by Fiona Underhill, Staff Writer

The upcoming release of David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream may prompt those who aren’t that familiar with David Bowie – The Actor – to want to explore some of his film roles. Fear not, for we at MovieJawn have all you pretty things covered. His screentime ranged from kooky cameos to main characters. His supporting roles were often mysterious moguls or Svengalis who would pop up, impart wisdom (or create chaos) before departing back into the shadows. His larger parts (ahem) range from aliens, to vampires, to Goblin Kings. Let us take you from station to station and ashes to ashes…on a tour through ten David Bowie movies.

Cameos

Into the Night (1985)

Into the Night is a fun movie that takes place across the course of one crazy night in Los Angeles. Jeff Goldblum plays Ed, an insomniac who discovers his wife’s affair. He drives to the airport, vaguely planning to maybe spend a night in Vegas. Instead, he is derailed by Michelle Pfeiffer’s Diana – who leads him on a merry dance through LA – from movie shoots, to the Beverly Wilshire, and beyond. Many film directors including Lawrence Kasden, Jonathan Demme, and Amy Heckerling, as well as Rick Baker and Jim Henson have cameos in this crime caper.

But the cameo we’re here for is Bowie’s. Bowie plays a kind of gangster henchman criminal who threatens Ed and takes Diana hostage in a hotel room. Let’s be honest, Bowie doesn’t really need to brandish a weapon in order to get people to do exactly what he wants. Bowie gamely fits in well with the darkly comedic tone, something it would have been good to see more from him.

Absolute Beginners (1986)

This British musical was not well received and has pretty much slipped under the radar since it came out, aside from Bowie’s phenomenal title track of course. But it’s an interesting experiment that fits in well with other British musicals of the era that have working class characters, such as Tommy (1975) and Quadrophenia (1979). With its 50s setting and use of theatrical sets, it probably has most in common with the work of Dennis Potter such as Pennies from Heaven (1978), The Singing Detective (1986), and Lipstick on Your Collar (1993).

The film directed by Julien (father of Juno) Temple centers around young photographer Colin and his pursuit of model and fashion designer Crepe Suzette (Patsy Kensit). James Fox (from Performance), the theatre practitioner Steven Berkoff, and soul legend Sade all have small roles. