Today's already been pretty nuts. Four interviews down, one to go. Spoke to such stellar video directors and filmmakers as Anton Corbijn (best known for his work with U2 and Depeche Mode), Mark Romanek (who has worked with Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash; he did the "Closer" and "Hurt" videos) and Jonathan Glazer (who did a bunch of stuff for Radiohead and the like, plus Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" clip). All quite nice. Corbijn told me he's been banned, after all these years, from directing a video for Depeche Mode, at the command of Warner Bros. records. That's just silly.

It's interesting that in many ways these directors - as well as Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry - are seen as peers or even superiors to some of the artists they work with. Cunningham and Corbijn have such a close working relationship with their frequent clients (Aphex Twin and the above, respectively) that they're more like partners or collaborators.

Interesting things learned: Corbijn is currently casting his Joy Division movie. Romanek admits Mick Jagger "doesn't give a shit." Thom Yorke had some serious reservations about some of the videos he did with Radiohead and UNKLE. Glazer has been approached by Kanye West and the White Stripes to possible direct videos. And Keith Richards still smokes and drinks like a champ. Well, everyone knew that last bit.

On Sunday I had a near disaster with my iPod. I thought it had spontaneously erased itself. Now, iPod/Apple makes everything pretty easy, but reloading 40GB of songs onto the thing still would have taken hours. Fortunately, the worst case scenario was so drastic that it overshadowed the simpler, less destructive solution: just resetting the thing. The car is once again safe for a non-stop set from DJ iPod.