It’s been a month since Miley Cyrus appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to talk Something Beautiful, Hannah Montana and becoming a Disney Legend. But it was Kimmel who steered the conversation toward the “Walk of Fame” video, which caught his eye the most out of the various visuals of the Something Beautiful film because, well, as he put it, “You’re lucky you didn’t get a hypodermic needle in your body.” This as a result of Cyrus rolling around on the sidewalk as though she’s picturing Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” performance during the 1984 VMAs (and really, she wouldn’t be the only pop star to do so of late). Cyrus faux sheepishly replies, “It’s funny you say that…” She then finishes that sentence with her tale of artistic woe. For Cyrus, being as “committed to the craft” as she is, had no qualms—in the moment—about writhing around on the ground. This was at the end of October.
About a month later, around Thanksgiving, “My leg began to disintegrate… around the kneecap area. And then I was like, the doctor goes, ‘Do you have any idea why you would have such a brutal infection on your kneecap?’ And I just saw myself [she gets a far-off look in her eyes before doing some of her hand choreo from the video]… And I had to tell him. To have a surgeon look at you and say, ‘Yuck’—like, they open up, like, cadavers. Like, they see inside the guts of humans and they’re looking at me, telling me I’m disgusting.”
But how was it to be avoided, in the end? Because it’s not like it could have been filmed anywhere else, least of all on a sanitized sound stage. No, Cyrus strutting the real Walk of Fame in the middle of the night for the purposes of this video is as it should be (in contrast to, say, Fergie choosing not to set her “London Bridge” video on the actual London Bridge). And Cyrus’ confident strutting (“I walk the concrete like it’s a stage”) is apparent from the very outset of the visual, once again co-directed by Cyrus, Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter.
As far as some of the standout directorial choices go, at first, the camera is facing Cyrus, allowing her to walk toward it as it “follows” her from the front instead of (as is usually associated with following) from the back (though there is a bit following from behind action as well). But then, in another shot soon after, the camera shows Cyrus walking from a side perspective, allowing her to look back at the camera almost as if it’s a POV shot of someone who knows her observing her…and she wants to taunt and tease that person a little bit. Maybe that’s just because she’s channeling her inner Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) in Pretty Woman, what with Hollywood Boulevard being the signature milieu where Viv did her hooking, which led her to encounter Edward Lewis (Richard Gere), a rich man merely in search of “directions.”
Yet Cyrus isn’t after anything like love, sex or even money as she treats this hallowed ground like a runway (or, as Manila Luzon once said, “Let the streets be my runway tonight/In the fashion show we call life”). Soon enough, all her “serving cunt” walking leads her to the part of the boulevard near the Hollywood Wax Museum, as evidenced by the brief cameo made by Bob Kane’s star. A star that also happens to be near Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. And it’s his, for whatever reason, that makes the only prominent appearance in the video. Otherwise, Cyrus, Bixenman and Walter do their best to keep the stars as “vague” as possible, with no names shown as Cyrus traipses and gyrates around them. Who knows, maybe Cyrus is just an unexpected fangirl of Arnold’s…or this is her “subtle” way of trying to get the attention of Patrick (who doesn’t yet have a star). Either way, Arnie gets plenty of play in various shots—this mostly in between scenes of Cyrus working it in an alleyway backlit in blue. Which happens to be just one of a few elements that lend this video a certain Maxxxine quality.
It’s around the three-minute-fifteen-second mark that Brittany Howard finally appears. A.k.a. the woman behind all the stunning Bronski Beat-esque backing vocals. Indeed, Cyrus herself commented in an interview that Howard’s voice can perform like an instrument in and of itself, which it does during the moments when she’s just sort of moaning. Almost in the kind of way that one imagines would get the Sea Witch all hot and bothered as she snatched Howard’s voice out of her throat the same way she did Ariel’s.
And, speaking of “snatched” (one of Cyrus’ favorite drag phrases to throw around), that’s how Miley looks as she unhesitatingly arrives at the infamous portion of the video where she kneels down on the pavement (hence, that abovementioned kneecap infection). Thereby kicking off the “down and dirty” portion of the visual, with Cyrus distracting audiences from how ultimately low budget the production is by rolling around on the ground in a manner that makes people think, “Wow, I can’t believe she’s doing that.”
But since the bulk of the budget was eaten up by the many pieces of couture Cyrus sports throughout the Something Beautiful film, she essentially shrugged when asked by her crew what she planned to do for “Walk of Fame,” deciding that being filmed frolicking about in the dead of night (a time when one is liable to end up dead) would have to suffice. Which, in the end, it definitely does. Further proving, perhaps, that simplicity is the best approach to any visual concept. With a few errant cameos thrown in for good measure (for, in addition to Brittany Howard and “Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Cyrus’ current boyfriend, Maxx Morando, also makes a brief appearance as a man skulking against a wall).
All of which amounts to this visual adhering to Howard’s impassioned conclusion, “You’ll live forever/In our hearts and minds/An ageless picture/A timeless smile/We’ll wear it on our t-shirts/A star buried in the pavement/Everyone will walk around it, around it.” Or, in Cyrus’ case, they’ll get a bit sexual around it.
