You’ve probably seen the video by now. (Even if you have, watch it again, above.) It’s the year’s most innovative music video—and it was made for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was released 48 years ago. Vania Heymann, the music video’s 27-year-old Israeli director, created sixteen different “channels,” including a CNBC-type news channel, a movie channel, and a sports broadcast. On each one, the celebrities, actors, and hosts go about their daily business—but while lip-syncing to the lyrics of Dylan’s landmark composition. It’s an awesome interactive experience, and my description doesn’t really do it justice. (Like I said, watch it, flip through it.)
The music video, which was posted earlier this week, coincides with the release of The Complete Album Collection Vol. One, Dylan’s 47-CD box set. The video includes TV channels featuring comedian Marc Maron, The Price Is Right host and ReasonTV darling Drew Carey, rapper Danny Brown, and History‘s Pawn Stars cast members Austin “Chumlee” Russell and Rick Harrison.
“The lyrics including ‘pawn’ was a happy coincidence from our end,” Joel Patterson, a Pawn Stars producer, told me. “The fact that Bob Dylan had appeared on Pawn Stars in the past made it an easy ‘yes.'” The video took just “a few hours” to shoot, he adds: “Rick and Chumlee both knew the song pretty well already.”
According to Patterson, Russell and Harrison are huge Dylan fans; in the aforementioned Pawn Stars episode, Russell has a signed copy of Dylan’s critically maligned album Self Portrait. As for Dylan, Patterson says, his manager “communicated a while back that…he likes the show. He also told us Dylan was extremely pleased with his appearance on Pawn Stars.”
