A Different Kind of Comeback At first glance, Henri Alexander Lévy's music video for Marilyn Manson's "Front Toward Enemy" appears surprisingly restrained. Considering the title and the confrontational tone of the song, one might reasonably expect a visual statement built around warfare, retaliation, or public vindication. Instead, the music video repeatedly turns away from those expectations. It lingers on a child dressed in military attire, a motionless body on an examination table, shelves of psychology books, childhood trophies, playground equipment, and a cabinet filled with carefully arranged artifacts. None of these images directly illustrates the lyrics, yet none of them feels arbitrary. By the time the music video ends, it becomes clear that Lévy is asking the viewer to consider something more complicated than revenge. That immediately distinguishes the video from the song itself. Borrowing its title from the M18A1 Claymore mine, whose front face bears th...
How the Relationship Began In the August issue of Elle U.K. magazine in 2007 there is an interview with 19 year old Evan Rachel Wood titled "Dark Angel" in which she explains how she met Marilyn Manson at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles in 2006; she was 18 and he was 37, married to Dita Von Teese at the time. The interview took place at the Chateau Marmont, for which reason she commented about a particular sofa there: "I love this place and this is my favourite sofa. This is where I met Manson, both of us hiding in the corner of a party neither of us wanted to be at." In the April 2007 issue of Le Parisien , Manson explained how when he first met Evan he asked her to be in his upcoming horror film, Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll. It was to feature Evan and British teen model Lily Cole sharing the role of Alice in Wonderland. Both insist a romantic relationship between the two did not exist while Manson was married to Dita. Evan says they became ...