Director Bill Dear said they were doing "music videos before people even knew what they were... we approached them as mini-movies.... We always tried to tell a story and we looked for a lighter interpretation.
"[1] Throughout Elephant Parts, Nesmith makes fun of his own works, with segments including a parody of his song "Joanne" called "Rodan", and comic promos for his albums Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma and Live at the Palais.
[6] It was later released on LaserDisc and CED and was the third best-selling video laser disk in 1982, behind Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
[7] When Elephant Parts was first released on LaserDisc in 1981, Nesmith recorded an esoteric commentary track which did not describe the content of the video.
Later, Nesmith recorded a new commentary track which does describe the content, included as part of a DVD version released in 2003.