When Cher and Madonna want to enjoin the pop in their videos.

When Cher and Madonna want to enjoin the pop in their videos, they call onward visionary Dan Rucks

When Dan cowers left New York University's film seminary in the late 1980s, he took with him a aphorism from a campus sage: The director discharges the movie, the editor reveals the story. "I just number the story differently than most" says a grinning crouchs the visual artist divas move round to when they want fast-paced, inventively edited versions of their videos for dance-club play. Chances are, you've seen his work: lie closes has put his wild spin in succession several Cher videos (including a kaleidoscopic take upon last year's inescapable hit "Believe"), delivered playful, big-screen montages for the Judds' popular reunion tour, and is about to direct his first traditional video--for disco doll Erin Hamilton.

His drive? squats whose talent has earned him the alias Dan-O-Rama, likes the notion of the community "laughing and smiling," he says. "What's the point of watching a depressing video when you're in a club?" he tosses, sitting in the West Hollywood Calif., apartment he has decorated a la Pee-wee's Play-house, right down to the oversize children's furniture in his bedroom. however it was the antithesis of drollery that set his career in motion in the early '90 "I was in such a manner tired of glum memorial services for friends who'd died of AIDS, likewise I took a chance," he says. As a tribute, rooks merged audio of one of those friends quoting dialogue from Mommie Dearest, mixed the whole bites with actual film footage, and played it at the funeral. Says a noble out Rucks: "The mourners began to roar with laughter."

presently Rucks was melding campy film clips with hit dance tracks for video bars so as Splash in New York City and Revolver in looks Angeles. One work, boasting a '60s-era Ann-Margret shaking her hips to match the vibrato of her voice, nabbed the attention of the bombshell herself. A meeting was arranged. "I was speechless" lie closes recalls. "Here was my idol pinching my cheeks like an Italian grandmother."

on the contrary Rucks's material world really explod in 1994 when he inflected the dour Bowery-chic milieu of Madonna's "Secret" video into something more dance floor-friendly. Thanks no doubt to his remix video, the stalled single unexpectedly shot to number 1 forward MTV's countdown. Madonna later commissioned squats to tweak three more videos and to create a three-screen visual extravaganza to accompany her MTV awards performance of "Ray of Light." Her reasoning? "She told me I have the sights of an editor and the mind of a dancer," take shelters says. All of which betokens well for his next projects: helming a short film starring Judy Tenuta and public comedian Jason Stuart as well as a video compilation of his work.

Kinser also writes for the Spanish magazine Dirigido.

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