Note: The writer of this review watched Stardust on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
In the early part of his career, David Bowie was at different times a novelty singer, a mod, and a fey, art-schooled folkie. When he finally found himself, it was not by rejecting the phoniness of the record industry—as many stars would claim to do throughout the history of rock. Instead, he simply began writing his own roles: androgynous messiah, drug-addled rock voluptuary, purveyor of imitation soul. Claiming to be bisexual or fascist (despite negligible proof of the former and a lifetime of evidence against the latter) was part of the act. More than anyone before or since, he turned every part of the music business, from manufactured personae to overblown concert tours, into art, all while producing unbelievably catchy songs with mysterious, collage-like lyrics and a palette that mutated rapidly from album to album. During his rise to international stardom, Bowie seemed to be living in a fantasy, but then so were most of the people who bought rock albums, and in that sense he was more emotionally relatable than any guitar god.
No one except Bowie (who was, among other things, a gifted impressionist and actor) could ever play all of these parts. Mastering just one early iteration seems to be beyond the capabilities of everyone involved in Stardust, a junky biographical drama that doesn’t feature any music by Bowie or his contemporaries and stars a guy who doesn’t look or sound anything like the man. The same was also true of Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes’s interpretation of the Ziggy Stardust-era rock cosmos and the rise and fall of gender-bending glam. But that film succeeded in conveying what made its stand-ins into idols. As played by actor-musician Johnny Flynn, the Halloween-costume Bowie we meet in Stardust is a miserable, charmless wannabe. Which is to say that the film fails where a single photo of this most chameleonic of music legends would succeed: It makes Bowie boring.
Despite a tongue-in-cheek opening that pays homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey and a disclaimer that warns that the film is “(mostly) fiction,” Stardust is a largely straightforward retelling of the events of Bowie’s first visit to the United States in 1971. This trip is generally considered to be a pivotal moment in his creative development. It was at this time that Bowie first encountered the music of Iggy Pop And The Stooges, and was introduced to such musical outsiders as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Moondog. Among the many unimaginative liberties and shortcuts taken by the film’s director, Gabriel Range, is the decision to depict this as an origin story for The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars—rather than the LP that it actually produced, Hunky Dory, an art-pop album of occult themes and New York impressions that was written and recorded mere months after the trip.
Though Bowie had many early musical heroes, the makers of Stardust seem to have only been able to secure the rights to Anthony Newley. In the storied tradition of art, everything else has been left to the viewer’s imagination. Even the strange new world of America is fuzzy; most of the film (which was shot in Canada) consists of sparse hotels and roadsides, through which the future Thin White Duke is accompanied by his optimistic publicist, Ron Oberman (Marc Maron). It should be noted that all of the real-life characters that appear in Stardust were in their mid-to-late 20s at the time, and that the actors playing them (Flynn included) are all 15 to 30 years too old for the roles. (Sometimes more, as in the case of Bowie’s manager, Tony Defries, who was 28 at the time but is played by the 65-year-old Julian Richings.)
Stardust is awash in these kinds of off qualities. Unable to use any songs from Bowie’s catalog, Range finds a potentially intriguing alternative in having the star perform covers, all of which the real Bowie either recorded or performed live. But Flynn’s limp, warbly interpretations—most of which seem to be sung out of his range—do not suggest a world-historical talent. In fact, it’s easy to understand why this Bowie isn’t a star; his rendition of Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam,” a song beloved by Bowie and by another one of his inspirations, Scott Walker, may qualify as a crime. Whether it’s due to a failure of demystification or direction, no one here seems to be having fun; the energy levels are low, the characterizations mostly limited to making sure everyone’s wigs are on the right way. It likely says something that the only variety comes from occasional despotic appearances by the star’s first wife, Angie Bowie (Jena Malone, given the unenviable task of playing someone who speaks with an uneven, fake-sounding accent in real life).
Range and his co-writer, Christopher Bell, attempt to give the movie a dramatic core by emphasizing Bowie’s relationship with his half-brother, Terry Burns (Derek Moran), who began to develop symptoms of schizophrenia around the time his younger sibling started to pursue a musical career. There is debate among biographers and Bowie gurus about the role that references to Terry’s mental illness played in the development of his songwriting. However, reducing a multifaceted artist’s body of work to a single cause has the opposite of illuminating the subject. Lacking the real-life Bowie’s music, artistry, or charisma, Stardust’s lackluster version is simply a mediocre jerk who needs roleplaying therapy to deal with his demons.
What his demons might be is presumably part of the mystique. If there’s any moment in the film that sums up its thin, unenthused depiction of its culture-changing central character, it’s the flash-forward finale. “Ladies and gentlemen, in their first performance on planet Earth, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars!” declares an announcer. The musicians take the stage in cheap costumes and launch into a bar-band performance of the Yardbirds’ version of “I Wish You Would.”
161 Comments
I never got how people do this, would want to make a biopic of a musician without permission to use their songs. It’s like, dude:What are you even doing?
