Liz Seymour and Misha Zubarev Star In: Taylor The Latte Boy Music Video

The new CD packaging! Taylor The Latte Boy Music Video for Liz Seymour - That Thing Called Love and The Story Behind Taylor The Latte Boy Music Video Did She Dream The Whole Thing?

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The character, "Liz," has been going to the coffee shop for months, and she dreams about meeting Taylor, the cute but clumsy guy behind the counter.

She's shy but has a vivid imagination.

He's shy and preoccupied with music playing in his brain.

So… what is real and what did she dreamed up? You decide as you watch the video!

Story and Character Analysis

Since the song gives us nothing about Liz or Taylor (and since my mind worked OVERTIME on this video for WEEKS), I want to share my ideas about who these two people are and how the video builds from the beginning through the end. We had NO rehearsal time, so each actor had to be mentally prepared with these thoughts in mind and be ready to take direction as we “play” and video. It was a blast!

Taylor:

He’s a sweet guy, but just short of not-bright. He’s a bit dorky, does “ok” preparing lattes, isn’t stupid or rude or angry, but he has almost no dreams or aspirations. He finished high school about 10 years ago and still plays in a small band with some of his high school buddies who work at the local furniture-fabricating factory.

And when it comes time for his breaks at work, he’s a loner who prefers reading comic books or listening to music (on a bench in the town park across the street) versus socializing with other employees or the music crowd that frequents the coffee shop. His musical tastes lean more to rock and metal, not the folk or folk rock of those at the shop.

He really doesn’t notice Liz. It’s not that he wouldn’t be interested in her and he certainly isn’t gay, but he just doesn’t notice. His mind is active yet he lives internally, and without verve.

His rumpled clothes at work are symbolic of much of his life – he’s not well-pressed and really doesn’t even notice. He’s CLEAN… but not careful and isn’t a sharp dresser.

As long as he collects his $6.27 an hour from the coffee shop (plus the occasional tip left by the stout wife of the local stationery store owner), he’s happy.

When the lyric says he “smiles and says, ‘How are you?’” he doesn’t – he just nods a socially-uncomfortable nod. His only real interaction with Liz is the “And he softly answered, ‘Hey’” when he actually mouths the word.

OH, Sure… he DOES pay for her latte one time, telling her to keep the money, but that’s because it’s his birthday. No one called him or gave him a gift, so he decides to give someone a free latte (which HE actually pays for) as if he’s giving that latte to himself to celebrate – and Liz just happens to be the next person in line when he does that.

He’s a bit clumsy, so sometimes he pours too much milk into a cup and it overflows (needing to be wiped up). And he doesn’t always focus on his work since his mind is busy with music, so at times he makes a triple instead of a double.

His only social activity is with his band called "The Flat Tones." The six guys in the band practice twice a week in the remade garage of one of the single members (who has no family) whose house is a mess. Two of the guys are married with small children, but the other three are pretty much like Taylor – just eeking out a living without a care in the world. Taylor shares a small apartment with his 82-year old mother. His father has been dead for 20 years.

The band almost NEVER plays anywhere (and they don’t care – they just enjoy making the sound they call music), but once every six months the local bar owner takes pity on them and lets them play in his basement for no pay… on a Wednesday night when almost no one is there. The factory lets out early that day (so the boss can go play golf) so most of the workers are home before the bar gets going. And it’s not in the nicest part of town, so not too many people want to go there anyway – it’s just the local watering hole for the factory workers who need a brew before heading home to the routine they call life.

HOWEVER… When Liz thinks about Taylor, he gets better and more lively with each sequence. She can’t dream up enough good looking clothing for him, but in her mind he’s nearly a superstar. Cute, sexy, just short of Elvis when he plays his guitar. We need to see this possibility hiding beneath the rumpled clothes when he’s in the shop. And when we see him playing guitar (both in the shop and “in the basement of a bar”), he plays it the way LIZ imagines he plays (Chuck Berry or Elvis), not the way he actually plays.

Liz:

She’s a perky, self-absorbed, polite, sweet person who remains very child-like (not childish, but child-like). She loves bright colors, romantic movies, drawing pictures, writing stories, and singing to her CD player.

She imagines this whole, sweet tale. She’s convinced herself that Taylor loves her, and the love she imagines is the comic-book-color love of “happily-ever-after” tales she’s read over and over again.

Liz is 23 and still takes one evening class a semester at the community college 30 miles from home. She borrows her family car to get to class. She’s determined to make herself into something in this small town with a small shopping district and the factory where her dad and brother work. (Her dad is a foreman and her brother, who recently turned 18, just started so he’s at the bottom of the rung sweeping floors, but hopes to be a foreman when he puts in his 20 years of hard work).

Many of her friends were in the high school Contemporary Choir with Liz. She loves singing, though she usually was second when it came to auditioning for solos. She did sing one soprano solo that she’ll always remember, and did it before a packed auditorium (227 people) 7 years ago: Somewhere My Love, which Frank Sinatra recorded in 1966. She sang it with full energy and sounded really good.

She’s always wanted to be in a musical production at the local theater, but doesn’t have the nerve to audition… she just dreams about it.

Liz works at the local stationery store and loves the art supplies most. She imagines herself coming alive in the drawings she creates and the stories she writes. Her Walter Mitty outlook on life lets her think up MANY intricate stories, and she’s always the successful, happy, married one when the story ends. And people coming into the store really like her cheery outlook on life – a smile on her face and a song in her heart always.

One of Liz’s favorite old TV shows is Leave It To Beaver, and she can see herself as June Clever, the perfect mom.

The best thing she can think of is owning that little, brick and pale green, 2-bedroom house at the end of the town and moving out from her parents’ home. The well-kept garden is accented by the low, white picket fence along the sidewalk and the flower boxes under the two windows on the ground floor of the front of the house always have some pretty flowers in them – daisies, she thinks they are.

She’s sure she’ll find some great guy who works at the factory, get married with her closest 23 friends from high school in attendance (plus some relatives her mother insists she invite who will travel from the hills of Tennessee for the wedding), move in, have two children, and live happily ever after. (She’ll skip the labor pains and just have the well-mannered little darlings. And once married, she won’t go back to the stationery store – she’ll stay at home the way her mother does – just like June Clever.)

Her imagination is vivid, and when she dreams, she’s really alive. She visits the coffee shop every week day at 8:11 AM (soon after the bus drops her off in town). By then she’s had a light breakfast of toast, grape jelly, and orange juice at her kitchen table (which her dad insists he, himself, made at the factory), and sits thinking, drawing, dreaming until 8:57, at which time she gets up, packs up the things she’s neatly placed on the table, and walks two stores over to her job. She doesn’t leave the store until 5:00, having packed her own lunch.

She does take two breaks in addition to lunch, and she uses them to read, draw, and dream about singing and having a family.

Somehow, she’s convinced herself that Taylor loves her – as much as she dreams about HIM, she’s convinced he’s thinking about HER. She’s given up the dream of marrying the local factory worker opting to dream about Taylor, his highly successful music career (in her mind), and moving into that little house at the end of town.

As this story grows, so does Liz’s imagination. The costumes become more vivid, the action intensifies, and right up until the end, you’re rooting that she is right!

But alas, the camera pulls back to see her still sitting at the table – for the first time in her life, she missed a whole day of work caught in a reverie. She has been lost in her fantasy of hope, excitement, and romantic bliss, and Taylor still doesn’t notice her. The photo she's been clutching is one of her that her mother gave her and not the imagined photo of Taylor.

The story is charming, sweet, engaging, endearing, but in the end, it only happened in her mind.