“Cinematically, it was Taxi Driver and it was also 1980s collage art,” says Toronto filmmaker Micah Meisner of the vision behind Buck 65’s haunting video for “Pants on Fire,” which features a solitary Rich Terfry scribbling alone in his room, playing imaginary games of baseball and, well, driving a New York taxi. “The fragmentations that Rich uses as far as his narrative suit the idea well,” says Meisner. “The video and the multi-graph sequences are meant to convey the mental interior of Rich as he’s performing about loss and obsession.” He laughs. “Ya got that?” Filmed in Toronto over a January weekend last year—“ It ended in a police bust,” notes Meisner, because “Rich was driving a New York checkered taxi cab without a license plate”—the spot achieved medium rotation on MuchMusic, enough for you to vote it best local video for the second year running. Meisner, who’s nominated for a 2003 Juno for k-os’s “Superstar Pt.0” video, is finishing up work on the next Buck 65 single, “Phil,” off Square, so you may very well see his name this time next year.
Runner-up: “Clueless Wonder,” Joel Plaskett Emergency
