Images Of Peter: Finding Peter Godwin, Part Two

The Cotton Club, 1984

Peter Godwin: “Baby’s In The Mountains” was the directorial début of Stephen Hopkins, who was working for MGMM, probably the top video director team of the day. One of the “Ms” was Russell Mulcahy who became a major Hollywood director, directing Highlander and many, many other successful movies. Stephen followed in Russell’s footsteps and has had a very successful filmmaking career in Hollywood. Recently, he has directed and produced Californication, one of the cooler shows on US TV, in my opinion. He was also a director/producer of the very popular 24.

I knew Russell Mulcahy a little through mutual friends; he rented an apartment from them, and two minutes walk from my place. I knew Stephen Hopkins through a different set of friends and I suggested the idea to my label Polygram, because I felt we had a good rapport and would make an interesting film together. It was shot on 16mm using the metaphorical “mountains” (read skyscrapers) of New York. We managed to make it for about a tenth of the money it looks like, because MGMM had another shoot happening in New York simultaneously with Brian Grant directing and he and MGMM decided to help their first time director out by “loaning” us crew, even a helicopter, for one day, dawn ’til dusk, that they didn’t need them.

I remember Stephen was really on top of it all, despite his lack of experience. We had the police holding up the traffic on Fifth Avenue at dawn, whilst I wandered down the middle of the street singing. . . then they stopped the traffic—and the joggers!—on the Brooklyn Bridge, whilst I danced across it with Viewma Negromonte.

Viewma was a wonderful dancer—a prima ballerina from Rio—who really made me look good! I’d seen her as one of the Cotton Club girls—she had a small part—in the Coppola movie of that name, with Richard Gere. Both Steve and I thought she was perfect. I often look back at the dance sequences, especially those shot in that beautiful loft, and feel how ironic it is that it pre-echoes my current (well, the last six years) passion for Argentine tango and dancing. You could look at this video and imagine I was into it back then, too. Spooky!

Viewma, sometimes using the name Vya, went back to Brazil and became a big television star there.

Nile Rodgers

I still think this video has something; I think Stephen did a great job. Coincidentally, that song—and also “The Art Of Love” and the rest of the Correspondence album—is what brought Johnson Somerset (my partner in Nuevo) and I together so many years later. He loved that album and even heard the rough mixes, because a friend of his, Pickford Sykes, played a lot of the keyboards on Correspondence. Johnson’s first leap into the music business was to go to New York and work with the legendary Nile Rodgers. Nile produced Let’s Dance for David Bowie—which included my song “Criminal World”—the same year that we shot the “Baby’s” video in New York. So circles within circles and endless twists of fate, wouldn’t you say?

I just spoke to Nile for the first time in years because he was in town to play guitar on Bryan Ferry’s latest album, which, by the way, is being co-produced by. . . guess who? My amigo and Nuevo co-conspirator Johnson Somerset!

Click here to read more from Peter Godwin on. . .

Music Video Influences
Maturing inspirations
Poetry and Collaboration
Artistic suffocation
Chemistry and Alchemy
Old souls
Catharsis
Changes
Transcending technology
Everything Is Possible

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