It’s not necessarily a problem in principle; someone might want to make a biopic of a musician and depict them negatively, and their family/estate refuses to license the music, and the movie isn’t even about the music per se so it doesn’t really even matter.Unless one thinks that the point of a musical biopic is to watch an actor lipsyncing the musician’s famous hits, I guess.
Exactly, being free from that kind of control should be good. Everyone knows what the music sounds like anyway.
For documentation, sure, you don’t need the music. But a movie, man, for entertainment, come on. Need that music. Elton John: frickin Rocketman. Queen: shit, we all got our favorites. Me? It’s “don’t stop me now.” Notorious BIG, it’s “Juicy.”Gotta have that music.
Yeah it’s sort of a Catch-22; if you’re going to see a movie about a rock star you want to hear their music but in order to get the music rights your movie has to be so hagiographic that it sort of becomes pointless.Bohemian Rhapsody is a great example; no one would give that movie a second thought if it didn’t have the music but in order to get the music they had to portray the surviving members as faultless geniuses who kept effortlessly reinventing the rock genre and everything negative gets pinned on Mercury who’s not alive to give input.
You can always just go the Amadeus route: wait 200 years and the music’s all out of copyright.
[And fwiw, Immortal Beloved, while by no means a great film like Amadeus, is rather overlooked, and features a really compelling and accurate performance by Gary Oldman.]
Assuming that Disney goes bust at some point in the next 200 years, that is. I suppose more likely Disney will have its own Imperial Guard who charge you every time the neurometer catches you mentally humming a tune they own…
Rocketman was kind of a best-case. They had the music because they had the guy himself on board, and they could go warts-and-all because the guy himself was standing over their shoulder yelling “MORE WARTS”
Rocketman was such great fun.
Yes that’s one huge benefit to making a biopic while the musician is still alive, cause for the most part they would want to be involved in order to ensure they are portrayed in a certain light, and in that case they bring their songs with them. I still haven’t seen the Elton biopic, but if his silly cameos in “Kingsmen” and Snickers commercials have taught me anything is that he’s game.
“Ray” was another good example. Ray Charles approved the script before he died, and it doesn’t exactly paint him as a saint. I wasn’t crazy about the film itself, but props to Charles for not insisting on a hagiography.
More warts? Nah. More rhinestones? Yeah.
There’s also the Brian Wilson bipoic Love & Mercy.
Richard Grieco IS Brian Wilson in Greasy Summer.
CROSSOVER!
I love John’s quote about that movie, that it’s not PG because he hasn’t lived a PG life. His whole attitude is just “so what??”
I think there are some musicians you could do an interesting non-musical biopic – just looking at some aspect of their lives away from the stage. Maybe their childhood, or maybe their domestic life. You could fill the soundtrack with the music that the musician themselves listened to – treating them as a consumer rather than producer, showing the influences shaping their lives. But there are probably only a few subjects who are interesting enough to merit that. And even then, you’d probably want the rights to at least one of their songs, to play at the end…In any case, if your film is in any way about their musical career, then you need to have some of their musical career in it…
Honestly I kind of wish they could use a compulsory license. How many good music biopics have we missed out on because the subjects are self-obsessed prisses? How good could Bohemian Rhapsody have been if the living members of Queen hadn’t stuck their stupid toilet-person oars in?
Close, innit? Huh? Why ain’t them dicks dying, ya know? And then we gotta deal with copyright bullshit. Fuckin aye.
After watching that movie I was definitely impressed that Queen seemed comprised of the absolute nicest group of musicians I’ve ever seen.
I applaud awareness of music licensing, where hope goes to die. Speaking from direct experience.
It’s a deeply flawed movie in a lot of ways (the premise that glam fans would reject an artist who faked their death
is baffling, that’s like the total opposite of what would have happened
if Bowie had done the same) but Velvet Goldmine was probably the best Bowie biopic we’re going to get and it didn’t use anything even remotely resembling his music.
Exactly (though I personally loved the Hell out of that soundtrack as a teen…)
It’s a fantastic soundtrack!
Still, Bowie’s version of “Wish You Would” is pretty good.
Remember the movie Backbeat, about the early years of The Beatles that didn’t have any of their songs? Neither does anyone else, because it didn’t have any of their songs. It also focused on Stu Sudcliff, who was kind of interesting, but once again – it did not have any Beatles songs but was about the Beatles.
There’s a movie called Lennon Naked starring Christopher Eccleston as John Lennon (who is frequently naked throughout the movie). It’s an amazing thing to watch because at no point do you believe that Eccleston is under forty. The other Beatles are all in their early to mid-twenties hanging out with the forty-five-year-old Ninth Doctor.
In Behind the Candelabra, they cast a 40+ Matt Damon as Scott Thorson, Liberace’s teenage lover. They shoot Damon in a filter most of the time that makes him look young but not 17, which is the age at which he met Liberace. This serves to gloss over the sleaze of a 50-something millionaire seducing a teenager who is foster care.
Yeah, it seems to defeat the purpose.
“I’m gonna make the Michael Phelps story. There’s only one problem- we don’t have any water.”
