Allison Russell and Her Childhood Pal, ‘Eras Tour’ Creative Director Ethan Tobman, on Teaming Up for Epic ‘Demons’ Music Video
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The act of exorcism was never more delightful than it is in Allison Russell’s elaborate new music video for her song “Demons,” being released just in time to really turn Halloween into a party. The celebrated singer-songwriter has never employed such epic visuals or choreography before. And she’s doing it in a first-time creative partnership with her childhood Montreal pal, Ethan Tobman, who is making his debut as a music video director with “Demons.” He’s making a crucial leap, too, after being the creative director for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour as well as the production designer creating the look for many of the most striking videos for Swift, Beyonce, Ariana Grande and other female superstars.
The song that represents such a major breakthrough for the “birthday twins” — yes, they were born on the same day in the same city, Montreal — is premiering on multiple platforms and music networks Tuesday morning.
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Tobman tells Variety, “Specifically what I was interested in doing with this project — other than the fact that Allison and I grew up together, and I’ve been watching her from afar all these years, and she’s been watching me — was I wanted to celebrate the demons that someone who has been through trauma needs to embrace. So it’s not just about surviving the trauma that you’ve experienced, it’s actually about celebrating it.
“And with her,” Tobman says, “I’m getting to employ so many of the things I’ve learned over doing a hundred music video titles in the last 20 years. I love learning and pushing and innovating the visuals that telegraph the music. And ‘Demons’ is about really bringing joy to the party of your scars. Hence the reason why so many of the dancers I think are extensions of Allison in the video: She moves, they move — there’s a real kineticism to them. And ultimately, it’s really celebratory and joyful, despite having a darkness and a severity to the backstory.
“So that’s the kind of stuff I would never be able to do without exploring the layered storytelling of Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ and ‘Formation’ and ‘Black Is King,’ and certainly some of the work I’ve done on the Eras Tour with Taylor that’s meant to be very immersive and very layered,” Tobman adds.
Russell expounds upon their friendship — and belated collaboration — in a joint conversation. “I’m trusting completely trusting my beloved childhood friend, my birthday twin. We were so lucky as well because our other childhood friend, Jacob Tierney, helped us do this,” speaking of the Canadian actor-filmmaker having put his money into making the project more elaborate than it otherwise might have been, as an executive producer. “Our whole group of friends growing up in Montreal have gone on to really be extraordinary creative minds, storytellers, multifaceted artists, and I’m struck by it every time we get to be anywhere in each other’s vicinity, and also that deep trust that comes from foundational friendships that you’re able to keep for more than 20 years.”
The shoot took place over a packed three days at an industrial warehouse-type facility in Prague. “I wanted to do as much in-camera as we could, despite the digital environments around them,” Tobman says. Russell notes: “It was so far outside of anything I’ve ever done — I was on a wire at one point, like a Marvel comic hero.”
That Russell and Tobman share the same birthday sounds like some kind of astrological predestination, although it might’ve slipped someone’s mind along the way. “It was so crazy when we realized that,” says the filmmaker.
“We realized it like in Prague. It’s like, wait, what? Your birthday is, what? Oh my gosh,” says Russell.
“No, we realized it when we were 18 in Ali’s kitchen!” reminds Tobman. “We flipped out. And then I didn’t see you for 15 years.”
“Yes, and I forgot and then flipped out again,” says a still-elated-sounding Russell.
It was Taylor Swift who brought them back together, although not through any direct guidance. Tobman had worked as the production designer on her self-directed “All Too Well: The Short Film” video — as he did on other Swift clips like “I Can See You,” “The Man,” “I Can See You,” “Karma,” “Lavender Haze,” “Bejeweled,” and “Cardigan” — and that led him to be at the Grammys where that effort won best music video. Russell was also attending as a nominee, this time for being the featured artist on a song by Aoife O’Donovan, “Prodigal Daughter.”
“During lockdown, a lot of our childhood friends started reconnecting over weekly Zooms, because suddenly people had time to reach out,” Russell says. “But we didn’t get to physically be in the same space again until we ran into each other at the Grammys this last year, which is what rekindled our talk of ‘let’s do something together.’ I was there with Aoife, who very sweetly had me share in that nomination and took me along as her date. And Ethan invited us to Taylor Swift’s after-party, which was totally surreal, but we had this lovely time reconnecting and hanging out and chatting, and that’s when we started plotting: ‘Oh, maybe we could work together on one of the videos for ‘The Returner,’ [her sophomore solo album] — which, you know, it’s just a miracle to me that we actually pulled it off.
“And Jacob Tierney, our fellow Montréalais brother — Jacob and I have known each other since we were 5 years old, and I think Jacob and Ethan knew each other even growing up, even though I didn’t meet Ethan till I was 15. Jacob invested his own money in it and just wanted to help us make this art because he believed in the song — and he was excited about Ethan’s first music video being for me, and the resonance of that.”
Tobman made his first short film in his teens, so in a way this is a return for him, although in other ways it doesn’t seem like such a huge leap, since his role as production designer on about a hundred music videos had him making creative decisions arguably as great as those of anyone on the team at times. He feels like his title as creative director on the Eras Tour speaks most to the kind of role he enjoys.
“I’ve always loved being a designer for directors because of my education in film as a director,” he says. “But the truth is, when you start working in music, which is where I think I’ve really the work I’m most proud of, you work very, very closely with the iconography of the artist. And specifically female pop artists have been my greatest creative exposure and opportunity — Madonna, 10 years with Beyonce, four years with Taylor Swift. You sort of blur the lines in those environments of designer, director, creative director. It’s not as departmentalized as it is in film, so it became a natural extension of my job as a designer for some of those extraordinary artists to then start authoring music videos again.
