So I just saw Velvet Goldmine on Monday on IFC. I absolutely loved it to pieces! I can’t stop thinking about it. (I am also a HUGE Bowie fan).
So I’m just wondering, who else out there saw it? What was your impression of it? Did you like it, hate it, leave you cold? How much of Bowie do you think the movie was? Was Kurt Wilde kinda supposed to be Rod Stewart? Or who? Wouldn’t Ewan McGregor make a great Kurt Cobain (when are they making THAT movie)?
Discuss.
I’ve probably seen it about seven times, not counting viewing of specific sections for my academic work on contemporary film musicals.
*I like it, but could not in good conscience recommend it to moviewatchers in general. It’s not the kind of movie that a lot of people are going to like, which is probably why it did so poorly at the box office. Well, that and the incredibly misleading trailer – I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it portrays the film as a whodunnit murder mystery set in the crazy world of rock and roll! Anyone expecting that kind of movie would be sorely disappointed. As for me I love rock movies and don’t have any special interest in whodunnits, so despite being interested in Velvet Goldmine after the Cannes buzz I avoided it in the theater because of the ad campaign.
*Rod Stewart? Geesh, where did you get that from? The obvious inspirations were Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, although there’s bits of some others thrown in, like Mick Ronson. But Kurt Wilde is about as much Rod Stewart as he is Linda Rondstadt.
I got Rod Stewart from this photo.
This is (as I remember) the exact photo that was in the newspaper in the movie. Also Rod’s hair is blonde with black roots and cut just like Wilde’s was at the time of the picture.
I could be wrong, but isn’t that Iggy Pop in the pic?
sooner than you
think (kinda)
That’s Mick Ronson.
You’re both wrong. That’s Mick Ronson. In fact, it’s the most famous photo of Mick Ronson ever taken.
As far as I know Rod Stewart’s never worked with Bowie at all. Iggy Pop has, but isn’t much of a guitar player (and was even less of one in the 1970s).
ooOOOoooh. Mick Ronson. Well then. That makes more sense than Rod Stewart. But you have to admit, it looks like Rod. Right? Right? :o
Thanks, folks!
I loved the movie as well, all those pretty, androgynous glam-rock boys! Plus, I loved the music. I own the soundtrack, though not the DVD - that’s on “the list”.
I’d like to see more of Jonathon Rhys Meyers (sp?) as well.
I’m a Bowie fan and an Eddie Izzard fan, so I really wanted to see this. Unfortunately, it transpires that I cannot BEAR Christian Bale.
Even taking that into consideration, I thought there were some good moments in the movie, but that it was very self-consciously artsy-fartsy and smug. Also (without giving too much away for those who haven’t seen it and want to) the flashback thing, where Bale’s character recognizes the publicist from someone else’s memories?? WTF was THAT?
He’ll be playing Elvis in the new TV movie.
Yes, it was rather artsy-fartsy, but I thought that went well with the subject of the movie. I mean glitter rock was pretty artsy-fartsy and somewhat pretencious (ooh spelling atrocity!).
Oops!
Sweet! Now when and on what channel will this blessed event be occuring?
It’s a mini series. Sunday May 8 and Wednesday May 11 on CBS.
I have been trying to get a hold of this movie for ages. Ewan McGregor and Christian Bale engaging in wild hot monkey sex? Sooooo need to see this!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but nothing except some hot kissing happens between any of the guys. The only nude sex scene is het.
I found it pretty boring because the whole glam rock scene doesn’t interest me, and it was just all petty arguments between the characters. And Jonathan Rhys-Meyers looks so much better with long hair. 
How can you not like Christian Bale? 
He’s always struck me as a very talented actor.
Plus his dad is married to Gloria Steinem, and that’s pretty cool.
*It really doesn’t make sense, but I’m willing to give it a pass as one of the movie’s many Citizen Kane allusions. Nothing exactly like that happens in Kane, but people do seem to know about events they weren’t present for and would have no other way of knowing about.
If you’ve seen Citizen Kane, it’s fun to look for the references in Velvet Goldmine. Aside from the basic framework (journalist investigates the life of a famous man by interviewing his former lovers and business associates), there are numerous specific allusions to and borrowings from Kane. The scene where Ewan McGregor is singing (badly) in the recording studio is a pretty funny riff on Kane’s ill-fated attempt to mold his mistress into an opera singer.
Bale and McGregor do have a sex scene towards the end of the film, although it seems to be shot from roughly half a mile away.
Guin, I’m surprised you’re having difficulty finding the movie. I see it at the video store all the time. Amazon is offering a decent price on it, too.
Oh, for the Jonathan Rhys-Meyers fans, I’m aquainted with the webmistress of a very nice fansite devoted to him:
Yeah, I know I’m in the minority in not liking Christian Bale - funny thing is, I hadn’t seen much of his work before Velvet Goldmine and have since seen quite a bit. I thought perhaps his slack-jawed whinger in VG was just acting, but he was equally unbearable in American Psycho and The Secret Agent.
I got some of the Citizen Kane references, but that was another thing that struck me as adding to the all-around pretentious self-consciousness of this movie. The story premise was good, and the glam-rock era certainly worth exploring, but I could think of so many ways it could have been done better. Toni Collette is terrific in pretty much everything I’ve ever seen her in; ditto Izzard, and I actually liked Ewan MacGregor’s take on Iggy (even if I think he was more Cobain than anything else.) So … not a total waste of time, just not something I’d put on my best-loved list.
I’ll register a vote for hating this movie with a passion… and I’m a BIG of Iggy.
Or was until Blah Blah Blah came out.
I think a large part of the purpose of the movie was to be pretentiously self-conscious, which may strike one as either “rather clever” or “almost insufferable”. That’s one of the main reasons why I don’t usually recommend Velvet Goldmine even though I do personally like it. I’ve sometimes described it as a movie no normal person could possibly enjoy.
*Oh yes! I love her. I think she did a great job with a difficult role in Velvet Goldmine, and the Mandy Slade character is really different from anything else I’ve seen her do.
I think big fans of Iggy or Bowie have as much reason to hate the movie as they do to like it. The mixing of real events from those men’s lives (Iggy Pop really grew up in a Midwestern trailer park) with real events from other people’s lives (Lou Reed had electroshock therapy) with stuff that’s completely fictional (neither was molested by an older brother, or even had an older brother) is again one of those things that one can see as either “interesting” or “irritating”.
I do think it’s cool that they got Ron Asheton to play on the soundtrack, though.