Bowie’s in Space, Bowie’s in SPACE! What you doin’ out there, man?
That’s really far out, man
Do they smoke grass out in space, Bowie, or do they smoke Astro-turf?
Receiving transmission….from David Bowie’s nipple antennae…..
Woo-OOH!
Claiming to be bisexual or fascist (despite negligible proof of the latter and a lifetime of evidence against the former) was part of the act.This line sounds… iffy and uncomfortable. Like trying to say “yeah Bowie wasn’t bisexual because TMZ never caught him with a bloke” or, in less charitable interpretation, “you can’t be bi if you never fucked the same sex”, which is oof. Especially when one could just quote the man himself, who said that his interest in men was more a product of his environment and desire to experiment rather than genuine attraction.
Yeah, there’s certainly better ways to phrase that. I had hoped that AVClub would be better than bi erasure, but oh well.We do exist…
Former and latter are mixed up in that sentence. However, I have to wait for somebody else to edit it. My bad.
“negligible proof” of his bisexuality is less bad but still dumb and biphobic. people shouldn’t have to parade an equal number of male and female lovers in front of some heterosexual adjudicator to “prove” their bisexuality.
I mean, I know of corroborated accounts of at least three men he had sex with, just off the top of my head, but I guess Ignatiy has some magical number in mind?
Not sure if he was trying to be contrarian or “well actually” us about Bowie, but it seems like an odd assertion given general common knowledge and his own statements.
I totally agree with you. Like, one shouldn’t have to have a tape of themselves hooking up with lovers of both genders just to gain Bi points. Also, interviewers had no chill in the 80’s and 90’s etc when they were grilling Bowie about his sex life, like he said it got to the point where he had to downplay his sexuality so he could talk about music instead of just entertaining questions about screwing dudes. Like, in my life I’ve had to change the subject away from my bisexuality a lot especially after getting the whole “so who do you prefer?” question from someone who doesn’t really care et. so I can only imagine what a celebrity would go through, especially back then when nobody really knew what being Bi was and it was “new” to pop culture
I figured it was because (correct me if I’m wrong) Bowie said later in life that he made up the bisexual stuff for his image.
It’s kinda funny
However you edit it, that line is hot biphobic garbage
“Lifetime of evidence against it” is a weird way to phrase it. It seems like Bowie had a lot of sex with men in the 60s and 70s at least, but went back and forth on how he’d label or consider himself.“I think I was always a closet heterosexual. I didn’t ever feel that I was a real bisexual. It was like I was making all the moves, down to the situation of actually trying it out with some guys […] I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him. The irony of it was that I was not gay. I was physical about it, but frankly it wasn’t enjoyable. It was almost like I was testing myself. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all. But it had to be done.”
How the fuck is it biphobic when the man himself (quoted in these comments, no less) admits he never really felt bisexual??? FFS. What he was was a goddamned poser and a thief of lgbt culture, taking ideas from actual LGBT people in his orbit and using them to make himself rich and famous knowing he had power and they didn’t. Sounds like every other straight, white guy who’s ever existed imo.
He was the equivalent of two straight girls making out at a bar for attention. I think any association he has with bisexuality HURTS us rather than helps, because he was the posterchild for “bi is just a phase!” Fuck David Bowie.
I’m glad you don’t speak for all bisexuals, cause to me it seems like he admits that he experimented a lot and it just wasn’t for him. Maybe now we’d label him heteroflexible, someone who is willing to try stuff out with other guys but doesn’t actually feel the attraction a bi person would. I don’t think he was a thief of LGBT culture, you can be a straight person and still be a gay icon, there are only dozens of examples. I do sort of agree with you that it could appear as if he appropriated a bi lifestyle for his Ziggy role, but ultimately Ziggy Stardust was more about androgyny than bisexuality and Bowie legitimately had the former in spades. There is also the idea of cultural appreciation, where you can involve elements of a culture not of your own in creative expression as long as you acknowledge their roots and support the community of which you got your inspiration. I think the issue with Bowie is a lot more complex than “two straight girls making out for attention” but I definitely agree with you that as a bi person the annoyance factor outpaces the eroticism, especially cause I know if I made out with another dude in most bars the consequences would likely be a lot different. Anyway, long story short, I’d say with queer culture Bowie was more of a “white rapper” than “two girls making out at a bar” if that makes any sense at all.
People can try things out and have it not work, admitting that shouldn’t be a negative thing, lots of people sweep past sexual experimentation under the rug, as a celebrity he didn’t have that luxury, you also have to keep in mind that he was getting hounded by interviewers who only wanted to talk about his sex life with dudes and not his music, if I were in his shoes in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, I’d do the same thing and downplay my bi-ness because he did not have the same space to be both bi and a musician as many people do today.
I’m a heteroflexible man and I give David Bowie the credit for giving me the courage to admit that.
Right on man!
Is the opposite of heteroflexible, heterorigid?