“And in many ways, I feel like I’ve been doing this for years; it’s just now the nomenclature of this job has changed, because creative director encompasses so many things… I would say that the term creative director is probably the most accurate title I’ve ever had, whereas director or designer feels kind of limiting for what you’re actually providing.” (Non-music projects Tobman has worked on include the films or miniseries “Free Guy,” “Pam & Tommy” and “Room” as well as countless commericals. Ironically, perhaps, he also has some prior experience with demos, having worked on the “Exorcist” TV series.)
Tobman welcomed the task of doing something with Russell that would be epic and playful but also speak in a meaningful way to her recurring themes. Her “The Returner” album is a largely more upbeat expansion on her Grammy-nominated solo debut, “Outside Child,” where she had explored in harrowing depth the after-effects of the traumatic abuse she experienced growing up in Montreal before running away from home and reestablishing a sense of safety with what she calls chosen family. Fans might not have expected an album as funky as “The Returner” after “Outside Child,” but it’s underpinned by the understanding of the heaviness that makes the increased levity possible.
And in “Demons,” Tobman says, “particularly this song, reminded me so much of ancient Greek theater, its call and response. So kind of like in the tragedies or even the comedies of ancient Greek theater, you have like one person saying hello, and then you have 50 people saying back hello. And there’s something very playful to me and very humorous about that. And also the repetition of the lyrics: I mean, there’s a moment in like the fifth or sixth or seventh reprise where Alison says something like ‘deee-ee-ee-mons,’ like she’s almost flirting with them. So it was really natural for me to be inspired to play off lyrics like ‘coming up from behind,’ and every time that lyric happens, we see them coming up from behind in a different way. And it’s never in a sinister way, never in a creepy way. It’s very playful; it might be in choreography that’s very hand-based, creating geometric shapes.”
Being able to do a project like “Demons” brings Tobman back to the MTV he grew up on. “Music videos like this aren’t made anymore,” the filmmaker says. “I was raised by music videos like this, and it made me the filmmaker and the storyteller I am today. I remember reading, at the height of (David) Fincher and (Mark) Romanek and Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry’s videos, that my generation was the first generation that was so consistently exposed to experimental film. Experimental film used to be something that you had to go to the French Cahiers de Cinema, the repertory theaters, to watch, or you had to go seek out in super indie theaters. And my generation and Allison’s generation was the first where MTV really allowed for filmmakers to explore really irreverently and really experimentally their visual ideas, which then later became movies that are some of the greatest directors working today. So I really wanted to embrace the epic quality of those ‘80s and ‘90s videos and their inherent humor and their focus on narrative. Because I just think we need to see more of that, not only in the visualization of music, but just in entertainment in general.
“I wanted to shoot it anamorphic to sort of telegraph that this is a visually important art piece, visually important story. But in order to do that, you have to call in every favor in the book in this market to make something beautiful. So you really have to find people who are eager to tell visual stories because they haven’t had the opportunity in the marketplace currently.”
Says Russell, “In watching this video, I’m discovering new layers of meaning with each view, which is a testament to the depth with which Ethan was able to channel and even go beyond what I had given him to work with.” And, she adds, “I feel like it’s just opened up new expansive vistas of creativity within my own mind that is now going to feed back into songwriting, beyond this collaboration. … Re-embodiment and working with dancers was thrilling to me, and has made me want to pursue practicing and studying dance and incorporating that movement more into the way I story-tell, even at shows. And of course, that’s something I want to work on with Ethan at some point — probably, thinking budget-wise, for the third-record tour, creating film elements that interweave with what we do live.”
“That’s where the Eras tour allowed me to explore,” Tobman says. “I have this huge desire to continue exploring the integration of immersive cinema with live performance, in an additive way, as I feel that only music (combined with film) really can.”
After establishing a foothold in claiming the director’s chair for the “Demons” video, he adds, “I just can’t wait to tell more stories for so many artists, but I really can’t wait to tell more stories with Allison.”
Russell is currently on tour behind “The Returner,” including a Wednesday show at L.A.’s El Rey Theatre. Angelenos had a chance to see her in another context recently, performing as part of the “Brandi Carlile and Friends” all-star concert at the Hollywood Bowl, where she sang backup and played clarinet for Joni Mitchell. Even more impressive than that, though, was Russell’s own turn in the spotlight, where she sang “Requiem” — the most solemn number from her new album — preceded by a musical prayer. It was the part of the night that was the greatest nod to the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East, apart from an opening speech Carlile gave that suggested it was OK to grieve, worry and celebrate as part of the same communal experience.
“That night to me was so magical,” Russell says, “because I had been really struggling to feel OK even touring right now. Doing self-promotional posting felt impossible in the first days. Since Oct. 7, I’ve been struggling a lot with it, and how to navigate, and there was something so healing and holy to me about Brandi’s last show, and the way that she drew the circle and invited us in, and acknowledged all of it, but also gave us all permission to be joyful. And in fact, in these circumstances, our joyful resistance to violence, to terror, to go from the endless waging of war to waging peace, that is part of imagining a different possible outcome, a different way to process trauma, a different way to move through it.”
“At Brandi’s show, backstage there’s people of Jewish descent, there’s people of Iranian descent, people of Palestinian descent, all together and all just loving on each other, and all re-grounding in each other’s humanity.” Of continuing to perform against a background of global anxiety, Russell says, “That sacred, creative communion in joyful assembly — it’s not nothing. Our human species, just like the mycelial network that feeds our forests, we’re connected, and music helps us remember and amplify that connection.”
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