Comedian Jeff Hilliard is a master visual storyteller, primarily through making music videos, who uses music to communicate his messages on society. Jeff is a trained character actor from the Second City Conservatory in Los Angeles and a professional actor with credits including Paul Schrader’s Dog Eat Dog film starring Nicolas Cage and Willem Defoe, Bernard Rose’s award winning film Frankenstein starring Danny Huston, Carrie-Anne Moss, Xavier Samuel, and Tony Todd, and Traveling Light along with Stephen Dorff, Tony Todd, and Danny Huston.
Jeff is most known for are his satire music videos, which he writes, directs, produces, and puts together. His music videos “Mulletude,” “Consensual,” and “Silicone Wave” have won numerous awards at film festivals. His song and video “Balls” featured Steve-O of Jackass fame. His song “Good Life” and accompanying video was hailed by The Cult’s Billy Morrison as “The most outrageous, wrong, socially unacceptable music video I’d ever seen – and that is what makes it UTTER GENIUS!” Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, Dead by Sunrise, and Stone Temple Pilots says “‘The Good Life’ is one of the best music videos I’ve ever seen.”
Jeff’s most recent song, and video, “Abandon,” is by far his most impressive visual composition yet, and not just because it turned out great, but because of the amount of creative freedom he has. He wrote the lyrics, sang the song, and directed the entire video. His vision is clear through the whole video: flipping gender roles on its head with a play on 80’s metal ballads. Jeordie White, a.k.a. Twiggy Ramirez, of 9 Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, helped Jeff on bass and guitar and helped a little with the lyrics alongside Lee Miles and Jeff.
As a trained character actor, Jeff embodies the main character, Dwight, the sad sack who still lives with his mother and is stuck in his 80’s metal band glory. The story of “Abandon” is of this guy who gets picked up by a woman named Vivian, who happens to be a married woman with kids and a happy suburban life. Dwight is obsessively calling Vivian thinking that their one night they spent together meant more than it did. The song is a melodic 80’s metal song and captures the aesthetic of that era.
He takes not only the social culture of men, who are sometimes married and have families, picking up women, who are portrayed as thinking the one night meant more than it did, but also the toxic masculinity of metal bands who sing ballads that label women as crazy. He creates this character who’s creepy and obsessive and sings about wanting more than one night.
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