It’s 5:30 on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, and Paul Beck is just waking up. Is it because he’s mis-set his alarm clock and believes it’s 5:30 in the morning? Is it because he’s too depressed about world affairs to get out of bed any earlier? Is it because he’s a lazy bum? No. It is because he and his partner Jason Archer spent the previous evening being feted by friends at Steve Brudniak’s house, where much liquor was consumed and a tree nearly caught on fire. Beck and Archer, video artists and Waking Life animators, are the proud owners of a pair of matching Latin Grammy’s for their video for Mexican hip-hop rockers Molotov, hence the fete, the fire, the hangover, and the early-evening, hair-of-the-dog beer run to HEB, from whose pay phone Beck is calling to fill us in on the particulars of last week’s Great Miami Grammy Snatch.
“It was a trip,” Beck says. “The Latin Grammys are so diverse, they go from mariachi-style stuff to Brazilian — I don’t know — hyper-tango-pop. Just seeing that was … bizarre.”
In between Archer’s late-night flesh bar excursions and a performance by new Latin sensation Juanes (for whom the duo have recently completed a video), the pair managed to get dissed by the Spanish-speaking media contingent (“I think they thought I was some drunk gringo trying to horn in on Juanes’ scene,” laments Beck), scope the Black Eyed Peas performing in front of a Beck/Archer video wall, and generally have altogether too much fun.
And as for the Grammy itself?
“They’re heavy suckers,” says Beck. “You could use it as a weapon.”
This article appears in September 12 • 2003.