Jimmy Eat World The MiddleWatch at the source

Restored to 4K from the original film reels.

Jim Adkins wrote "The Middle" for a stranger. Back in the 90s, a fan wrote to the band's AOL account saying the punk kids at her school didn't think she was punk enough, which struck Adkins as the opposite of everything punk was supposed to be. His answer became a message to anyone chasing acceptance from people who withhold it: you don't need them. It just takes some time.

Director Paul Fedor turned that letter into a party. His pitch flipped the classic naked-at-school nightmare: what if everyone else was undressed, and your clothes made you the outsider? So a kid (Josh Keleher) walks fully dressed into a house packed with people in their underwear, looking for a single person like him, while the band plays in the middle of it, dressed like they always dressed.

Twenty-five years on, the original film reels came out of the vault, unassembled. Every reel was scanned at 4K, every shot in the video located across the raw footage, and the edit rebuilt shot by shot to match the original cut, then regraded from the full range of the film itself. A video about finally being seen, finally seen the way it was shot.

In association with the UMG Film Archives

From the album Bleed American (2001)