The
music video, directed by
Julian Doyle, was conceived by
Terry Gilliam and Kate Bush as a short film. The video features
Canadian actor
Donald Sutherland playing the role of Wilhelm Reich, and Bush in the role of his young son, Peter. The video shows the two on the top of a hill trying to make the cloudbuster work. Reich leaves Peter on the machine and returns to his lab. In flashback, he remembers several times he and Peter enjoyed together as Reich worked on various scientific projects, until he is interrupted by government officials who arrest him and ransack the lab. Peter senses his father's danger and tries to reach him, but is forced to watch helplessly as his father is driven away. Peter finally runs back to the cloudbuster and activates it successfully, to the delight of his father who sees it starting to rain. Filming took place at the
Vale of White Horse in
Oxfordshire,
England. From the eminence on which the machine is positioned can be glimpsed the bald chalk top of
Dragon Hill, immediately below the
Uffington White Horse, a prehistoric hill carving which can be seen briefly in a couple of the shots. Bush found out in which hotel Sutherland was staying from actress
Julie Christie's hairdresser and went to his room to personally ask him to participate in the project. In the UK, the music video was shown at some cinemas as an accompaniment to the main feature. Due to difficulties on obtaining a
work visa for Sutherland at short notice, the actor offered to work on the video for free. Although the events depicted in the story took place in
Maine, the newspaper clipping in the music video reads
The Oregon Times, likely a reference to Reich's home and laboratory "
Orgonon". The Cloudbusting machine in the video was designed and constructed by people who worked on the
Xenomorph and bears only a superficial resemblance to the real cloudbusters, which were smaller and with multiple narrow, straight tubes and pipes, and were operated while standing on the ground. In a reference to the source material of the song, Bush pulls a copy of Peter Reich's
A Book of Dreams from Sutherland's coat. ==Track listing==