehearsed the night before we shot, and talked about trying to get to that raw place, that sad, pathetic, drunken, lost place,” Jonze told the Times. “I told him, the more shameless it is, the more pathetic it is, the better. He just went for it.”
One of the things that has fascinated the public about the film is the way it mirrors West’s behavior in recent months, including his allegedly drunken interruption of Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards. Jonze said none of that has changed how he feels about Kanye or “Fairytale.”
“To me, I like him,” he said. “I like Kanye and I care about him. This video is a side of him. Who knows? I don’t know what the reception is going to be, but I love making stuff with him. I love the guy.”
As for how the film found its way on to West’s website and then was yanked, Jonze offered this explanation: It was accidentally leaked from a post-production facility and when Kanye saw it on the Internet, “…he was like, ‘Oh, it’s out. I’ll link to it.’”
Jonze said the entire experience has been an interesting lesson for him about the perils of the Internet and piracy.
“This is the first time it’s happened to me,” he told the Times. “and it is a weird feeling, like, ‘Wait a second – I wasn’t ready to put that out! That’s mine. Uh, no, I guess it’s not mine anymore.”
While the film has been pulled from the Web as quickly as reps from West and Jonze can get to each site posting it, the fact remains the cat’s out of the bag. So will it still find its way to iTunes at some point? Jonze says maybe.
“I like the idea of trying to put it out on iTunes as an experiment in, can you make a short film yourself, put it out for sale? It’s an experiment to see if that is feasible.
“I don’t actually know if that makes any business sense at all, because once it’s out there, it’s out there.”
Indeed.