Learn To Fly

About

Arguably Foo Fighters most popular music video, ‘Learn to Fly’ was directed by Jesse Peretz with his treatment serving as an homage to air themed movies ‘Airport 1975’ and ‘Airport ‘77’ and in turn the existing parody of those movies, ‘Airplane!’.

As had been the case in several of their previous videos the band elected to play almost all the main characters themselves, male and female, the exception being two janitors being played by Jack Black and Kyle Gass, Tenacious D. A small number of background extras were also hired, including a nun, in direct reference to a well-known character in ‘Airplane!’. The video was filmed in the transitional gap between Franz Stahl leaving the band and Chris Shiflett joining so only Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins and Nate Mendel featured.

According to Taylor his female flight attendant character was given a busty appearance using a chest pad, the seams hidden under the uniforms collar and scarf.

Principal photography took place in London, England in the summer of 1999 using a cabin crew training jet. The premise of the video followed closely the films it was parodying with the corrupt janitors adding their drugs package to the coffee which the crew inadvertently then serve to almost the entire passenger list, plus the pilots. This would lead to the band, also playing themselves, having to quickly “Learn to Fly” to be able to land the plane.

Due to broadcasting regulations in certain countries regarding the depiction of drugs the package that Black’s character places in the coffee machine had plain parcel tape on the outside during filming. In countries where it could be shown a label with the text “Word Domination ‘Erotic’ Sleeping Power” was added in post-production.

In other regions, only the original blank package was seen leaving viewers to use their own imagination as to its contents. The ‘clean’ version was also available on the DVD included with the Greatest Hits release in 2009.

Editing took place back in Los Angeles where mock concert scenes were also filmed to be shown on the in-flight entertainment screens of the plane.

According to Grohl a significant chunk of filmed content was cut from the final video which saw Jack and Kyle playing a second role as air traffic controllers. “It was so hilarious, and then we never used it”, Grohl told Zane Lowe in a later interview, without elaborating further on the scenes.

The video was released alongside the single in September 1999 and won a Grammy in February 2001 for Best Short Form Music Video.