Authors: Catie Disabato
When Molly visited Chicago, she copied the maps into MollyMaps on a computer that she never connected to the Internet.
Eventually, when the number of maps became too overwhelming for her to digitize on her own, Molly gave Berliner a copy of MollyMaps and bought him his own laptop. When Berliner met up with Molly on tour or when she visited him in Chicago, they synched their maps over a closed wireless connection.
As 2007 slid into 2008, Molly’s relationship with Peaches fell apart. The rift developed slowly. At first, they just snapped at each more often, poking at each other with pithy, bitchy remarks when they were both tired or overwhelmed with work. For a while, they would apologize after their little snipes. Then they stopped apologizing. When Ali was there to act as a buffer, Molly and Peaches got along fine, so to avoid arguing, Molly and Peaches stopped spending time by themselves. Very quickly, they forgot how to have fun together; alone in a room, they argued or lapsed into uncomfortable silence. Molly stopped discussing her personal life with Peaches and never asked advice about her family or romantic entanglements. They still spent almost every day together, but without meaning to, they stopped being friends.
Then Peaches asked to see the map that Molly had just begun calling The Ghost Network. Molly didn’t want to show Ali and Peaches until it was finished, so she refused Peaches’s request. Peaches thought it was hypocritical of Molly to let Berliner see the map but refuse to show it to her, even as Peaches collected the raw materials for it. Peaches complained to Ali, who refused to participate in the conflict. To avoid her friends’ squabbling, Ali spent ten hours a day working, dancing, or copying maps, and the rest of her time with her boyfriend. Though Ali removed herself, she encouraged Molly to try to patch things up with Peaches.
During the last week of May 2008, Molly and Peaches met every night to try to work through their problems and instead spent hours fighting. Neither girl would relent, so they fought for days. It seemed to Ali that they would go on like this forever, that fighting would
become the new normal mode of their relationship, then Peaches crossed a line. In early June, Molly found her trying to break into the computer Molly used to run MollyMaps. Later that night, she sent a text message to Ali and Berliner: “Peaches is expelled from the Urban Planning Committee.”
Berliner supported Molly’s decision, but Ali tried to reconcile the situation. She spoke to Peaches and Molly, trying to put a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. After a few days of needling from Ali, Molly wrote her an e-mail during a layover on a quick trip to Australia to promote
Cause Célèbrety
:
Ali dear, this is my last word on the subject. I don’t want to cut you off or keep you from expressing yourself, but I’m not going to relent and nothing you can say, or that Peaches can say for that matter, would change my mind. I’ve been betrayed on a personal level, a professional level, and an artistic level—betrayed so completely that even talking about it is difficult and painful for me. If it wasn’t you that I was writing to, someone I trust completely and who I feel confident that I can bare my soul to without putting myself in emotional danger, I wouldn’t be able to speak about this at all. I can’t talk to Nick about it, for example. I wanted to make sure you knew that. Peaches seemed to take my closeness with Nick as some kind of threat against her, and I wanted to make it absolutely clear to you that my relationship with Nick is separate from my relationship with you, and has no baring [
sic
] on how I feel about our friendship.
Peaches made it very clear to me, both in her words and her actions, that she no longer believes in our work—both in the Urban Planning Committee and our pop music. She felt trapped by my relative power. For example, she knows that even though she is no longer a part of my work, her nondisclosure agreements are so binding that if she talks publicly or
even privately about any of my secrets, I will have the power to ruin her life in a serious way. I’m angry enough right now that I would probably do it. I trust she won’t talk about the Urban Planning Committee, in any case. I think that, unfortunately, she would sound insane if she tried to do so. I didn’t mean for it to be like that.
I know you’ve done some reading about the Situationists—so you know that to rigorously maintain the focus and driving force of the group, Guy [Debord] had to expel several members, including a few of his painter friends. I’ve exchanged a few e-mails with an academic named McKenzie Wark (under a pseudonym of course) who has just written a book about the Situationists, and has been asked to write the introduction to a collection of Guy’s correspondence. I convinced him to send me a few of the translated letters he’s working with and I read Guy’s own words on expelling members from the Situationists.
