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Lana Del Rey · S4 E4
Freak
Father John Misty, a short film, and a growing obsession with cinema
Late 2015. Lana Del Rey calls Father John Misty with a pitch: a psychedelic commune, dancers in white, and a music video that runs longer than most short films. Nobody at Interscope asked for it, but she's already booked the crew.
"Tropico" (Lana Del Rey, 2013). Before Freak's eleven-minute film, there was this: a thirty-minute short film that Lana conceived, starred in, and creative-directed. Tropico is the proof of concept for everything she'd do next as a visual artist, the project where the filmmaker was born.
The Eleven-Minute Film
The "Freak" video is unlike anything Lana has released before. She casts Father John Misty as a kind of desert prophet, surrounds them both with dancers in flowing white, and lets the camera drift through scenes that feel more like a David Lynch fever dream than a pop promo. It runs eleven minutes, nearly twice the length of the song.
Sources
Pitchfork
Rolling Stone
Complex
Gods and Monsters, Lana Del Rey (2012)
"Gods and Monsters" is the dark centerpiece of Tropico, the short film where Lana first proved she could think in cinema. Listen for how the production mirrors the film's narrative arc: the beat starts clean and almost pretty, then layers of distortion creep in as the story moves from Eden to the Fall. By the final chorus the mix is thick with reverb and feedback, as if the song itself is decaying. Every visual choice Lana makes in the Freak video, the haze, the slow dissolves, the woozy color grading, starts here.
Sources
Pitchfork
NME
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Lana learn to direct without anyone noticing?
The Filmmaker
What separates Lana from other artists who "direct their own videos" is control. She doesn't just pick a concept and approve edits. She scouts locations, blocks scenes, chooses lenses, and sits in the editing bay until the final cut is exactly what she saw in her head. By 2016, her visual work is as distinctive as her music: slow, saturated, and completely unconcerned with looking like anything else on YouTube.
Sources
V Magazine
Rolling Stone
Freak: The Facts
Salvatore, Lana Del Rey
From Honeymoon (2015). Sung partly in Italian with what Lana described as "a little bit of an old-world Italian feel," "Salvatore" is the most cinematic track on the album. It sounds like a lost scene from a Fellini film, all warm strings and Mediterranean light. For an episode about Lana the filmmaker, this is the song that proves her camera was always rolling, even when she was just writing lyrics.
Salvatore, Lana Del Rey (2015)
"Soft ice cream" she sings in Italian, and the lyrics read like postcards from a summer that never ended. The language switches between English and Italian as naturally as the song shifts between dream pop and orchestral balladry.
What was Father John Misty's previous band before going solo?
Honeymoon sold less than Ultraviolence, and the singles barely dented the charts. But something strange is happening: the fans who stayed are more devoted than ever, and they're building a cult that Lana never planned. Next: lower sales, deeper love, and the birth of the most loyal fanbase in pop.
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