Cyndi Lauper Music Video Director Was 78

Edd Griles, who directed Cyndi Lauper within the bouncy music video for “Women Simply Wish to Have Enjoyable,” the singer’s breakthrough hit and a wildly common tune within the early days of MTV, has died. He was 78.

Griles died Tuesday on the Actors Fund House in Englewood, New Jersey, after an extended battle with Alzheimer’s, his daughter, Allyson Monson, informed The Hollywood Reporter.

The New York native additionally directed music movies for Huey Lewis and the Information (“The Coronary heart of Rock & Roll,” “If This Is It,” “Caught with You”); Eddie Murphy (“Occasion All of the Time”); Lee Greenwood (“God Bless the USA”); Peter Wolf (“Come as You Are”); Sheena Easton (“Jimmy Mack”); Deep Purple and Rainbow; and others.

He additionally produced the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards in 1984; the primary ESPY Awards in 1993; and from 1996-99, the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.

Griles started directing music movies in 1979, and he did one for a band referred to as Blue Angel, which included Lauper. When that group break up, he and the Brooklyn-born singer teamed for “Women Simply Wish to Have Enjoyable” to advertise Lauper’s first main single as a solo artist and the lead single from her debut studio album, 1983’s She’s So Uncommon.

The video for what turned a feminist anthem was shot on the Decrease East Aspect of Manhattan in the summertime of 1983 and premiered on MTV in December 1983. Lauper’s mom, Catrine, was her mother within the video, whereas the flamboyant professional wrestler Captain Lou Albano portrayed her dad.

(Griles and producer Ken Walz had developed a relationship with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation after they tried to make a film set on the earth of professional wrestling.)

“Women Simply Wish to Have Enjoyable,” which made it to No. 2 on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart in March 1984, received the first-ever VMA for greatest feminine video, and it handed 1 billion views on YouTube in January 2022.

Griles additionally directed music movies for Lauper’s “Time After Time” — he was nominated as director of the yr on the VMAs for that — “She Bop” and “Gap in My Coronary heart.”

Born on Nov. 18, 1945, Edward Mori Griles graduated from Flushing Excessive Faculty in Queens and the Faculty of Visible Arts in Manhattan. He began out in promoting in 1965 as an artwork director at DDB Worldwide, then joined the Nationwide Hockey League in 1972 as editor and inventive director of Purpose Journal and government producer of NHL Movies.

Griles’ directing and producing résumé was not restricted to music movies.

For Shelley Duvall‘s Tall Tales & Legends in 1985, he directed the episode “The Legend of Sleepy Hole,” which starred Ed Begley Jr., Charles Durning and Beverly D’Angelo, and he was a producer on a 1988 CBS adaptation of Herman Wouk‘s The Caine Mutiny Court docket-Martial that was directed by Robert Altman.

He additionally created and produced awards reveals for cars and bikes.

Along with his daughter, survivors embody his spouse, Danielle; his son-in-law, David; and his grandchildren, Max and Carly.