In a disturbing video project reportedly leaked last month, horror director and actor Eli Roth violently raped pop singer Lana Del Rey. The footage was attached to shock rocker Marilyn Manson and his brand of daring music videos. However, Manson has rejected the footage and laments its association with his corpus.
“It wasn’t a Marilyn Manson video,” Manson told NME: “The editor of the company that put it out was somebody who’s edited my videos, that video was something that was done with a camera that Eli (Roth), who’s my friend, and I both wanted to test out, so I let him test it out… what they filmed was put in context seemingly as if it were a Marilyn Manson video, and that was in no way the intention.”
Manson also told NME that working with Del Rey was a priority, but one that quickly dissolved over creative differences and general rapport. He says the rape scene was filmed without his knowledge: “Eli and I wanted to do a music video with her but she was being such a problem… Although I still respect her, I’m friends with her. I just left, I was tired, I was not willing to make that part of the video. Eli and I originally had intentions of making a video with her, but that is not the intention that is represented in that film clip because that is not what I filmed, not for my video.”
To hammer home his disgust with what he says is third-party editing, Manson expressed disdain for the notion of rape scenes as artistically central to anything the singer would condone: “…the people put it together with my other clips. And it really strongly stands out of place, it doesn’t really make sense. I would not make a video of that nature, nor would Eli. I don’t think either of us were ever intending for that to be seen, it was more of a camera test. I’m a person that would beat somebody’s ass if they raped somebody that I know.”
H/T NME | Photo via Kmeron/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)