In most of Michel Gondry's videos, Michel fancies shifting realities to question different aspects of the world and of the people stuck inside it. For Beck's Deadweight, a single from the soundtrack to A Life Less Ordinary, Gondry shoves Beck, one of his favorite artists, into bizarro world. That means everything is reversed: Beck works at the beach, and sun-bathes at the office. His bedroom's wallpaper consists of family photos (that's Beck in the red), but there's wallpaper in the picture frames. In an airplane, it's mighty windy, while birds sit comfortably on the wing.
More novel is the fact that Beck's world interacts with the parallel universe of A Life Less Ordinary, the 1997 Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz flick. When a kid on the beach plays with cars in the sand, real cars skid around in the film. Later, Beck punches the air, and effectively KO's people in the movie.
From the start, Beck doesnt fare too well in his world. He's sick... probably sun poisoning. Plus he's getting beaten up by unseen characters from the film, which would kinda freak anybody out, sure. So, he decides he needs a vacation.
On his trip (at an office), the Life Less Ordinary universe still messes with his mind. His dreams appear more real than reality. Besides, he just got a picture of his wallpaper in the mail. Even more confused and anxious, Beck goes out on the street. He and his shadow meet - both looking awesomely like Spy vs. Spy. His shadow then gets up and conspires over the phone with Ewan McGregor.
Beck then ventures to the movie theater, where they're showing the film A Life Less Ordinary. The posters out front look strikingly familiar, so Beck decides to see the flick. He sits down and, to his surprise, views himself in bizarro-bizarro world, aka the real world: A world where he works in the office, and vacations at the beach. At the sight of this Beck giggles a bit.
Beck must have smiled a bit when he received a 16mm short film in his mailbox before Michel was hired to this project, as Michel explained in his auto-documentary. In it, a barefoot Michel strolled through a parking lot following his shoes, which were walking by themselves in front of him. "It was like a Buster Keaton effect," Beck told the New York Times. "A visual effect that didn't require C.G.I. It was pure cleverness and ingenuity."
