Post by The Curmudgeon on Feb 2, 2017 14:57:31 GMT 2
I think I did something similar to this a few years back, where every week we look at a movie or TV show that has just never really been talked about in here before. You might have seen it, you might not, it might be great, it might not. That's pretty much it.
This week?
I don't know why, but I remain oddly fascinated with this movie, and it's one I keep coming back to, even though it's not without its flaws (the lack of Bowie in the soundtrack, for one).
It would have been interesting to see what the actual original movie would have become had Bowie not threatened to sue after reading the script and being less than keen on how his life's story was being "borrowed" from. So even though the film is named after a Bowie song, that and any other Bowie song is nowhere to be found, and a huge re-write had to happen before the movie could be completed.
Still, what we are left with can be a lot of fun, and it's now ambiguous enough that you can try and guess who each character is supposed to be based on. Brian Slade/Maxwell Demon is obviously Bowie/Ziggy and Ewan McGregor's Curt Wild is obviously Iggy Pop, but there's a lot of really sly references that you might miss (the "Venus in Furs" band is named after a Velvet Underground song, Maxwell Demon was an early band of Brian Eno's, French novelist Jean Genet is mentioned a few times, which is where Bowie got the "Jean Genie" name from. Stuff like that).
It's not perfect. It's messy in some places, (Oscar Wilde was an alien? Huh?) but that might be why I've watched it about ten times trying to figure out what the hell is going on. But the soundtrack makes up for the lack of Bowie with an inspired selection of songs, some original 70's gems and some great covers by the likes of Thom Yorke and Placebo. I bought the soundtrack and it still gets heavy rotation, and, come on, if you don't want to see a film where a future Batman masturbates over a cover of the NME, well.. I don't know what to tell you.
I thought I'd play one of the original songs ("The Ballad of Maxwell Demon") here, and it always depresses me that it's not, like.. REAL. I absolutely love it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4l2EsT87pY
This week?
I don't know why, but I remain oddly fascinated with this movie, and it's one I keep coming back to, even though it's not without its flaws (the lack of Bowie in the soundtrack, for one).
It would have been interesting to see what the actual original movie would have become had Bowie not threatened to sue after reading the script and being less than keen on how his life's story was being "borrowed" from. So even though the film is named after a Bowie song, that and any other Bowie song is nowhere to be found, and a huge re-write had to happen before the movie could be completed.
Still, what we are left with can be a lot of fun, and it's now ambiguous enough that you can try and guess who each character is supposed to be based on. Brian Slade/Maxwell Demon is obviously Bowie/Ziggy and Ewan McGregor's Curt Wild is obviously Iggy Pop, but there's a lot of really sly references that you might miss (the "Venus in Furs" band is named after a Velvet Underground song, Maxwell Demon was an early band of Brian Eno's, French novelist Jean Genet is mentioned a few times, which is where Bowie got the "Jean Genie" name from. Stuff like that).
It's not perfect. It's messy in some places, (Oscar Wilde was an alien? Huh?) but that might be why I've watched it about ten times trying to figure out what the hell is going on. But the soundtrack makes up for the lack of Bowie with an inspired selection of songs, some original 70's gems and some great covers by the likes of Thom Yorke and Placebo. I bought the soundtrack and it still gets heavy rotation, and, come on, if you don't want to see a film where a future Batman masturbates over a cover of the NME, well.. I don't know what to tell you.
I thought I'd play one of the original songs ("The Ballad of Maxwell Demon") here, and it always depresses me that it's not, like.. REAL. I absolutely love it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4l2EsT87pY
