Melina Matsoukas talks Beyoncé

Thanks to Honey Mag!




Point blank, we dig Melina Matsoukas. She’s the homegirl, the ace-boon-coon if you will. Here at Honey, we’re pretty particular about who we let in. We’ll bust out the Vaseline if chicks start talking reckless. The 29-year old has a little more than 40 videos under her belt in only four years. She’s worked with Ludacris, Solange, Alicia Keys and Beyoncé. The New York native stays in high demand because of her creativity, her chameleon-like approach to every video she directs and her ability to bring a song to life.



Speaking of working with people, you’ve worked with Rihanna, Solo. You’ve done a whole bunch of videos with Beyonce. What’s it like working with those three? Do you brace yourselves for attitudes or is that not even the case?

Not with them. Definitely, there have been some other people with attitudes that we won’t name. But with those three, especially now that I’ve worked with them and I’m good friends with Solange and Beyonce and we’ve done so much stuff together, it’s almost like we’re family. It’s like working with your family, and we have fun. It’s collaborative. We bounce ideas off of each other and it’s no attitude at all. Even with Rihanna, she’s definitely really smart with her ideas and creative and she gets it. I think that’s the thing with all of those three. I have very similar taste, so we’re able to collaborate on ideas. And it’s not like a competition or we’re battling each other, and that makes it fun.



How was the video shoot with Alicia Keys and Beyoncé in Brazil?

That was amazing and really hard, not because of them at all. Just being in Brazil and I was kind of expecting like a third-world place so we could go down there and steal everything, and shooting would be easy. But it was very by the book, we had to get permits and the crew had union’s rules and all that technical stuff that makes shooting not really fun, and it was like 87 million degrees and we were outside (laughs). But it was such an amazing experience to be there with the people and we were in the favelas and we were under the stars, so we really got a lot of love and support from the people. But there was also a lot of corruption too. We had to hire a certain amount of cops, too. Somebody that was like a liaison between security with their people and our people started getting cocky and rude to the cop and there was almost this crazy shoot out fight. It all happened at the end scene when I’m shooting this big carnival parade. We’re just starting to shoot it, and the [fight] is all happening behind me. I don’t even know this is happening, and then I get people starting to come up to me saying “This is the last take. We’ve got to get them out of here. This is starting to get scary.” Then it got a little sketchy, so the cops pretty much quit. [They] left with all the barricades that were pretty much holding all the people back, and the people kind of like bum rushed our set. It was kind of an ordeal. I felt like it was that scene from City of God where I thought someone was about to die.



She talks a lot about Why Don’t You Love me, so click Read More to see that!



For Beyoncé’s “Why Don’t You Love Me” video, whose idea was it to dub Beyoncé “B. B. Homemaker”?

(Laughs) As the project developed and progressed, new ideas started to come up. She came up with the name. As I was editing, she was like ‘Let’s do a “Leave It To Beaver” type intro’ and I edited that together. I started looking at all these shows and they all have those voiceovers. I loved in “Leave It To Beaver” [that] they would announce the actress’ names and then at the end they would say ‘The Beaver.’ Then I said, ‘Oh, you should be The Beaver’ and Beyoncé was like ‘No, Melina. I can’t be The Beaver’ (laughs). Then I was like let’s come up with like a cool name, and just off the top of her head she was like “I don’t know, B.B. Homemaker.”



How long did it take to shoot?

We shot for one day and prepped for like two or three weeks. It was just really chill. When we came back from Brazil shooting the other project, she said she was thinking about doing this video for a song she had and it was number one on the dance charts at some point. She said her and Solange wrote it. So it was nice because it all just came together. She really loved the whole Bette Paige idea. That’s where it kind of started. Then Bettie Page turned into Susie Homemaker slash frustrated housewife and we just decided to throw all that together.



Was it her idea to dust off the 8.9 million Grammys?

(Laughs) That was her idea. Then I was like ‘Well, let’s do the life of Bettie Paige, like how she would live her life back then.’ Then it became Beyoncé-slash-Bettie goes hood kind of (laughs). She also kind of wanted to play off of everyone telling her to sit down and go have babies and be a housewife. You know, just having fun with it. Then she was like ‘Hmm, now might be a good moment where I can dust off some Grammys.’ I was like ‘I love it!’ so that’s when she dusts off her Grammys.



Were those all her Grammys?

Actually, they were hers, Destiny’s Child’s, and Jay’s. Yeah, it was a lot of Grammys. Everyone on set was taking picture of the Grammys.



Where was the video shot?

It was shot in L.A. on Mount Olympus. Actually, we found this house that was owned by a 95-year-old man. And I believe he was Dorothy Dandridge’s either agent or PR person. He’s a white man, but he really had all this stuff in his house that had to do with the Blues. He was really on the forefront. He had this wall of fame and he was just really interesting. The cars that were in the video were his. It kind of all magically came together.