Rockhard's Klasfeld Parties with Perry

Rockhard's Marc Klasfeld Parties with Katy Perry on
"Last Friday Night"

The director's latest video, an Eighties romp, is rocking the YouTube playlist. Even MTV likes it.
 

Katy Perry as uber-nerd "Kathy Beth Terry" in "Last Friday Night."

Summer officially has a new anthem. The recently unveiled "Last Friday Night" video from Katy Perry, directed by Marc Klasfeld of Rockhard for Capitol Records, may turn out to be the feel-good hit of the year. 
 
An homage to those classic 1980s John Hughes films like "Breakfast Club" and "Pretty in Pink," the video opens with a newspaper boy riding down a familiar American suburban street as title cards introduce the video like it's a movie.  In the clip, Perry reprises the role of "Kathy Beth Terry," the nerdy-girl persona she first unveiled at the Teen Choice Awards last year.
 
Perry, wearing oversized 1980s glasses, a retainer on her braces and sporting a truly bad haircut, wakes up in her room to find that her house has been the scene of a massively wild and bitchin' party.  She's in bed with a sleeping hunk, there's a guy wrapped up in duct tape lying nearby and another passed out on the floor whose body has been colored with what looks like lipstick or Magic Markers.

The pop star turns into the belle of the ball in Klasfeld's comic clip.

The video goes on to reveal how this poor little wallflower was drawn out of her shell by none other than Rebecca Black, the internet star of her own pop tune, "Friday," who's become the most recent pop culture poster child for instant celebrity. Black helps Perry find her true and much hotter self, providing her with a new outfit that's topped with a head of seriously moussed curls. 

From there, Perry takes over the party, which is populated with a rash of cameo celebrities including the '80s brother band Hanson and current "Glee" stars Kevin McHale (as a nerdy boy with the hots for the nerdy version of Kathy Beth) and Darren Criss.  Also making an appearance are the smooth jazz sax star Kenny G (who also showed up recently in an Audi spot that made fun of Mercedes-Benz owners), decked out in a white suit, the 80s actor Cory Feldman (who plays Kathy Beth's father) and the pop singer Debbie Gibson, who plays her mother. All that's missing are Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson.
 
MTV News fawned over the clip in a recent web site article, calling it a "bold" video and quoting Klasfeld as saying that he wanted this clip to help push the artist to a fifth straight number one single.  It should be on target to do just that as it's wildly popular, having racked up over 37 million views on You Tube alone (check it out here), which is roughly equivalent to the population of the entire state of California.  It's not the first time the director has worked with the star, and he commented about the experience to MTV by suggesting other pop stars could borrow a page from Perry and "try to not take themselves so seriously all the time. Sometimes, fun can be cool, too."

Kenny G? Sweet!

Regarding the celebrities in the video, Klasfeld told MTV that he gets a kick out of working with them. "I always enjoy making these pop-culture mash-ups, where comedy and random celebrities get mixed with the music into this brand new thing," the director said.
 
The video was Executive Produced by Rockhard's Nicole Acacio, who, like everyone else in the cast and crew, gets a rare on-screen credit.  It was produced by John Winter and shot by Director of Photography Damien Acevedo.  Richard Alarcon of Bonch edited the clip. Capitol Records' Danny Lockwood shares a co-directing credit with Klasfeld.
 
The Perry video is the second pop-culture home run from Rockhard over the past year. The company's Rob Pearlstein directed a series of comic shorts about "Matumbo Goldberg," a fictional African-American man who passes himself off as an African orphan so he can be adopted by white Jewish parents. The series ran on the Atom Films web site, which is part of Comedy Central.

Published 30 June, 2011