The music video for Foo Fighters Everlong can be viewed below.
The video was directed by Michel Gondry, a famous French director and screenwriter who actually won an Academy Award in 2004 for the very popular Jim Carrey film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Oscar he won was for Original Screenplay, though he also served as director on that film as well.
In terms of music videos, Gondry has a long history of directing videos for a variety of famous acts over several decades. His experience includes directing videos for such superstars as Lenny Kravitz, Bjork, Beck, Kanye West, the White Stripes, and almost a hundred other acts. The impressive list goes on and on, with Everlong being just one of many.
The music video for Everlong is filmed in an intentionally grainy style, with much of the video in a choppy, grainy, black and white film style. The video is filmed in a sort of blend of comedy and horror.
In the Everlong video, the hero character portrayed by Grohl bounces back and forth between wrestlessly sleeping in the present (depicted in black and white), and a nightmare he is having (depicted in color). In the dream setting, a girl is getting attacke by two henchmen. Grohl sees her, and his hand magically (and comically) grows to 3 or 4 times the size of his regular hand. He then uses this superhero weapon to smack the evil people and escape with the girl.
Throughout the video, the girl finds herself again in perilous scenes, where she is being attacked visciously. Through another strategic and comic method, Grohl recognizes that he must fall asleep to help her in the dream, so he lays down and instantly falls asleep, waking in the nightmare world to grow his ridiculously large hand and defeat the enemies once again, saving the girl.
At the end of the video, the band members reveal themselves as the enemies, and simply play the song as a garage band for the ending of the song itself.
The video is said to be a parody of the legendary Sam Raimi horror film Evil Dead, which starred Bruce Campbell as the heroic Ash Williams. The video has a similar style as the film. The characters portrayed in the film are said to be Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.
To date, the official music video has been viewed over 235 million times since being posted in October of 2009.