When Rhino rang Lake & Pine about directing a video for "I Will Dare" to promote the Let It Be deluxe box set, I panicked. This was the song from my teenage years. How do you create new visuals for a 40-year-old song without betraying what made it perfect? Especially for a band that famously hated making videos and wouldn't be involved beyond picking a concept?
Some fans will say this song doesn't need a video. Maybe they're right. We wrestled with that. But when you get an opportunity like this, you take it.
I wrote and directed this as a companion piece to the "Takin' A Ride" video from 4 years before. Remember when Jon and Fred visit the CC Club during the guitar solo? This is what was happening in another booth at that exact moment. We took cues from those early Replacements anti-videos—using tight crops and mundane moments. On the surface it's a boy-meets-girl story, but I wanted it to be about the creative process itself. About the struggle, and finding your muse when you stop trying so hard.
We packed it with easter eggs for the diehards and shot everything in just six hours with a skeleton crew. The result is an anxious film about creative courage, set in the best dive bar in Minneapolis, soundtracked by arguably the best band to ever come out of this city.
Oh, and I also did the cutdowns for social media promotion.
