(AllHipHop News) On May 17th, less than a week after Solange and Jay Z’s elevator fight footage surfaced, Jay Z’s Life+Times released a faux-movie trailer for his “On The Run (Part II)” song. In a recent interview, the director of the trailer explains how it came to fruition, how Jay Z delayed the process and more.
Grammy award winning music video director Melina Matsouka directed Beyonce and Jay Z together before for their 2007 collaboration “Upgrade U”. In an interview with Elle.com, Matsouka explains that the fake movie trailer is actually the music video for “On The Run (Part II)”. According to the acclaimed director, the project came together in the past month after previous attempts were stalled:
We were supposed to shoot in January, but he was on tour. We canceled [that] shoot the day before because it was just too much. It came back up last month because the tour [together] was starting and they really wanted a visual for the song. I was excited because I loved the idea and wanted the chance to visualize it. We started shooting and all those cameos came last minute. Once we got one then we got everybody.
Matsouka reveals that while both of the power couple were excited to make the video, Jay Z was apprehensive. Matsouka says Jay Z was “hesitant about ‘Oh, now I have to be an actor”, however was able to pull in an Oscar winning star in a day’s notice:
Jay put in a call for Sean Penn. It was the end of us shooting the first day. One of Jay’s creatives came up me and she’s like ‘OK, we need to call Sean Penn now. He’s coming tomorrow.’ And I’m ‘What? OK.’ So I’m driving back through the desert and my phone’s not working and it didn’t work that night and I wake up the next morning to a text from Sean Penn. So I talked to him about the project and what were thinking of doing with him. And he’s like ‘I can be there at 3.’ I’m like ‘I kind of need you there in an hour.’ And he went home and got dressed and came camera-ready. It was all improv so it was kind of perfect. [Jay and him] discussed where their characters were at that point in our faux-film. He came up with his own dialogue. That’s actually one of my favorite scenes.
Check out the full interview at Elle.com