A bit self-righteous. He admitted it was a mistake, which he didn’t need to. And at least he made art out of it, and didn’t just pull a Katy Perry
Yeah, as a queer person I think there’s a difference between two drunk girls making out for attention and actually being in an ongoing sexual relationship with your mine instructor, but ok.
‘Claiming to be bisexual or fascist’ is what it takes to inspire biopics. Where’s the Roger Waters biopi … God, that’d be boring.
That and he flat out said he wasn’t – he did it for press, which is a shitty thing to do: The biggest mistake I ever made,” Bowie told journalist Kurt Loder over some beers in Australia, “was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual. Christ, I was so young then. I was experimenting …” and I think I was always a closet heterosexual. I didn’t ever feel that I was a real bisexual. It was like I was making all the moves, down to the situation of actually trying it out with some guys […] I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him. The irony of it was that I was not gay. I was physical about it, but frankly it wasn’t enjoyable. It was almost like I was testing myself. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all. But it had to be done.andBut for me, I was more magnetized by the whole gay scene, which was underground. Remember, in the early 1970s it was still virtually taboo. There might have been free love, but it was heterosexual love. I like this twilight world. I like the idea of these clubs and these people and everything about it being something that nobody knew anything about. So it attracted me like crazy. It was like another world that I really wanted to buy into. So I made efforts to go and get into it. That phase lasted up to about 1974. It more or less died with Ziggy.
In Bowie defense that interview was in 1983. AIDS had kicked homophobia into high gear and MTV was kick starting Bowie’s career again and making him more “mainstream” then ever. Bowie always knew how to sell his persona and read the room. It’s pretty telling that he basically shut up about his sexuality after that. Im not saying what he did was good for the LGBTQ+ community but I understand why he would do it.
He lied.For press.That’s unforgivable.
If that is the hill you want to die on that’s fine. Personally it’s a forgivable sin to me
OK, guess I’ll die on the hill and you can be a bigot.I’m not so forgiving to right wing assholes like you.
Really? I’m a right wing bigot because I forgive a dead man for saying he wasn’t Bi anymore in the early 80s when the AIDS crisis was making life hell for anyone in the LGTBQ+ community. That’s an interesting logical leap right there.
Yeah, it’s odd that no one seems to place that quote in the context of the AIDS crisis and the deeply homophobic press of that age, his own mainstreaming career, etc. Contrast it with this one from 2002, for example:“I found I was able to get a lot of tension off my shoulders by almost ‘outing’ myself in the press in that way, in very early circumstances. So I wasn’t going to get people crawling out the woodwork saying [seedy, muckraking voice]: ‘I’ll tell you something about David Bowie that you don’t know …’ I wasn’t going to have any of that. I knew that at some point I was going to have to say something about my life. The quote has taken on far more in retrospect than actually it was at the time. I’m quite proud that I did it. On the other hand I didn’t want to carry a banner for any group of people, and I was as worried about that as the aftermath. Being approached by organizations. I didn’t want that. I didn’t feel like part of a group. I didn’t like that aspect of it: this is going to start overshadowing my writing and everything else that I do. But there you go.”This does not sound like the statement of a closet heterosexual to me; it sounds like a queer artist who didn’t like the idea that people cared more about his sexuality than his work, and maybe didn’t like labels all that much personally. Bisexual people are often made to feel like we have to “prove” our identities to other people— this article is a really good example of that — and it’s exhausting! I can see why he’d be sick of it by the mid 80s.But I’m glad he was proud of coming out as well, because he gave a lot of people the word bisexual to describe themselves and that’s amazing.
Even assuming that those quotes are true and reflect how he felt throughout his later life (rather than themselves being a press strategy or self-delusion), those quotes certainly seem to show it was much more complicated than ‘doing it for the press’. It seems to have been a mixture of experimentation (nothing wrong with that!), the youthful confusion of being strongly attracted to a lifestyle but not knowing how to find a way to fit into that lifestyle (certainly a common issue), and the fact that he explored his feelings through, effectively, performance art (strange and arguably in hindsight callous/exploitative, but not ill-intentioned at the time, and evidently a deep-seated part of his personality and way of understanding the world).He tried to be something that he later realised he wasn’t. That doesn’t mean the attempt was deceitful.
Assuming they’re true?Fuck you they’re sourced.
Not sure why the profane hostility.I didn’t suggest the quotes weren’t authentic, I just suggested that they might not necessarily be true: just as Bowie had reasons to exaggerate his sexual fluidity at times, at other times he had reasons to downplay his sexual fluidity; just as Bowie’s 70s behaviour was part of a manufactured persona, so too was his 80s behaviour; and when a man is famous for changing over time, we shouldn’t necessarily take a statement at one time to be an incorrigible truth about what he felt at a different time. If Bowie in 1972 wasn’t necessarily entirely honest, or entirely aware of himself, equally so Bowie in 1983 and Bowie in 1993 may not have been entirely honest, either with interviewers or with themselves.
