Stéphane Sednaoui | Take a Walk on the Wild Side / 2005

 the glam world in which they always imagined themselves

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stéphane Sednaoui (director) Take a Walk on the Wild Side / 2005 [4.10 minutes]

 

Since it was not common in the early 1970s to promote new songs through videos, professional photographer and video director Stéphane Sednaoui felt it necessary, thankfully, to create a fully realized chic video at 4.10 minute far flashier than even the standard music video, outside of the Bollywood-like celebrations of Lil Nas X and Todrick Hall, to accompany Lou Reed’s Take a Walk on the Wild Side in 2005. Everything about this is quite glamorous, with quick visions of the Warhol studio figures and colorful ad-like spins through the song’s lyrics that make these queers as stunningly gorgeous as they might have wished themselves to be.

     The sound is meticulous, and the varying segments need little explanation since they fully reveal the lyrics.

     While Reed sings the first stanzas about Holly Woodlawn—

 

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.

Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.

Plucked her eyebrows on the way

Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

Said, "Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side”—

 

we see her do precisely that, shave her legs, paint her lips with lipstick, hitchhike into a life “on the wild side.”

Candy came from out on the island

In the backroom, she was everybody's darlin'

But she never lost her head

Even when she was givin' head

She says, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

Said, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

     The splashy ad-like portrayals of our celebrities continues with my favorite, Joe Dellesandro.

 

Little Joe never once gave it away

Everybody had to pay and pay

A hustle here and a hustle there

New York City is the place where they said

"Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

I said, "Hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side"

     The director provides us with no shots of Joe Campbell, finishing out instead with Jackie Curtis and the three women again.

 

Jackie is just speedin' away

Thought she was James Dean for a day

Then I guess she had to crash

Valium would have helped that bash

She said, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

I said, "Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side"

    If Reed’s gravely-voiced rendition is not quite in keeping with the slick artistic shots of Sednaoui’s images, they nonetheless reveal what the lyrics are proclaiming: when you take a walk on the wild side you sell your soul to the devil of commercial notions of style and beauty, underneath of which you have little identity left.

     The nameless “colored girls” sing out the true meaninglessness of their existence.

 

Los Angeles, May 30, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2025).