Our “Weapon of Choice”
Dancer and Engineering student Scott Theede
Photo by Silas Polkinghorne
An amateur music video shot at the U of S and starring Scott Theede, an Engineering student, has been circulating via e-mail and the web.
The video shows Theede in a red Engineering jacket recreating the Spike Jonze-directed clip for Fatboy Slim’s song “Weapon of Choice” that originally featured a dancing, flying Christopher Walken.
“I find Christopher Walken dancing hilarious, and I think a lot of people do,” said Theede recently. “This was a blatant attempt to copy it.”
The piece — hosted on YouTube.com and Google Video — includes scenes shot in Place Riel as well as the Arts, Agriculture, and Engineering Buildings.
The video was shotaround 1:30 a.m. one morning when Theede and fellow engineering students Wayne Bailon and Mike Kachor were exhausted and sick of working on engineering design games. “We had a camera with us and we decided, ‘Let’s go do something’,” explained Theede. “We just picked the song and went.”
They tried to recreate many of the shots, but couldn’t do any of the flying Walken does in the original, so Theede improvised. “It was totally just made up,” he said. The video also includes some inside jokes only a few engineering students will understand.
He and his friends are now looking at remaking other videos. The Beastie Boy’s “Sabotage” and Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” are under consideration.
To view the video, go to Weapon of Choice.