[I’m not a Bowie expert by any means, but just two years after that ‘93 interview, didn’t he write a song with the recurring lyrics of being asked: “do you like girls or boys?” and the answer “It’s so confusing these days”? Being confused, and giving misleading answers to interview questions, seem to be recurring themes in Bowie’s personal life. It’s also maybe worth noting that while he says he didn’t really enjoy having sex with men (despite, you know, doing it a lot), that’s not exactly the same as denying that he was ever sexually attracted to men.]But as I say, even assuming those quotes are true, I don’t think they’re as simplistic as you suggest.
Bigot.I’m profane because you’re sticking up for someone who pretended to be bi to get newspaper inches.I’m profane because you’re a bigot – you sound like one of those people who stick up for Rowling because she wrote some books they enjoyed.
I’m “sticking up for” the freedom of confused individuals to experiment both in their sex lives and in how they identify. If freedom, fluidity, acceptance, and a recognition that labels often oversimplify is ‘bigotry’ these days, then yay for bigotry!
Bowie was not one of those people, he lied.You’re not being an ally, you’re being disrespectful.
Why do the sexually open people insist on boxing in other sexually open people with labels? Live your values, man.
It sounds more like he was experimenting personally and part of the attraction of the experimentation with was that it fed his art, which was the primary focus of his life. He was also doing all of this in very, very different cultural moment than we live in now. I’m not saying it was necessarily admirable, but I just think we’re probably not good judges of what was happening with this particular guy, way back when. Also, is it really so dishonest to say you’re bi when you like girls but are actively, regularly sleeping with men?
No, it sounds 100% like he said it for controversy as part of one of his acts, he even mentioned specifically it was part of Ziggy.It was a part he played, that was made to be taboo.
If you’re going to pull those quotes to define Bowie it might behoove you to include some actual context around why someone who in 1983, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, might make those statements while he was trying to reinvent himself as a mainstream pop star and had recently signed a recording contract for orders of magnitude more money than he had ever been paid before. The fact is, Bowie’s statements on his sexuality and his sexual history varied enormously over his lifetime and it’s just as arrogant to assume what he said in 1983 or 1993 was “the truth” as it is to assume it was a lie. I’ve called myself straight, bi, gay, and queer at different times of my life and I was being honest every time, at that time. Bowie also called himself many things over time and I see no reason to pick and choose which “one” he meant.It ultimately is unknowable, except that wat is indisputable is that virtually every biography, from laudatory to smutty, has confirmed that he had sex with men, multiple people who knew him have confirmed it the same thing, and there is ample evidence of it.
Its very odd that people are working so very hard to deny that. Except really, it isn’t odd at all, as 1983 Bowie knew so very well.
Wasn’t that a running joke in The Velvet Goldmine — guys pretending to be bi together chicks? Different times, I guess
oof. I don’t like to work with labels nowadays, but I’d have to go with bisexual if I acknowledged the necessity of classifying human sexual behaviours. As in, safely and healthily attracted to both women and men.
The entire argument that sexuality is a product of the environment is anxious overthinking, or at least a half-formed argument. If you don’t wanna do it, don’t do it then. The old adage, ‘if it feels wrong…’. How do you define genuine, and where is that naive belief in one’s own social experience until now? And for what reason do you begin to problematise that experience for yourself or those under your care? Sex is supposed to feel good. Under ideal conditions, I’d argue sex is a form of play and stress relief, complete physicality and animal bonding. That takes many forms. Bowie has always struck me as a wretched form, but he was a new and interesting creative force in the market then. And in this world, the wretchedness of nature is fairly commonplace.
Seems like they shoulda just done the ol’ “Happy Birthday.”**either start every scene with Bowie singing the last two words of one of his songs or end every scene with Bowie singing the first two words of one of his songs.
Better yet, all public domain songs. I’m way into the idea of unlicensed biopics having the star sing, say, Camptown Races.
Sung by Jackie Jormp-Jomp, ideally.
Yes – portray Bowie in all phases of his career, in all the right costumes, but have every single song be The Camptown Races… a cappella! No microphone!
How about he sing the last two syllables?
“…Fragette! Bye bye, we love you!”
“the energy levels are low, the characterizations mostly limited to making sure everyone’s wigs are on the right way.”This is funny but coupled with the note about character ages vs. actual ages is depressing too. Boring old people slouching around pretending to be real young people to get some of that sweet Bohemian Rhapsody money. Blergh.
You know, boring old people were just boring young people once.
And they should duke it out to star in Baxter: The Ralph Bellamy Story. “Boring,” young or old, should not be part of a Bowie portrayal.
There is no Baxter but Matt Jones.
Eh, I’m sure it has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the slow realization they all went through, finding out they had accidentally signed on to a hugely obvious stinkin’ turd.
Can’t say I’m surprised since everything I’ve seen/heard about the movie so far indicated it would be bad, but I was still trying to hold out hope because I love Maron and I thought Flynn was great in this year’s EMMA.
They should’ve given this to the people who made Jackie Jormp-Jomp.
They were too busy working on the sequel to the guilty verdict in The Rural Juror, Hillbilly Elegy.
I never fail to laugh at her Janis Joplin song. “You know you got it…if you bought it with things!”
