As a gay person, I spend a lot of time at friends’ apartments throwing on our favorite music videos and gabbing about them, and I’m always pointing out the cars. Just like in television or movies, car casting is super important when it comes to music videos, whether they be purely for background aesthetics or an integral part of the video’s plot. So today I ask you, dear reader, what’s the best car in a music video?
My answer is easy: It’s the Pussy Wagon from “Kill Bill: Volume 1″ as used by Lady Gaga and Beyoncé in the nine-and-a-half-minute-long music video for Gaga’s 2009 smash hit Telephone. In the video (which was released in 2010), Gaga is in jail following her murder of her boyfriend in the 2009 Paparazzi music video, and Beyoncé shows up in the Pussy Wagon to bail her out.
After an iconic scene where the duo talk to each other in the truck’s cab, they go to a diner to poison Beyoncé’s boyfriend (played by Tyrese Gibson), inadvertently poisoning all of the diner’s patrons as well. Gaga and Bey then escape in the Pussy Wagon and go on the run, with Bey asking “promise we’ll never come back?” Gaga replies “I promise,” they clasp hands and the screen says “To be continued…” as the truck drives into the horizon.
The whole video has a Tarantino-esque vibe to it, so the Pussy Wagon is a perfect fit. Tarantino owns the truck, and it was his idea for the truck to be in the Telephone video, as Gaga described to E! News:
There certainly is a Tarantino-inspired quality in the video. I mostly love the way he uses different forms to create something new. His direct involvement in the video came from him lending me the Pussy Wagon. We were having lunch one day in Los Angeles and I was telling him about my concept for the video and he loved it so much he said, ‘You gotta use the Pussy Wagon.’
OK, that’s enough from me. What’s your favorite instance of a car in a music video? Let us know in the comments below, and I’ll round up the best answers later this week.