We Are All Made of Stars

Last Update: 29 August 2002

The first single and video from Moby's album, simply titled 18, is We Are All Made Of Stars. The video features cameos by a number of celebs and old-school TV stars, including (in order of appearance): Kato Kaelin, Verne Troyer (''Mini Me'' from Austin Powers), Corey Feldman, Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman, J.C. from 'N Sync, Dave Navarro (of Jane's Addiction/Red Hot Chili Peppers), Sean Bean, Dominique Swain, porn star Ron Jeremy, Thora Birch, Tommy Lee, Victoria's Secret model Molly Sims, Moby, L.A. model Angelyne, The Toxic Avenger, and producer Robert Evans. Click here to read Moby's thoughts on Sean appearing in his video.

We Are All Made of Stars has won Best Cinematography in a Video, in the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. The awards aired Thursday, August 29, at 8.00 pm ET/PT on MTV. Congratulations to everyone involved in the video's production! The nominees in this category were: Alicia Keys - A Woman's Worth (J Records) - Director of Photography: John Perez Moby - "We Are All Made Of Stars" (V2) Director of Photography: Brad Rushing Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott f/ Ludacris & Trina "One Minute Man" (Gold Mind/EastWest/EEG) - Director of Photography: Karsten "Crash" Gopinath Shakira - "Whenever, Wherever" (Epic) - Director of Photography: Pascal Leeque

We Are All Made Of Stars sees Moby donning an 80-pound spacesuit and assuming the guise of a somewhat distant and removed Spaceman who has come down to earth. He lands in LA and observes Hollywood Babylon, but in its most banal and cinematic moments.

Sean's segment shows him sitting in a silver sports car with gull-wing doors, parked at a car wash.

Moby says the single was inspired by quantum physics. "On a basic quantum level, all the matter in the universe is essentially made up of stardust," he explains.

Playing off the celestial concept, director Joseph Kahn rounded up some of the biggest stars he could find and had Moby, the perennial cool-kid outsider, play a spaceman who interacts with them.

At times, the set was chaotic, as managing all that celebrity is a full-time job in itself. "These aren't normal people," Kahn said. "These are Hollywood stars. If you've ever had to deal with one ... ? We've got to deal with 20 of them in three days. It's like going to war ... a beautiful, fun war."

The video, based on photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, is "a fashion take of all the excesses of Hollywood, both the lows and the high. But mostly the lows," Kahn said. "If there's a high, it's about the ugliness of Hollywood and how you can make that beautiful."

"Hollywood is like this town where almost anything can happen so anything does happen," he continued. "If you're one of the famous people, you can get overloaded on every sort of sin you could possibly have, to the point it gets boring."

All the locations are classic, iconic Hollywood venues: Hollywood Boulevard, seedy strip clubs, bars, tattoo parlors, and, of course, Kinko's. "Places," Moby said, "where normally you'd have debauchery and degeneracy and hedonism happening, but there's a banal side to it. My hope is, through showing the banal side of degenerate Hollywood, there's a sense of humanity to it as well, and we reveal endearing qualities in these iconic figures."

We Are All Made Of Stars was filmed on location in Hollywood, Santa Monica and Sunset and Vine, over a three day period in February 2002.

Image from Entertainment Weekly, April 19, 2002

18, featuring guest vocals by Sinead O'Connor, was released on 14 May 2002. Says Moby of his new record, "It's a more soulful record than things I've done in the past. Most of the singers on it apart from me are women. It's a very warm, inviting, enveloping record."

The video We Are All Made of Stars, is directed by award-winning Joseph Kahn, whose credits include Destiny's Child, Backstreet Boys, U2, Garbage and Wu Tang Clan. He has most recently been responsible for Enrique Iglesias' Hero and George Michael's notorious, and unprecedented, Freeek. Moby has worked with Joseph Khan once before - on the award-winning video for Southside, which also featured Gwen Stefani.

"Joseph Kahn completely came up with the idea for the video," Moby says. "He had directed the video Southside for me and he did such a good job. His track record is so good and I have such respect for his work that I kind of just give him carte blanche.”

Moby has been around for years - his first UK top 40 hit was in 1991, and he's had a few more since then. It wasn't until 1999's Play album however that it really took off for him in a big way in the UK.

Moby lives in New York, is a vegan, a Christian, a philosophy graduate, DJ and recording artist. His work as a remix artist includes Brian Eno, LFO, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Orbital, Depeche Mode and Michael Jackson.

His own work has been equally varied. His 1991 Twin Peaks theme under the name Go went top 10 in the UK. In 1993 on the single I Feel It/ Thousand, the track Thousand entered the Guiness book of records as the fastest single ever at 1015 bpm. 1995 saw his first album for a major label with the dance based album Everything Is Wrong, and in 1996 as dance music and electronica were taking off in America he topped that with the thrash rock of Animal Rights.

And then came Play - an epic 18 track album which went back to his dance roots and expanded some of the influences from his Animal Rights period. The finished album is widely varied and uses samples from the ancient blues artist Alan Lomax as an extension of his own voice which creates an other-wordly sound and feel.

Moby can trace his family history to the author of the famous whaling tale, Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1819 - 1891), hence the name.

Info from MuchMusic, the BBC, Mute Records, Corey Feldman, and MTV.

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