Cole Bennett talks about the “Godzilla” video.
Eminem recently teamed up with Lyrical Lemonade’s young director Cole Bennett for the official video for his single called “Godzilla” with Juice WRLD. Now Cole Bennett sat down for 16 odd minutes to talk about all the behind-the-scene for the video.
Lyrical Lemonade by Cole Bennett has created visuals for a slew of up-and-coming rap artists. Their most recent video features a living great and a young talent who passed away far too soon. The group debuted the video for Eminem’s “Godzilla,” which features the late Juice WRLD, on Monday afternoon. The song recently made headlines as it was revealed that the Detroit rapper had set a Guinness World Record for the quickest rapping.
The crazy music video for Eminem’s most popular recent song “Godzilla” pays respect to Juice WRLD, who was cruelly stolen from us far too soon. The film concludes with archival footage of Juice and his voice-over message about his musical ambitions.
Getting hired by Eminem for the “Godzilla” video.
I almost couldn’t believe it. It was pretty crazy for a moment not only because it was Eminem but because I knew what that meant to Juice. Eminem was one of Juice’s favorite artists growing up and he always talked about him. I just understood the impact that Eminem had had on Juice. This was kind of coming full circle and the opportunity for me to be able to do the video was a good way for me to pay proper homage to Juice.
Writing Eight pages for the video and conversation with Paul Rosenberg.
I finished the treatment – there was no pictures, no reference photos, nothing. It was just all words. There was like seven or eight pages, it was like an essay. I just opened piece by piece and I kind of broke it down and how I wanted to do it and what reference to what and I sent it back to Paul and just kind of waited a few days. You know, an artist of that stature, they’re gonna be very particular about how things are done and how they want to look. I was kind of nervous for a little bit and then I got a callback.
Featuring Mike Tyson on the video.
I remember while I was writing the video I was like, “I need something outlandish. I need something to catch you by surprise. I need something to pull you out of it and then right back into it at the same time”. And I was like, “He has to get knocked out by Mike Tyson!”. He had made a reference to being knocked out by Mike Tyson on one of his super old albums so I thought it was perfect. He loved the idea. I knew someone who knew Mike Tyson so I thought it was possible to get a hold of him at least and I knew if we got the treatment to him he was gonna agree to it. And we got it to him, he was down for it.
Working with the legendary rapper like Eminem.
It was really cool to work with Eminem because he was there to work. You know, someone of that size you’d expect to maybe just go through the motions or even be a little lazy or feel entitled because of everything they’ve accomplished so far in their career, especially working with someone as young as myself. And he’s done everything at the highest level. So for him to work with me and me being so young and for him to respect me and be ready to work, it was just very respectable. And he was ready the whole time. He’s ready to go whenever I said: “Get ready for the next shot”. He was up and ready to go and he was down for fun last-minute twist on things and he was just cool with everything. But one of my favorite parts about working with Em was that he really respected Juice and everything Juice had done. He had made that very clear that he admired his work, he loved his freestyles, he loved just his approach in all his different sounds and how versatile he was and it was really special to be able to work with him knowing that he really cared about Juice.
Eminem’s birthday reference in the video.
There was lots of references throughout the video that I wanted to include and tie in subliminal and if you caught it – you caught it. One of which was in the second verse. It’s a one-take and he says “Wonder if it would be like this tomorrow” and he looks into the calendar. It’s hard to see because we didn’t catch the focus perfectly but if you really pay attention you can probably catch it. It says on October 16th “Wonder if it would be like this tomorrow” and then on October 17th it says “YES”. On October 17th is his birthday. Just like a fun little twist that I wanted to see if people could catch.
Check out the full thing below.
