he appears on camera bathed in purple light with blue fluorescent stars as a backdrop, surrounded by clouds. As the camera pans closer, an image of the skyline of Van Sant's home city, Portland, is superimposed from his chin downwards. Flea and Chad Smith are placed into the image while playing. Van Sant made superimposing the theme of the video; the idea came from a project he worked on with novelist William S. Burroughs. The scenes in the studio are coupled with scenes of Kiedis walking the streets of L.A., wearing a white T-shirt with the words "To Hell And Back"; as he walks, the camera focuses on various people. At various points, Kiedis stands before the Belmont Tunnel before its closure, which he felt was vital; he felt that the studio portion alone would not convey enough emotion: "The first time we shot [the video] it was all in a studio and that didn't seem to capture everything we needed to capture. It needed more; it needed to be combined with an outdoor, streets-of-Los-Angeles thing." Towards the end, Kiedis runs down the Los Angeles River channel in slow motion; the background is a nuclear explosion (the "Baker" shot of Operation Crossroads). The video ends with various superimposed images of the band, followed by Frusciante playing alone on a pedestal—this time with an inverted shot of the ocean as the sky. MTV placed the "Under the Bridge" video on heavy rotation. At the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, the Red Hot Chili Peppers led the nominations, which included the categories of "Best Video", "Best Group", and "Best Direction". "Under the Bridge" won the group "Breakthrough Video" and "Viewers Choice Best Video"; the band's video for "Give It Away" won "Best Art Direction". Chicago Tribune readers voted it the 8th best video of the year. Live performances "Under the Bridge" has been performed over 640 times since 1991, making it the Chili Peppers' second-most performed song behind "Give it Away". Unlike several of the Chili Peppers' other songs, "Under the Bridge" is not interpreted in a different manner than what is on the record—aside from being played acoustically, the track is performed the same as it appears on Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Kiedis is, however, notorious for being incapable of achieving several high notes in live performances; the vocalist has noted that he sometimes forgets or rearranges song lyrics in the