ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Howd you come up with the concept for the video?
What kind of input did Justin have?
He was pretty trusting.
He liked the idea and just let me get on with putting it together.
Obviously he was influential with the dancing and choreography component.
He also suggested that the dancers sing the refrain at the end.
This was your first time working with Justin.
What was that like?
Weve known each other for a pretty long time.
Hes a very genuine guy.
He was still at the tail end of a very bad cold/flu, so he was quite the trooper.
Howd you find all these people in the video?
My wonderful casting director Dan Bell and his crew found them.
It was easy to cast.
Then it was just a matter of having a balance of types of people.
Howd you get them to let loose in front of the camera?
Howd the decision to have the red inflatable guy joining in on the fun come up?
Theyre amusing urban artifacts.
We thought of it a bit like a more casual version ofGene Kelly dancing with Jerry the mouseinAnchors Aweigh.
Justin dances a lot, of course are those all his moves or did he have a choreographer?
We had a great choreographer named Marty Kudelka who works with JT a lot.
He helped these mainly untrained dancers to learn their synchronized choreography in a very brief amount of time.
Everything else was just improv by JT, which was pretty amazing to see.
Hes very smart and inventive and the best dancer Ive worked with since Michael Jackson.
What part of this video are you most proud of?
Just the overall feeling of unironic and sincere humanism.
Its not trying to be cool or slick or ironic.
Most of the time, people are excellent.
Its just a big sugar cookie.
It makes people smile for four minutes.
Did you take any inspiration from other videos?
I watched about 15 minutes of it.
It was all Pharrell dancing at night with no cuts.
But thats the only version I ever saw.
