Tag Archives: Charlie Chaplin

Classic Movies in Music Videos: Gone by *NSYNC

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This is October’s edition of Comet Over Hollywood’s classic film references in music videos.

Last October for Halloween, Comet spotlighted the Backstreet Boys “Everybody” music video because of its horror film themed video. It only seems appropriate to blog about their “competitors” *NSYNC a year later.

Justin Timberlake spoofing Charlie Chaplin in the music video “Gone.”

This month, I’m spotlighting *NYNC’s 2001 single, “Gone.” The video is probably the most boring video the band ever made. Filmed in black and white, Justin Timberlake dramatically and sadly sings about the loss of his girl friend and the other band members randomly pop up behind him during the chorus.

However, the first 40 seconds of the video are of the band pretending to be in a silent video with Timberlake dressed as a clean cut version of Charlie Chaplin’s character, the Little Tramp. We see this unexplained nonsense again the last 10 seconds of the video.

I’m not sure why *NSYNC decided to put a silent film spoof at the beginning of the video, unless they figured the video was so boring that it needed to be lightened up a bit.

Check back next month for another classic film reference in music videos!

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F is for Fake, as Orson Welles said

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A friend shared a CNN story with me about a woman on a cell phone passing by in the background in the 1928 Charlie Chaplin film “The Circus.”

What do all of you classic film fans think of this?

Circled person is supposedly holding a cell phone.

I personally think it’s a bunch of poppycock and don’t believe it and here is why:

 1. Videos like these are easily faked. With the mass amounts of sophisticated film software available today, anyone could dress in 1920s garb and walk around in the background of an already filmed movie. Even take “Forest Gump” (1994) for example. Remember when Tom Hanks is seen in videos taken in the 1960s such as the black students going into the University of Alabama with Governor George Wallace blocking the entrance?

 2. It could have been a person in the movie simply with their hand to their ear or holding down their hat. The public is looking at “The Circus” with preconceived notions of today and our technology. We are looking at simple gestures they are making and automatically think that holding your hand to your ear means a cell phone because we see that several times on a daily basis.

 3. From what I have heard, IF there is a time travel you can’t take contemporary items and technology with you. Cell phones didn’t exist in 1928 so you can’t have it.

 4. Hypothetically, if there is time travel and you somehow still had your cell phone, you couldn’t use it anyways. There were no satellites or cell phone towers. And who on Earth would she be talking to? From what I’ve seen in time travel movies, once you go back in time  you can’t communicate with the contemporary world. It’s not like she traveled back and time and can call someone in 2010 and say, “Hey Jennifer, yeh I got it to 1928 safely.”

I mean believe me, if there was such thing as time travel I would hop right on and go back to the good ole technology free days of the 1920s-1940s, but there isn’t in my opinion.

So there you go, there are my thoughts and as it is I think I put too much thought into it.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know!

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