That- also Synonym’s just another word for the words you want to use…
It should be noted that all of the real-life characters that appear in Stardust were in their mid-to-late 20s at the time, and that the actors playing them (Flynn included) are all 15 to 30 years too old for the roles. (Sometimes more, as in the case of Bowie’s manager, Tony Defries, who was 28 at the time, but is played by the 65-year-old Julian Richings.)I don’t understand making this particular artistic choice. One of the whole points of rock and roll is its rebellion against existing norms, aesthetic or otherwise. Why cast actors of basically another generation? It feels like it diminishes one of the essential points in the story.I haven’t watched Trial of the Chicago Seven for similar reasons. Abbie Hoffman was 32 in 1968. Sacha Baron Cohen is 49. In a movie that pits generation vs generation, why cast an actor from the wrong generation? FWIW — Song for song, Hunky Dory is arguably just as good as The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. I wouldn’t bother debating this point — both are great and if one prefers the latter, that’s completely defensible. But HD is a great record, just sayin’.
Yeah Hunky Dory is a really underrated Bowie album IMO, there’s some great stuff on there.
Rick Wakeman really shines on Hunky Dory — “Life on Mars” is a Mt. Rushmore Bowie song. Ziggy was the real commercial breakthrough, of course, and much more of a rock record. You can feel the Stooges influence coming through. (One advantage of the time is that when you bought record, you got the record sleeve. Ziggy’s sleeve said something about playing the album at maximum volume. It’s harder to get that across on Spotify.) I want to say that HD was more Lou Reed influenced, but I’m not sure I could back that up — it’s just a vibe-thing.
I want to say that HD was more Lou Reed influenced, but I’m not sure I could back that up — it’s just a vibe-thing.I think the track that proves your point the best is “Queen Bitch”. The back cover of Hunky Dory has a small note next to the song on the track list – “Some V.U. White Light, returned with thanks”.
I really like “Queen Bitch” that’s a great song
Hunky Dory is all of his influences at the time he recorded it.
Hunky Dory’s my fave.
Quicksand is so much better then alot of his most known song.
I love the ChangesNowBowie version.I’ve been doing a deep-dive through the Bowie catalog while on WFH lockdown. I was kinda “meh” on Hunky Dory at first, but it seems every live album features at least one “hey, that’s a great tune, what is that” song and it’s usually from HD.
I think it’s underrated and I enjoy it a whole lot, but I still think Ziggy Stardust is a better album.
This is a better way of putting what I was trying to get at. I do think there is an overall shift in how actors age, I think some critics pointed out, per Chicago 7, that Cohen actually resembles Hoffman fairly closely despite being 15 years older. Cigarettes and booze and hard living make you look older, I think a general survey of actors in their 40s in the 60s/70s vs. actors in their 40s today would not look the same, age-wise. But like you say, these are young people pushing boundaries and that’s the point of the story, cast some folks who look like they’re capable of that.
That’s often the issue when older plays are revived (or films remade). The stage Sunset Blvd is often cast with women quite a bit older than Gloria Swanson’s 50 years when she played Norma Desmond in the original film. Casting Blanche DuBois is rarely done anymore with a woman in her 30s because to most audiences now that would just read as wrong for the character—even if historically it would make sense. Not to get too esoteric but my musical theatre friends are always making dream casts for a movie version of Sondheim’s 1971 musical Follies, and for the leading four characters who all feel like their lives have completely passed them by and are at an age where it is basically impossible to change direction, they always are dream casting stars in their early 70s or late 60s. In 1971 these characters were played by actors in their *mid 40s*—but I get it, in 2020 casting an actor in their mid 40s in that kind of role would again just seem wrong to most modern audiences (due to how people, with increasing life spans and good health, actually do age slower, but due to how society has changed).
But at the same time, despite standing by all of what I just wrote, in the case of this movie (which seems misguided in all respects), I do think it would have made more sense to cast young.
“Casting Blanche DuBois is rarely done anymore with a woman in her 30s because to most audiences now that would just read as wrong for the character—even if historically it would make sense.”Heh, the It’s A Wonderful Life discussion elsewhere has me thinking of Alternate Universe Mary Bailey, who as an unmarried woman in her 30s is essentially dead and entombed at the library. But yeah, it seems like casting youth for youth would be pretty easy here.
“In a movie that pits generation vs generation, why cast an actor from the wrong generation?”To me that kinda sounds like they should’ve cast a member of the Silent Generation.
I would love some sort of biopic of a radical young person in the sixties, in which everyone from that generation was inexplicably played by people actually from that generation (even though their parents are played by age-appropriate younger actors). No SF premise or anything, just never mentioned or explained….
I actually prefer Hunky Dory to RFZS. It doesn’t tell as much of a coherent story with its tracks, but I think the music is better. “Starman” and “Ziggy Stardust” are super catchy and fun to sing along to, “Hang on to Yourself” and “Suffragette City” are dependable rock songs, “Rock and Roll Suicide” is very good but you can’t really take that song everywhere. With Hunky Dory it has two of Bowie’s best songs ever, “Changes” and “Life on Mars” as well as the lyrically imposing “Oh! You Pretty Things” which is pretty fun for a song about subjugation by aliens and “Queen Bitch” which is just great in general. “Quicksand” is good too but I can’t listen to it all the time.
