As part of our ongoing Saying Bye and celebration (I would like to think it’s that) of all things Bowie it’s surely time to include his acting career. His Wikipedia Filmography lists over 30 credits, before concert films and videos are taken in account. Here’s my top 4 Bowie film moments:
The Man Who Fell To Earth
His best film surely, one of the best acting performances by a musical artist ever in a feature film, and one of the best films of the seventies. Making it clearly had a profound effect on him, as the Thin White Duke is basically an extension of Thomas Newton back into the musical world. Film stills adorn two of his best albums. I love everything about this film from start to finish, but the moment where he picks out his contact lenses in the bathroom to reveal the alien beneath is just a brilliant piece of film-making.
2. Zoolander. His best ever cameo.
3. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. Not a great film, but two great visual moments – Bowie rocking a boater and blazer as a schoolboy, and being buried up to his neck in sand.
4. The Snowman prelude. What a jumper. Again as so often with Bowie the clothes are important.
I can’t remember much about Absolute Beginners (the strength of the song has been noted elsewhere) or The Hunger (beyond Bauhaus in a cage), and have (shock horror) never seen Labyrinth or less shockingly Baal or Just A Gigolo. Over to you all for fave David onscreen moments.
Since it represents my first encounter with Bowie, for me it absolutely has to be his performance in Labyrinth. That hair. That voice. Those TROUSERS!!!
*goes for a lie-down*
I’m for Labyrinth too. Such fun, such glee. So kooky. So David Bowie.
I really like The Hunger. The Bauhaus opening sequence is fantastic, everyone in the film is beautiful and cool, Bowie asks “forever and ever?” a lot, to which Deneuve replies “foreveur and eveur” before getting all jiggy with Susan Sarandon cos Bowie’s gone and aged a century in a scene, the music is sublime (best evah versions of choons by Shubert and Delibes), pigeons fly around in slo-mo and the ending is completely baffling. Fab.
Is it disrespectful for me to admit that I think Bowie never made a really good movie?
I find TMWFTE incredibly clunky.
It’s not the best Nicholas Roeg film but there’s a lot to like and Bowie is great in it, like Jagger in Performance of course – not too much of a stretch from his rock star persona. He’s fine in The Hunger too, it mostly required a certain look, a stylised role he could pull off. The Elephant Man stage role was a success. He couldn’t really act though, at least not in a naturalistic way. Not much range. He’s sometimes described as a renaissance man. Not convinced about that. Pop genius is enough isn’t it?
My sentiments exactly, Mr North. I walked out of the cinema halfway through Fell to Earth. Caught it years later on DVD – jings, Bowie’s acting is awful…
It’s not really acting though is it @henpetsgi and @diddleyfarquar – more like lending his charisma and presence to the story. He just is. That’s what Roeg seemed to understand so well in TMWFTE and Performance – even the creepiness under Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing. Stylised is a good word – a greater degree of naturalism and becoming someone else seemed certainly to be beyond him, for example in Merry Xmas Mr Lawrence which IMHO is far worse than TMWFTE, based on my 30-year old memory of seeing it in the cinema.
Hope no-one’s going to nominate the extended-length “Jazzing For Blue Jean” song clip…he was bobbins in that.
Challenge accepted.
The man has comic timing. Not afraid to poke fun at himself mercilessly. This in an era when stars simply didn’t do that kind of thing.
And as I once said at the Old Place, the entire Bowie everyman performance was lifted wholesale by Ricky Gervais. The circle was completed when Bowie appeared on Extras, which again built on the idea of mocking celebrities.
Amongst the other things DB was or could have been: a full time comedian or comic actor.
He made one movie in which he’s completely brilliant all the way through.
It’s called Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
He was luckily not in The Rutles 2 film much – but in the out-takes where he is clearly talking about his friendship with Lennon. Him cracking up at 1:50 is one of my favourite things
Thanks for that, it’s ace.
“We were going to live in a bag in Norwich”
….and the Barry Wom impression at the end.
This man was the midpoint between Elvis Presley and Peter Cook.
Wonder if there is audio or video evidence of the rumour that he and Eno used to have conversations as Pete and Dud?
It’s more than a rumour – Eno himself said on the Ross R2 show in about 2000 that he and DB would sit in Hansa doing the Dagenham Dialogues.
He didn’t say whether the first take of Moss Garden had been ruined by somebody going Tap Tap Tap at the bloody window pane.
And there she was, bloody Marlene Dietrich, at the bloody window “David, David, Liebhaber. you ist more than just a gigolo”…..
And who is the Hunky Dory cover based on? Bladdy Greta Garbo, of course…
I liked the Hunger (admittedly are for Deneuve and Sarandon) but Bowie was good in it.
I also liked him in Into the Night with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer – not a film you hear much about but I liked it back in my early VHS rental days.
There is! And it’s here…
I remember posting on here or Afterword v1 that I was watching The Prestige on TV a few years ago and had no idea that he was in it, playing Nikola Tesla. I was only half-watching it, but then appears, walking calmly across a room that is alive with machine-generated lighting bolts. I suppressed a squeal.
His accent in the film is eastern European and sounds strange, like he is hamming up the mad scientist schtik. As it turns out, he researched Tesla’s accent and he did actually speak like that.
I had the same experience of watching that film, which DB’s cameo livens up all too briefly.
Ditto. He surprised me in Zoolander too.
I think he gives good Pilate in The Last Temptation Of Christ. Very natural and casual.
It’s just occurred to me that Lydon might have been thinking of this when he agreed to play PP in Jesus Christ Superstar.
I think most people on this blog know that DB would have been more appropriately cast as Biggus Dickus.
An of course the fly on the wall footage of the birth of Cobbler B- Ziggy
Of the many actors who I’ve seen play Andy Warhol (including Guy Pearce in I’m Not There Jared Harris in I Shot Andy Warhol and Crispin Glover in The Doors) I think Bowie’s (in Basquiat) is the best. First hand knowledge obviously helped his portrayal.
I haven’t seen the production of Brecht’s Baal since it was first broadcast on the BBC in 1982, but I remember thinking that Bowie was really good in that.
Quick heads-up – The Man Who Fell to Earth is on the Horror Channel (Freeview 70) at 0:35 on Monday night / Tuesday morning.
Wasn’t there a python? movie where he appeared right at the end as a kinda Billy Budd lookalike?