Phantom Planet - Big Brat

What this video is

Released in late 2003 and tied to the January 2004 self-titled album, 'Big Brat' arrived at an inflection point for Phantom Planet: Jason Schwartzman had just departed the band in August 2003 to focus on acting, and the group's sound was consciously pivoting from radio-friendly pop-rock toward a rawer garage-rock aesthetic comparable to The Strokes. The band occupied a unique celebrity-adjacent cultural node — its…

Why it matters

An emblematic artifact of the LA indie alt-rock scene at its early-2000s commercial apex — simultaneously a product of MTV's TRL mainstream and a self-conscious critique of slick production values. The video's dual-narrative horror-comedy structure anticipates the meta-cinematic playfulness that…

The director

Born Adam Spiegel (October 22, 1969, Rockville, MD). Pioneering American filmmaker who rose from BMX/skateboard photography and youth culture magazines to become one of the most acclaimed music video directors of the 1990s–2000s, with landmark videos for…