I mean, “Life on Mars” and “Changes” alone would be enough to qualify it as the best album in most people’s career. The fact that the rest of the album is also pretty good just puts it over the top.
I haven’t watched Trial of the Chicago Seven for similar reasons. Abbie Hoffman was 32 in 1968. Sacha Baron Cohen is 49. In a movie that pits generation vs generation, why cast an actor from the wrong generation?Also the movie is a neoliberal appropriation of Abbie Hoffman’s politics (He was an Anarchist) and gets a lot of .
Gabrielle Carteris IS 13-year-old David Bowie!
And not just rebellion; at that age you’re figuring yourself out as a person and professionally probably have no fucking idea what’s going on. The stories you read about some of the biggest acts’ managers make it clear they were making it up as they went along.
I always look at Hunky Dory as the prototype for Ziggy. It’s when the Spiders became Bowie’s backing band and Mick Ronson became his collaborator and arranger.
I guess the band came together sequentially. Ronson is the guitar player on The Man Who Sold the World, which came before Hunky Dory. And Rick Wakeman is on both HD and ZS, but isn’t really one of the Spiders from Mars because he joined Yes.But I do think that HD informs ZS. I also think that ZS’s harder rock sound was more consciously aimed at an American rock audience. Ronson definitely plays the heavier hand on ZS. The concert film that was recorded at the Santa Monica Civic is really great — it’s the Spiders tour. I think there is also a concert film of the same band in England where Bowie announces it’s the last Spiders appearance. I was too young for those shows — I didn’t catch Bowie until the Serious Moonlight tour.
Yeah, it seems genuinely idiotic to cast older actors.
Hunky Dory was an artistic breakthrough with a dash of awkward pastiche. A gem in his catalog for more reasons than “Life On Mars?” though that sure seals the deal.
Sounds like this movie could use a few ch-ch-ch-changes.
It seems that the film is a saddening bore…
All the nightmares came today, and it looks as if they’re here to stay
Eh, I’ve lived it ten times or more.
His name was always BowieAnd he’d shrug and ask to playA song by the Yardbirds or DonovanWhose licensing fees he could payThe actor looks nothing like himBut the wig’s doing all of the actingI hope you’re a fan of Marc MaronIt’s a D-grade biopic
I’m a caffeine spider . . . from Mars.
The actors must’ve felt UNDER PRESSURE! to pull off a good performance.
This movie appears to be DOA. Ashes to ashes.
The trailer looked terrible, so this isn’t a shock. Flynn just doesn’t have any of Bowie’s qualities – not a knock, most don’t – but this casting is baffling.
I’ve got a feeling that this is the start of a phase of shitty music biopics trying to capitalise on the success of Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman.Seriously, they can’t even try to pretend they didn’t make this for the money.
I’m assuming that this is from the studio that brought us Jackie Jormp-Jomp?
I will say that I am excited for the inevitable podcast that Maron, Moran and Malone will start.
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Maron just said on his podcast the other day that the haters “need to watch the fucking movie before passing judgement”. It has been seen, this is a judgement. It is bad
Even Marc Maron can’t be right all the time.
I’m a Maron fan and I get that he wants to act in movies. Unfortunately he only gets cast as “music industry guy” or “promoter/wrangler guy.” So he has to work with what he’s given. Sounds like it didn’t work out this time, hopefully the Aretha movie will be better.
I knew when I saw the byline that this was going to be an epic takedown.Loved your essay for Criterion’s edition of Until the End of the World, btw!
All I know is I felt embarrassed for everyone involved in this production after watching the trailer.
I preferred it when it had Bobby De Niro.
More movies need to have Robert de Niro playing a crossdressing air pirate. I can’t think of a single movie that wouldn’t improve.
“Crossdressing Navigator: set course for…Chicago, lil’ bit. I have to go meet my new weird son-in-law, lil’ bit!”Hey, you’re right, it is better!
I really, really love when there are four people on a poster, but only three of them are billed. Our apologies to The Guy From Stardust, but the real stars need 40-point font.
Some of Eric Andre’s early work.
That should say MICHELLE PFEIFFER all the way across the top. Fit everyone else’s names wherever you can. Rowr.
And that’s Charlie Cox, aka Daredevil, which I only discovered when I rewatched this recently. Also, Henry Cavill is in this and is completely unrecognizable.
Why do Claire Danes and Michelle Pfeiffer look exactly alike? Don’cha think? Lil’ bit?
I don’t understand why they’d cast people much older. Young people nowadays already look usually older than young people in the 70s (less scrawny, a bit more bulky) so that just seems weird
Why make a Bowie biopic when a perfectly good one (Velvet Goldmine) already exists?
I love Bowie and I love it when Vishnevetsky deals out “D” reviews or lower and is scathing, so this is really a nice confluence of Endymion’s enjoyments.