It comes down to this: it was incredibly painful for Guy to break with his friends and oust them, but if he hadn’t done so, the Situationists would’ve crumbled. I won’t let my own efforts crumble. I’ve worked too hard and come to [
sic
] far. If Peaches didn’t mean to hurt the Urban Planning Committee and my pop career, I would be able to work with her—but she acted against me deliberately. I can’t deal with that. I won’t ever see her again. I don’t care if you maintain a friendship with her, but you can’t speak to her about the Urban Planning Committee. If you do, I’ll expel you too. I’m sorry to sound so strict with you. I love you. Any forcefulness behind my words is because I’m hurt and frightened of losing you as well.
The first thing I want to do when I get back to Chicago is talk deeply and seriously with you. I miss you. I will see you when I return.
Ali and Molly did speak “deeply and seriously” and Ali reassured Molly, who put the incident with Peaches out of her mind.
s
Molly stopped worrying, and Ali continued her friendship with Peaches.
Meanwhile, Berliner and Molly had been working like mad on The Ghost Network, piling map on top of map at a frantic pace, as “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” started to get more and more airtime on Top 40 radio. To keep up their breakneck speed, Berliner often traveled from Chicago to wherever Molly was promoting her album and singles. Berliner enjoyed visiting Molly’s other world, her vibrant life as a steadily rising pop star, so they were together for the climax of the work on The Ghost Network, on the set of the “New Vogue Riche” music video.
On August 31, 2008, more than a year after Molly and Berliner had begun building The Ghost Network, Molly’s dancers, entourage, and a film crew descended on a mansion in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village to shoot the music video for “New Vogue Riche,” Molly’s first EDM-influenced single. Molly conceptualized the video, which follows a girl who discovers a portal to her own city hidden inside the second floor of a fancy mansion. It is a sequel to her first music video, for “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas).”
As she hadn’t yet proven she could record a hit, the label spent almost nothing on the “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” video production. To direct, they had hired Danielle Skendarian (not yet as in demand as she is today, and therefore cheaper), rented a mansion, and told Joe Frank Parker to choreograph a “normal pop video dance.”
t
Parker obliged and developed a routine that combined
sharp jazz movement with provocative hip-hop dance aesthetics, plus a few movements that would become dance signatures for Molly: a slinky walk with little flicks of her legs, her hands blocking her face, her whole upper body still; rolling into what, in yoga, would be called a “shoulder stand” and haphazardly peddling her legs; and overall jerking, rather than fluid, movements.
SDFC had foisted upon Molly a concept for the “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” video. It begins with Molly and her friends (Peaches and Ali) driving to a mansion on a hill, lit with teal and purple lights. During the chorus, they crash the party, and dance around as the guests dressed in Gatsby-esque costumes look on, perplexed. In a dazzling, back-lit close up, Molly lip-syncs her hook: “Don’t stop stop / stop never stop / Keep dancing, dancing / dancing ’til we drop.” She finds Astroman, the song’s producer, among the guests and gyrates against him, mouthing his lyrics: “Work, work, work your body / Pop, pop, pop a Molly.” The video ends with a long dance sequence on the mansion’s grand staircase. In the final shot, Molly laughs and runs up the stairs, an outtake edited into the video for its considerable charm. In later interviews, when SDFC was giving Molly more money and creative power, she called the “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” video the intro to “New Vogue Riche.”
Molly designed the “New Vogue Riche” video herself. On the concept, she took creative input from Momo Waxler, her creative director, and her choreographer, Parker. Though SDFC and Rappaport, Molly’s handler from the label, had to approve of the concept before they would fund the video, they did so without giving Molly any notes and approved her choice of Skendarian to direct again.
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Unlike the “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” video, “New Vogue
Riche” smacks of Molly’s own aesthetic, and despite the record company’s minimal involvement, it serves as a sharp marker of her new power within the music industry and her label in particular. “New Vogue Riche” begins where “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” left off, with Molly running up the giant staircase. At the top of the stairs, Molly’s costume transforms into a bodysuit outfitted with panels of LED lights.
Ali follows Molly up the stairs, and they find abandoned rooms, the furniture covered with white sheets. During the first verse, while Molly sings about wanting to be Madonna when she was a little girl, Molly rips the sheets off couches and statues. She throws the white fabric, billowing, to Ali, who uses them as props in Parker’s ballet-inflected choreography.
