Behind George Michael's "Freedom! '90" Video: All the Secrets You Never Knew
Photos: Courtesy of British Vogue, 20th Century Fox, Sony Music (15)
1/17After rocketing to stardom with the duo Wham! and selling 20 million copies of his solo album Faith, Michael had had enough of being in the spotlight. He took a stand: no more photos and no more music videos. That is, until pressure from his record label prompted him to release a video for his single "Freedom! '90." Michael, however, still refused to appear on camera and instead asked the world's biggest supermodels—Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Tatjana Patitz—to mime the lyrics. The casting decision came about after the singer saw Peter Lindbergh's portrait of the five women for the January 1990 cover of British Vogue. "I knew that George wanted everybody that was on that cover, and it had to be all the girls," says Crawford, even if that meant rearranging schedules.
TM and ¨© 2014 Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises. A2/17The video was directed by an up-and-comer named David Fincher. "David was a known director but not like he is today," says hairstylist Guido. "I knew he had done a video for Madonna." Crawford was the only one who had worked with him before, on a Revlon campaign. Unbeknownst to many of the cast and crew, however, Fincher was simultaneously working on Alien 3, the movie that would launch his Hollywood career. The rest, as they say, is history. Fincher would go on to helm big-screen hits, like Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and, most recently, Gone Girl.
3/17The glam squad was made up of legends too. The team on set included makeup artist Carol Brown, stylist Camilla Nickerson (now a contributing editor at Vogue), and Guido, who was relatively unknown at the time. Now one of the most famous hairstylists in the world, Guido was quite surprised to get the job. "I think George Michael saw something I had done in British Vogue; I had just started working with them. I hadn't done a video before, and to be honest, there would have been bigger and better hairdressers at the time, so it was a lucky break for me. I was very nervous," he says.
4/17Linda Evangelista s platinum hair was a big surprise. She had dyed her hair platinum blonde the night before she showed up on the "Freedom! '90" set—she'd made the spur-of-the-moment decision while on a photo shoot with photographer Steven Meisel, remembers Nickerson. The storyboards show the model as a brunette. "We all thought it was a wig at first," says Brown.
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5/17The models had to study hard. To learn the lyrics, they were given tapes and CDs of the song just a few days before the shoot. "I was in Greece on another job, and I remember being on the plane, listening to it over and over on a Walkman, trying to remember the words," says Crawford. Some models did their homework better than others, says Guido. "I remember Christy in the shot where you just see her eyes. They had to dodge her mouth with the camera at times because she'd forget a line."
6/17Lip-Synching Is Harder Than It Looks.
Mouthing lyrics for the cameras may sound like a pretty easy gig, but it proved to be a tricky challenge. In fact, the models found it easier to sing along, karaoke-style. "It's definitely not as easy as it looks," Turlington told a newspaper at the time. "We all sang the song out loud because it was too hard to breathe and lip-synch at the same time."
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7/17George Michael forgot the lyrics to his own song. Turlington wasn't the only one who forgot the words. George Michael was on hand to coach his stand-ins—and had his own troubles. "George was really good-natured," says John Pearson, one of the five male models who appeared in the video. "I went into his Winnebago, and he said, 'Do you want to go over the song?' So we were singing the song together, and he actually forgot some of the words, and I remembered them. I always took it as quite brilliant that I had to correct him on the lyrics of his own song."
8/17There was a definite party atmosphere on set. "We worked late into the night, and we sort of knew the wine would come out," says Guido. "It was quite social, and there was quite a buzz because those girls were like movie stars; they were at the height of their careers. We'd drink red wine and sing songs, and George was just like one of the gang." After one long day on set, "I remember they took the wine away from George and me, and he got mad," says Evangelista. It was on the final day of shooting, "and they were very concerned about certain spots in the song that the others hadn't nailed with their lip-synching, so I had to get those," says Evangelista.
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9/17A famous fashion photographer made an appearance. The dark-haired male model scratching his bottom? That's acclaimed fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti. "None of us had met Mario, and little did we know he was going to go on to be an epic fashion photographer," says Nickerson. "He was petrified of the supermodels and just stayed in his van."
10/17Contrary to what you might think, Naomi Campbell was quite shy. "She had on a see-through top and you had 20 to 30 men around, like all the lighting guys and electricians," says Brown. "But as always, once she was on set she was amazing."
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11/17Cindy Crawford didn t actually take a bath. Her bathtub scene was all smoke and mirrors—literally. "There was no water in the tub," says Crawford. "They had some rig, like a smoke machine, that made the tub fill with steam. I was sitting on an apple box to get me high enough so it was just my eyeballs peeking out of the tub."
12/17Crawford was covered in oil. To make her skin look wet—without water—Brown coated her in oil. "Now you can get all these fancy oils, but back then it would have been baby oil. Water wouldn't show up in the same way, and it would have made her look cold. The oil made her look wet and hot and steamy. But it was a tricky balance between making her look really wet and keeping her makeup on," says Brown.
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13/17Linda Evangelista did some of her own makeup. "The first time I worked with her, when she still had long hair, even then she used to say, 'I like to do my own lip line because I know how to do it.' For 'Freedom' I'm pretty sure it was M.A.C. Lip Pencil in Spice," says Brown.
14/17All the blood was fake. The scene where Evangelista and Turlington prick their fingers to become blood sisters proved one of the trickiest moments of the shoot. "We had a special-effects person there who supplied the fake blood, but it was me who, after every take, had to clean the blood off, put a bit of Vaseline on so it didn't stain, and then apply another drop of fake blood from the dropper bottle," says Brown. "We had to be quicker and quicker because it took so many takes, and I remember that's the only time [Fincher] got a bit impatient."
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15/17A famous scene was improvised. Many scenes were plotted out ahead of time, but "not everything seemed overly planned," says Guido. "At times, Fincher would just see what was happening in front if him. The part where Linda goes under her sweater wasn't planned at all. She did it, and David put a camera and a light in there and just filmed it."
16/17Paul Newman inspired another scene. The male model eating an orange was also an unplanned shot. "I was eating an orange on set, waiting for my scene, and George and David came up to me and said, 'OK, what are we going to do with you?'" remembers Pearson. "I had stayed at a friend's apartment the night before and saw this picture in a book of a young Paul Newman, standing in the doorway of the Actors Studio. So I showed them the picture, and David said, 'Great, give me five minutes.' They built me a doorway, and David said, 'I really love that you're eating an orange. Will you eat an orange as you sing the song?' So I did, wearing my own clothes, and we nailed it in just two takes."
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17/17One model wore his own clothes. Pearson wore his own black M15 flight jacket onscreen, a fact he remembers because "I've still got the jacket," he says. "My 18-year-old son wears it now."
