Broken (film)
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The Broken Movie is a full length music video used by Nine Inch Nails to promote their Broken EP, released in 1992. It is a compilation video because each video in the package was recorded separately and then edited together, with the exception of "Gave Up". The video was filmed and directed by Peter Christopherson of the band Coil, and Trent Reznor (also directing were Eric Goode, Serge Becker and Jon Reiss)
The whole video is about twenty minutes in length and features videos for almost all of the tracks from Broken (The exceptions being the track "Last," and the two secret tracks that are considered conceptually separated from the rest of the album, "Physical" and "Suck"). The wraparound story involves a young man being kidnapped and made to watch Nine Inch Nails videos while being tortured.
[edit] Description
The first video, for "Pinion" begins in a bathroom. The camera zooms in on a toilet flushing, and a network of pipes is shown, one leading to a mask. As the camera zooms out, it is shown that a man is strapped and wearing a tight suit, with water coming in through his mask (presumably to drown him)
The video for "Wish" is (arguably) slightly more low-key, showing Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor on vocals, Chris Vrenna on drums, Richard Patrick on guitar and James Woolley on keyboards) playing inside high, caged walls while hordes of angry men assault the exterior of the cage (Reznor escapes the grasp of one of the men). The band is eventually accosted: Woolley is lifted off his feet by a suspended man and Vrenna, Patrick, and Reznor are grabbed through the sides of the cage. At the end of the video a brief scene occurs showing men storming into the cage with bats and clubs.
The video for "Help me I am in hell" shows a man in a room filled with what appear to be flies. He ignores them whilst eating food and drinking wine (on one occasion it is clearly shown that flies also enter his mouth when he eats). However, this video is not shown in the Broken movie. A black screen takes its place.
The video for "Happiness in Slavery" was lifted from the compilation and used to promote the single of the same name. The video shows performance artist Bob Flanagan strapping himself into a machine that subsequently appears to rape, torture and kill him whilst Trent Reznor watches and screams from a nearby cell; he enters the room after the machine kills Flanagan (his death is not shown onscreen, however there is a scene showing a bed of flowers underneath the machine that is seemingly being fed the man's remains, which have been grounded up into a paste-like substance), presumably to be killed as well. The video was universally banned.
The film also has a cameo by Robert Patrick (most famous for his role as the T-1000 in the Hollywood blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day and brother of NIN's guitarist at the time, Richard Patrick) portraying a police officer in the video for "Gave Up", which raised even more controversy than "Happiness in Slavery" due to its graphic onscreen portrayal of violence (including a man being flogged and attacked with a blowtorch, and later dismembered with a chainsaw) and a camerawork reminiscent of snuff films. Reznor once said the "Gave Up" video "...made 'Happiness in Slavery' look like a Disney movie". ([1])
[edit] Availability
The movie has not been given an official commercial release thus adding to its mythological status in alternative culture. The original hand-dubbed tapes were distributed by Reznor to various friends and dominatrixes with dropouts at certain points so he could know who distributed any copies that might surface. A future release seems unlikely, although it was hinted by Reznor in the Access section of nin.com that it may appear on the Closure DVD (however, the DVD has reportedly been delayed indefinitely). It was also hinted in Access that "Gibby" was responsible for the most prominent leak ("Gibby" most likely being Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, according to speculation [2]).
There are copies encoded in MPEG and AVI format that are distributed through p2p networks and Nine Inch Nails fansites. These are generally not of the highest quality as they are not first generation copies. In August of 2005, a new copy of the movie, as a 2-gig, remastered DVD, has surfaced, and is spreading around via fan forum Echoing the Sound using the BitTorrent p2p client. The remaster was sourced from a variety of downloaded copies of the movie, but was primarily taken from an anonymously-received, low-generation copy of the tape. Like all of the copies that exist online, however, this version does not have video footage during "Help Me I Am in Hell," so it is still unknown if a video actually exists from the Broken Movie that is different from the one featured on the VHS version of Closure. Menu screens, a chapter index and the option to dub in the audio tracks from the CD-quality versions are all distinct features of the new copy. This version is widely considered to be the best quality rip of the movie to date. Barring an official release (such as the one hinted for the Closure DVD), it is unlikely a better copy of the movie will ever surface.
The individual videos have been made available (except "Help me I am in Hell") on the Nine Inch Nails website ([3]) and on video-sharing websites such as YouTube, besides surfacing on certain p2p networks and being included on the "Closure" VHS.
Trent Reznor's discussion about the movie, like many things, has been cryptic at best. He definitely does not hide the movie's existence, however. On Fixed (the remix CD for Broken), remixers employed a heavily processed sample of Bob Flanagan's screaming while being tortured by the machine in the video for "Happiness in Slavery" as part of the rhythm in the track "Screaming Slave". On the recent Collected promotional DVD that was sent out in promotion of the most recent album With Teeth, portions of the movie outside of the commercially available music videos are shown for a few seconds in crystal-clear quality, teasing quite a few fans.
