R.E.M. 'Everybody Hurts' — I-10 Overpass, San Antonio

In February 1993, director Jake Scott closed a section of Interstate 10 near its interchange with I-35 in downtown San Antonio, Texas, to film the music video for R.E.M.'s 'Everybody Hurts'. The video depicts hundreds of people abandoning their cars in a stationary traffic jam and walking away across the highway overpass — an image of collective despair and release that became one of the most recognisable visual moments in 1990s alternative rock. The Texas Department of Transportation and San Antonio City Council approved a partial road closure, with traffic continuing on the upper deck of the double-decker freeway while the lower level was converted into a set filled with stationary cars and hundreds of extras.

The location was chosen specifically because of the double-decker structure of the I-10 through downtown San Antonio — a relatively unusual configuration that allowed the production to fill the lower roadway while keeping the city functioning around it. The shoot generated considerable local attention and has remained a point of civic pride: local media in San Antonio have periodically revisited the story, and the production is remembered as one of the more logistically complex music video shoots of its era. The video was made during sessions for Automatic for the People, R.E.M.'s most commercially successful album.

'Everybody Hurts' won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, including Breakthrough Video, Best Direction, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography. The song has since been used in contexts ranging from disaster fundraising campaigns to anti-suicide initiatives. The I-10/I-35 interchange carries no marker commemorating the shoot, though locals familiar with the video can still recognise the distinctive overpass structure in the footage — a piece of San Antonio's urban infrastructure that became, briefly, one of the most emotionally resonant images in rock music.