Abstract
This chapter explores how, from the mid-1980s onwards, David Bowie’s film career became more piecemeal as he confined himself to mainstream cameo appearances or supported low-key projects of personal interest. These roles took Bowie across several genres: comedy and cult television spin-offs with The Linguini Incident and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me; gangster films and westerns with Everybody Loves Sunshine and Il Mio West/My West; soft-hearted family fantasy and hard-nosed high-finance drama with Mr. Rice’s Secret and August (plus biopics, treated separately in Chap. 8). It is hard to establish a unified purpose for these cinematic sorties: as with his music, Bowie continually sought to explore new territories and avoid being pigeon-holed. Nonetheless, a common denominator can be found in Bowie’s narrative importance however small his role, while contrasts exist in the extent to which differing generic codes and conventions profitably intersect or ‘fit’ with the increasingly venerated star’s screen performances. To aid analysis, the chapter pairs examples that are adjudged to have contrasting levels of achievement.
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Notes
- 1.
The presence/absence continued. When David Lynch returned to a third series of Twin Peaks (Showtime, 2017), he approached Bowie to reprise his Agent Jeffries role. Serious illness precluded Bowie’s participation, but Jeffries does appear, from a steam-machine in a black-and-white dream sequence, in ‘The Return, part 14’ (tx. 13 August 2017), using Fire Walk with Me footage. Bowie’s one proviso was a redubbing of the Southern accent that had always embarrassed him—voice-over artist Nathan Frizzell obliged (Joanna Robinson, ‘How David Lynch Honored One Final David Bowie Request’, Vanity Fair, 19 September 2017).
- 2.
As Pegg notes, since Bowie sings no verses it is impossible to tell whether he is performing Julia Ward Howe’s 1861 ‘Battle Hymn’ or the earlier melody-sharing marching song ‘John Brown’s Body’ (2016: 34).
- 3.
Bowie passed on Luc Besson’s sequels Arthur and the Revenge of Malthazard (2009) and Arthur 3: The War of the Worlds (2010): his character was voiced instead by Lou Reed. In the third film, Malthazard’s son, Darcos, voiced by Iggy Pop, sang ‘Rebel Rebel’ over the closing credits (alas).
- 4.
The homage is fully explained on the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia website (sic): ‘It is often believed that Bowie had one blue eye and one green eye [heterochromia iridium], as is present in his character’s design, but in reality, Bowie suffered from anisocoria, the permanent dilation of the pupil, in his left eye; the condition was the result of a fistfight he got into when he was a teenager. On higher contrast cameras, the eyes appear different colors.’ https://spongebob.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_Royal_Highness [accessed 10.10.2021].
- 5.
Though Bowie Bonds fully liquidated as planned in 2007, the collapse in album sales due to (illegal) MP3 filesharing led to their being downgraded in March 2004 to just one level above ‘junk’ status (Dan McCrum, 'A Short History of the Bowie Bond’, Financial Times, 11 January 2016).
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Glynn, S. (2022). Bowie Goes Genre-Hopping—Comedian, Chameleon, Corinthian and Caricature. In: David Bowie and Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13401-2_7
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