I could listen to this song all day! I watched that movie for a week!

November 27, 2013 7:17 AM

24 hours of Happy is a full day of people dancing to Pharrell Williams' 4 minute song Happy, with a clock interface overlaid the video to allow you to jump around throughout the day. If you don't have the patience/ endurance/ care to watch a full day of lip-synching dancers, Molly Beauchemin watched it all, in two hour blocks, on mute, for you (and Pitchfork) and made note of the 5 best things. But if you are into that sort of endurance test, here's the Wikipedia list of films with the longest run times, including a total of 75 films that run over 5 hours. If you're looking for something a little shorter, an AMC blogger listed the top 50 longest (American) movies of all time, but missed The Ten Commandments (1956).
posted by filthy light thief (23 comments total)

Previously: Out 1 finally comes out
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM on November 27, 2013

The blogger also missed Gettysburg, which Wikipedia lists as 254 minutes, longer than any other film on the list. That was a great film. I remember seeing it in the theater and it actually had an intermission.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 7:51 AM on November 27, 2013

I love that those making music videos are doing stuff like this to the medium (and the incredibly cool Bob Dylan on

Seeing that AMC list, I realize that I must have an internal Godfather/Giant rule to long movies -- around 200 minutes is my limit and more than that, I need a real break.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:12 AM on November 27, 2013

MCMikeNamara, you're missing some words in your first sentence.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:15 AM on November 27, 2013

Ah thanks. Multitasking! Let's try that again:

I love that those making music videos are doing stuff like this (and the incredibly cool interactive Bob Dylan video recently) to the medium now that they aren't really limited to TV rules (since TV doesn't really show videos).
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:29 AM on November 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

The Pharrell video is cool but every time I see him do one of the segments all I see is Bill Cosby dancing in the opening of The Cosby Show.
posted by thorny at 9:03 AM on November 27, 2013

There was an awful lot of Despicable Me minions in that original video. Is there a full list of cameos?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 9:19 AM on November 27, 2013

Ah -- now I see Happy is on the soundtrack. Explains that (and Steve Carrell).
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 9:20 AM on November 27, 2013

BUT WHERE (WHEN) IS STEVE MARTIN?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 9:21 AM on November 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

This article, with six embedded YT videos of the day, list cameos including Odd Future (Tyler, the Creator, and Earl Sweatshirt), Magic Johnson, Steve Carell and Jimmy Kimmel. Other sites add Kelly Osbourne and Steve Martin, though this more extensive list of cameos (including i am OTHER Artists Buddy & Leah LaBelle, Steve Carell, Miranda Cosgrove, members of Odd Future Tyler, The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt & Jasper, Cyrcle, Gavin DeGraw, Urijah Faber & Michaella Tastad, Luisa Fernanda Espinosa, Francesco, Jamie Foxx and his daughters, Ryan Heffington, Whit Hertford, Magic Johnson, JoJo, Jimmy Kimmel, Alonso Mateo, Sergio Mendes, Ana Ortiz, Kelly Osbourne, Issa Rae, Fatima Robinson, Golden Sisters, Bevy Smith and Rob Zabrecky) doesn't include Steve Martin, so it could be a fake fact that has gone pseudo-viral with the re-telling of this story.

Fast Company has an article on the making of the video.

And I just now read (and realized) that the dedicated 24 Hours of Happy website sets the clip at a time corresponding to the local time of the viewer.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:41 AM on November 27, 2013

I'm a little bummed that out of the 5 "best things" in the Pitchfork article, 4 of them feature famous people. I haven't seen the whole thing (obviously; I'm not insane, nor am I being paid to do so, which is hopefully the case for the Pitchfork author) but there are a LOT of really fun little moments with non-famous people - like what about the woman at 7:42PM? She can dance!
posted by k8lin at 12:12 PM on November 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

(For a little bonus if you're checking the woman at 7:42 - start a few minutes earlier to watch someone dancing on stilts.)
posted by k8lin at 12:13 PM on November 27, 2013

You can link to a specific dancer by adding the time to the url:
http://24hoursofhappy.com/10h42AM

Between 10:42 and 10:44 theres a man in the background with a cat on his head!
posted by Lanark at 12:25 PM on November 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

I love that those making music videos are doing stuff like this (and the incredibly cool interactive Bob Dylan video recently)

There's two kinds of brilliance, for me -- there's kind of regular brilliant, where people do things that are complex and fascinating and that haven't been done before, but there's also like an extra brilliant, where you think all the above things and also "My God, why hasn't anyone done this before?"

The technology for this isn't bleeding-edge 2013 stuff... this could have been done for at least a few years now, but in the case of both the Dylan video and this project, people thought of it and actually did it.

I can't believe I've had the same song on repeat for about 30 minutes now and I haven't gone nuts, but I haven't.

This makes me... happy. Well done, Pharrell Williams et al.
posted by Shepherd at 1:44 PM on November 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

The AMC blogger also missed Magnolia - 188 minutes.
posted by crossoverman at 5:44 PM on November 27, 2013

You can link to a specific dancer

That girl in the checkered pants is making me feel funny in the pants area (right at sunset). This is great.
posted by jimmythefish at 6:11 PM on November 27, 2013

This reminds me why I love NERD so much. I always feel like pharrell felt that NERD wasn't as successful as it deserved to be - maybe that's just me projecting. But I can't believe I've been listening to this song for 45 minutes while cooking - even caught myself dancing a few times!
posted by ianhattwick at 8:51 PM on November 27, 2013

So... do black people not know who Steve Carell is? Is he pretty much a white people thing?

Edit: Oh wait, everybody's in on it! There all faking! That's no fun!
posted by Max Udargo at 9:38 PM on November 27, 2013

I was kind of wishing yesterday that I could have been part of this but I now know that the guy at 7:12 has got my back. Bald slightly overweight awkward white guys who are way too into it represent.
posted by Shepherd at 4:17 AM on November 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've been looking desperately for something to get Kathleen Edwards' Denim King out of my head.

Looks like we have a winner!
posted by sutt at 9:13 AM on November 28, 2013

there's also like an extra brilliant, where you think all the above things and also "My God, why hasn't anyone done this before?"

Worth a nod to UNIQLOCK, which has a different approach -- snippets every ten seconds, so more a mosaic than a tapestry -- but taps into similar ideas.
posted by holgate at 9:33 AM on November 29, 2013

The neat thing about this is that it pretty much sums up the sensation of my combination of happy feet, newly magical songs, and doglike hyperfocus, in which I find a song that lights up all the facets of the celestial metaphysical disco ball that's always hanging over my head and I just put it on my little music player on endless repeat and shimmy, shake, and shuffle my way through the day until the quiet hour comes again.

I wish for the world where everyone could find that.
posted by sonascope at 6:46 AM on December 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Pharrell Is The Future Of Music, Again
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:04 PM on December 5, 2013