I recall an anecdote from John Mellencamp. When he was a teenager the record label tried to market him as ‘Johnny Cougar’. His career was handed to a horrible little man who tried to take over his life and cast his career in a campy homoerotic light. When Mellencamp fought back his handler petulantly spat at him “I MADE DAVID BOWIE!”
Who the hell looked at Mellencamp and thought that was the way to go??
They *did* market him as Johnny Cougar, which is why I always think of him by the transitional moniker he bore in my formative years, “John Cougar Mellencamp.”
We always called him “John Mellen Cougar Camp” or “John Camp Cougar Mellen”.
I like the second one.
Maron, Moran and Malone.
OK, that’s kind of hilarious.
Reminds me of the 30 Rock jokes about the Janis Joplin biopic without any rights. How do you make a Bowie biopic without his music?
Brought to you by the guy who made “Death of a President” …
As a huge fan of his music, I think listening to that is a much better way of celebrating his life than any biopic could ever be, let alone one as bad as this seems to be.
This feels related, if tangentially. I just screened the dueling French language biopics of Yves St. Laurent that came out in 2014 and 2015. The 2014 one is an authorized, standardly plotted rise-fall-redemption biopic that focuses on the love story between Yves and his partner Pierre Berge. The unauthorized one is an artsy, meandering, non-linear exploration of Yves’s hard-partying ways and obsesses on his torrid affair with a young gigolo. I get the feeling that critics at the time wanted the unauthorized one to be the better one. But it is pretentious, mean-spirited and it didn’t have the stamp of approval of Berge so couldn’t use any of the authentic fashions. The authorized one may be formulaic and it may over-simplify Pierre and Yves’s incredibly complex relationship, but the presence of the real fashions (lent by the St. Laurent archive) and the fact that the actors got to talk to Berge as well as many of their friends lends depth to the formula. The creators met people who loved Yves the human being, and that lends empathy to the whole project. This Bowie pic sounds like it was made by fans who can only imagine who Bowie actually was, and it doesn’t even have the plain joy of Bowie’s songs. In sum, biopics are hard but sometimes the authorized ones are more enjoyable. PS. I’ll gladly write a whole article comparing the two St. Laurent biopics from my Thanksgiving quarantine because I’ve thought way too much about both of them.
You could call it “Yves of Destruction.”
Or De(con)struction of Yves.
+1 I will. I will from now on.
My favorite Bowie role will always be King Jareth, but one movie he was excellent in was “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”. It’s a movie I haven’t really researched because it’s heartbreaking, but he pulled of a great performance.
Jesus Christ. This sounds awful.
Not allowed to play this song
Not allowed to play this song
Bowie’s estate’s worried we’ll get something wrongDon’t have rights to play this song
I’ll change some wordings, then it’s on
Call a lawyer, then may fair use be with you
This ain’t David Bowie’s famous song
It’s really not the same
And the critics want to know which words went where
Now it’s time to copy phrasing if I dare
This is something else that I wrote for
A bad knockoff bio
And it’s sounding in a mostly familiar way
And the words look slightly different today
For here am I parodying this man
Far beyond his work
Editing is through, and there’s nothing I can do
Though I’ve passed three minutes of this bit
I’m feeling very chill
And I think the audience knows which way it goes
Tell the judge this is protected speech (he knows!)
Oops, my bad, he heard the song;
The music’s cribbed – there’s something wrong!
Did I plagiarize this song?
Did I plagiarize this song?
Did I plagiarize this song?
Did I
Play something Bowie copyrighted?
For a lousy film?
Editing is through, and there’s nothing I can do
Just want to put in a good word for Johnny Flynn’s music with his band the Sussex Wit. In particular, check out the song “Brown Trout Blues”.
Seconded. Johnny Flynn is an outstanding musician and songwriter. Don’t let a bad movie get in the way of discovering some great music.
Bummer. An unauthorized Bowie biopic would have the chance to dig into some uncomfortable subjects (his flirtations with Nazi imagery, his [and every other 70s rock star, tbf] dalliances with underage groupies, etc) that’d never be touched by a sanitized, authorized Walk the Line-style biopic. Sadly it looks like they went for a sanitized biopic, just without any actual Bowie music. Lame.
[and every other 70s rock star, tbf] dalliances with underage groupies, etc)That doesn’t make it more fair, that makes it more horrifying.
Hear, hear.
With all the biopics and uninspired remakes, it’s clear the mainstream movie industry simply doesn’t want to take any risks with original material; instead, they choose to bet on nostalgia, aimed towards ageing fans with a fat wallet, and a very understandable yearning for a time when excitement still mattered.This petty excuse for a movie is the most cynical incarnation of their soulless cowardice, with Bohemian Rhapsody as a close second; the only recent musical biopic that was somewhat truthful and enjoyable was the underrated Rocketman – which wasn’t great either, but at least it didn’t try to retcon the actual events in any egregious manner. This, on the other hand, is despicable trash.
For real, Bowie’s thighs were never that thicc