George Michael’s music video director has revealed that the late pop star wanted to make a “hardcore porn” version of his 1998 “Outside” video.
Vaughan Arnell, who directed a number of Michael’s music videos, shares the revelation in Channel 4’s forthcoming documentary film, George Michael: Portrait of an Artist (out Sunday, 17 September).
“Outside” was Michael's first single since being arrested for engaging in a “lewd act” with an undercover police officer in a public toilet in Beverly Hills, California, six months earlier. Michael was handed a £500 fine and 80 hours of community service.
The incident prompted the singer to come out as gay in public – a detail of his personal life that had been the subject of rumour for several years – and subjected him to malicious tabloid headlines and moral outrage.
In response, Michael wrote “Outside”, featuring lyrics that directly referenced and poked fun at the arrest.
The music video was even more on-the-nose, starting with a spoof of a Scandinavian porn film before cutting to a toilet that turned into a disco room with Michael wearing a police uniform and dancing with a nightstick.
“He wanted to develop it more to make a secondary video, which would be a more hardcore porn version of it,” Arnell says in the Channel 4 film.
Much of the video was shot from the air, Arnell explains, as they were filming people committing lewd acts in public so it had to be done “somewhere where people couldn’t see you doing it”.
George Michael in the music video for ‘Outside’— (George Michael/YouTube)
“Some of it was full penetration that we were doing as well so that was full on for a controlled town,” Arnell says, referring to the filming location of Los Angeles.
“The idea was to actually expand the video and make a porn movie of it as well but it never finally got made, I think it got canned,” the director says.
Arnell first worked with Michael on his 1996 single “Fastlove” and also directed the music videos for “Spinning the Wheel” (1996) and “Let Her Down Easy” (2014).
Michael would later speak openly and confidently about his sex life, telling BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that hiding his sexuality had made him feel “fraudulent”, and that being caught soliciting sex in 1998 was a “subconsciously deliberate act”.
“Outside” made it to number two on the UK singles chart, and was included in his solo hits collection titled Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael.
Michael died aged 53 on Christmas Day 2016 at his home in Oxfordshire.
Portrait of an Artist features more than 40 interviews from stars such as Stevie Wonder, Stephen Fry, Piers Morgan and Sananda Maitreya.
It airs on Channel 4 on Sunday at 9pm.
