The music video for "If I Could Turn Back Time", directed by American television director Marty Callner, takes place on board the battleship USS Missouri. It depicts Cher and her band performing a concert for a couple hundred of the ship's enthusiastic crew in white ceremonial dress uniform. The video was filmed in Los Angeles in the middle of the night around Friday June 30, 1989, while the ship was stationed at the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard at Pier D. In the video, the band plays under the main guns on the foredeck, and the ship is rigged with spotlights, light racks and strobes. Cher's son, Elijah Blue Allman, 12 at the time, appears as one of the band's guitarists wearing dark glasses and a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt.
The Department of the Navy had granted permission for the music video shoot because of its potential for boosting Navy recruitment; at the time (1989) the Navy did not have a budget for TV ads. The Navy initially selected the battleship USS New Jersey for the video. However, New Jersey was out to sea when Callner needed to do an initial site survey, so he toured her sister ship, Missouri, instead. During Callner's visit, Missouri's public affairs officer, Lieutenant Mark Walker, convinced him to change the filming location to Missouri.
A 12-time Emmy nominee, he worked with acts including Cher, Garth Brooks, Aerosmith, Paul Reubens, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Britney S
Remembering Marty Callner 1947-2025
Sad news that director Marty Callner has died at 78. He directed a number of iconic music videos and countless concert and comedy TV specials.
Callner and Cook
I was lucky enough to work with him on two specials both of which aired on HBO: Dane Cook: Vicious Circle (filmed at TD Garden in Boston in 2006) and Justin Timberlake: FutureSex/LoveShow (filmed at Madison Square Garden in NYC in 2007). I was a lowly production assistant on both. I did not work closely with Mr. Callner, but it was quite a thrill to watch him working in the filming of live events, which can be unpredictable to say the least. I thought it was so cool to have my name in the credits of two Callner productions!
After starting in local news in Ohio, he made his way to directing Boston Celtics games and that background in live events got him in at the ground floor of the early days of HBO and over the last 50 years, he directed numerous comedy specials (too many to list all) for the likes of Robert Klein (considered to be the very first stand-up special), George Carlin, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell and Pee-Wee Herman's specials too! For concert specials he did ones for Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, The Rolling Stones, and more.
From his live music experience he was one of the biggest music video directors of the 80s and 90s, the Golden Age of Music Video if you will! Countless music videos (too many to list) but ones for Laura Branigan, Twisted Sister (he did "We're Not Gonna Take It" and more), Pat Benatar, Heart, The Scorpions, Kiss, Whitesnake (he directed the famous Tawney Kitaen-starring "Here I Go Again"), Poison, Ratt, The Cult, Cher (he directed the too-hot-to-play-before-9PM "If I Could Turn Back Time"), Alice Cooper, ZZ Top, Bon Jovi, and more! Wow - MTV from 1984-1994 would have looked very different without him.
Callner directing Steven Tyler
But, for me, it was his longtime collaboration with Aerosmith that was one of the great director / musician collaborations of all-time. He became friends with the band early in his career and he directed their videos for "Dream On", "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", "Angel", "Rag Doll", "Love in an Elevator", "The Other Side", their "Dream On" segment of the MTV 10th Anniversary Special, "Sweet Emotion", "Livin' on the Edge", "Cryin'", "Amazing", "Crazy", and "Blind Man"! Wow - that is quite a collection and he brought their music to a whole new audience. He was also a film consultant for the Aerosmith segment in Wayne's World 2!
The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.
The music video was directed by Marty Callner with an emphasis on slapstick comedy. The video begins with a disobedient son playing Twisted Sister songs in his bedroom while the rest of the family is eating dinner. The father, "Douglas C." (played by Mark Metcalf as a character similar to his Douglas C. Niedermeyer from the 1978 film Animal House), goes to the boy's room and scolds him for being interested only in his guitar and Twisted Sister. At the end of the speech, he screams "What do you want to do with your life?", to which the son replies "I Wanna Rock!" He strums his guitar and the sound blasts the father out of a nearby window. The boy transforms into Dee Snider, and the music begins.
Snider sings to the other children, who turn into the rest of the band, and they wreak havoc on the family. The father gets the worst of the band's mischief, as he repeatedly tries and fails to get back at the band members, getting knocked out of more windows and even a wall. Still, even after a series of the father’s failed retaliations, his wife happens by to awkwardly recover him, such as throwing a bucket of water on him, dropping a first aid kit on him, & even spraying him with a hose.
"If I Could Turn Back Time" - Back to the Battleship in Honolulu
“If I Could Turn Back Time” – Back to the Battleship in Honolulu
The music video, directed by Marty Callner, takes place on board the battleship USS Missouri. It depicts Cher and her band performing a concert for the ship’s crew. The video was filmed in Los Angeles on Friday night, June 30, 1989, while the ship was stationed at the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard at Pier D. In the video, the band plays on the foredeck, and the ship is rigged with spotlights,…