After the first chorus (“When I get money [New!] / I throw a party [Vogue!] / For everybody [Riche!] / New. Vogue. Riche. Dance.”), Molly uncovers a miniature skyscraper, the size of a child’s playhouse. As Molly removes the tarp, the skyscraper’s little windows glow purple. Molly wraps herself around the skyscraper, humping and licking it, and generally acting like a sexed-up King Kong.
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After a verse, a door on the side of the skyscraper springs open.
Dropping to her hands and knees, Molly Metropolis crawls into the skyscraper, with Ali at her heels. Molly then finds herself in a seemingly empty city, her costume transformed again, this time into a jet-black leotard with metallic sleeves. The map travels off the leotard and, in body paint, across Molly’s arms, legs, neck and face. Molly gazes at the sky, where the words
Molly’s Metropolis
dangle,
a purple neon light attached to nothing in particular. In the giant neon words, all the O’s are rendered as small triangles, conforming to the visual ascetics associated with the ’80s-style Outrun Electro genre Molly
détourns
for many of her tracks.
A few quick cuts later, Molly’s dancers come tumbling out of doorways and join Molly and Ali in the street. Molly dances energetically with the group through a few iterations of the chorus. The video ends with Molly beginning to explore her city.
The “New Vogue Riche” music video received the best critical response of any of her videos and remains a fan favorite. I’m inclined to agree with the popular sentiment. The video is playful and fun, the choreography is top-notch, and the visuals are striking thanks to Benoît Debie’s candy-colored, glow-y cinematography.
Molly’s video for “Apocalypse Dance” was the third chapter of this saga, and ended in a cliffhanger. Because Molly disappeared, the cliffhanger was never resolved.
Molly invited Berliner to Los Angeles to sync their maps and to visit the set of “New Vogue Riche”; he pretended to be an old friend from high school whom she had met at summer camp. While on set, he met and hit it off with one of Molly’s dancers, Irene Davis. The two immediately began dating.
Molly and her team shot the video over three days, from August 31 to September 2, 2008, during a particularly exciting time for Molly Metropolis and her General Council; “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” was quickly climbing the charts and
Cause Célèbrety
had debuted earlier in the month to larger than expected sales figures. The dancers, Parker, and even the film crew, who had no long-term vested interest in Molly’s career, felt the energy and excitement on set. In between takes, the production assistants played LCD Soundsystem and M.I.A., and the dancers developed little dance moves for “Paper Planes.” For the first time since Molly was dropped from her
first label, she felt happy and secure in her career. In the minutes before the shoot began, she wept with happiness in front of the whole crew, then apologized to the makeup assistants for making them reapply her mascara. Molly was so emotionally overwhelmed, she didn’t realize her hold on Ali had begun to unravel.
Without Peaches around to help, the weight of Molly’s intensity fell on Ali alone. She treated Ali passionately, but roughly. She had always done so. For example, in an early interview with MTV VJ Nani Cook, when Cook worked up the nerve to awkwardly question Molly about her “friends,” Molly answered, benignly, that they were her “followers and dancers.” Then she grabbed Ali’s jaw and shook her face. Ali didn’t otherwise move or react, but unedited footage of the interview shows Peaches gasping as it happened.
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Cook quickly moved on to other topics. Ali thought about that moment often in the weeks leading up to the “New Vogue Riche” shoot, when Molly’s ferocity reached a fever pitch. Without Peaches there to help normalize the way Molly treated her, Ali realized that moment defined her relationship with Molly. Ali didn’t like that she had done nothing while Molly moved her. She felt like she was always standing perfectly still while Molly Metropolis shook her face.
For the “New Vogue Riche” video, Molly asked Parker to leave part of the bridge—a repetition of the couplet “all you nouveau / do the new vogue” layered over pulsating ’80s-style synths—unchoreographed, so she could freestyle with Ali. With the cameras rolling, Molly told Ali to sit with her knees up and Molly draped herself over Ali’s legs. Molly pressed the front of her body against Ali’s legs, arching into her, and tightly wrapped her hands around Ali’s thighs, while Ali performed a modified version of Madonna’s famous arm choreography from the “Vogue” music video.
Then Molly mimed a gun, pointed it at Ali’s head, and pretended to fire. Ali recoiled, then gracefully fluttered down, until she was lying on her back. Molly slithered over her body, then sprung up to standing and performed the Vogue-like arm choreography herself—she’d mimed killing Ali and stealing her dance moves.