Although “literal” is never a word one would associate with David Lynch, the director’s new video for his “Crazy Clown Time” single—and the only David Lynch-directed video you’re probably going to see for a while—offers a surprisingly literal translation of his song’s lyrics, which we have to admit are plenty hallucinatory on their own. Thus, just as Lynch dictates in his needling falsetto, Paulie does, in fact, wear a red shirt while Suzy rips hers off on cue, instantly rendering this video for an already-disturbing video NSFW, unless you work at a serial killing factory. In which case, you should quit, because serial killing is not the sort of industry that can sustain a factory.
After Paulie and Suzy get their wardrobes sorted, Lynch continues to sing what he sees and vice versa: Buddy screams until he spits, DeeDee sets his hair on fire, and Danny pours beer on people instead of drinking it, because Danny is a selfish asshole. Did you even pay for that beer, or are you just a super-duper asshole, Danny? Your friends are trying to have a backyard barbecue/psychotic breakdown and you’re just wasting the supplies. Anyway, the only things that Lynch mentions that do not get their proper visual analogue here are clowns, which it turns out are just a metaphor. That David Lynch—always with the metaphors.