Exclusive: Fall Out Boy unpack their “wonderfully silly” new video for Hold Me Like A Grudge
Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump explain what is going on in Fall Out Boy’s new video for Hold Me Like A Grudge, the hilarious (and surprising) follow-up to This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race.
Last week, when we met up with Fall Out Boy to discuss their incredible new album So Much (For) Stardust, we quizzed them on the planned video for Hold Me Like A Grudge – which they had previously teased was a “continuation” from an old video.
Well, now it’s here and it’s absolutely brilliant, surprisingly following on from the video for Infinity On High single This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race. As Pete Wentz tells us, it picks up right after he’s stage-dived and seemingly broken his leg… but it goes wild from there.
“When we did Dance, Dance, that was kind of the first video we wrote, right?” Pete begins. “And so, when we did Arms Race, we were like, ‘Well, what if we go back and we approach it super-cynically, and Dance, Dance wasn’t really what it was?’ And then Arms Race ends and it’s 2003 or whatever, and we’re at the show.
“And this video starts at Arms Race, and I fall and I break my leg, and then they fix my leg but it’s bionic, and I become a superhero for 20 years, and we don’t do the band, and it’s a different timeline. We get a call from a guy who’s in the future but the past, and the space-time continuum is broken, and so I go and find Patrick, who’s a local wrestler (laughs) who’s in this amazing muscle suit – which was a role he designed!”
“It was fun,” says Patrick Stump of his character. “It was by choice. I just thought it would be so funny. I used to wanna act years ago, and one of the things that was really difficult is that I don’t really have the physicality – no-one ever wants you to be the villain. They just see this little dorky guy and they’re like, ‘Hey, you wanna play this little dorky guy?’ And so I thought that’d be really funny.”
“And so he’s a wrestler,” Pete continues, “and our records are disappearing as we go a la Back To The Future Part II, and we get Andy who’s a monk, and we get Joe who’s a [motion capture] actor so he’s in a green suit with the dots. And then we go back to the Arms Race video when it’s black and white, and the whole world is chaos and it’s been sucked up, and basically we have to get this hat on Patrick’s head (laughs) and we save the continuum.”
“Apparently it’s the key to the universe,” adds Patrick. “It’s wonderfully silly.”
“It’s an ambitious video,” continues Pete. “I think if it comes out half as well as we want it to then it’ll be kinda funny. It was fun to make.”
So there you have it!
Watch the video for Hold Me Like A Grudge in all its glory below: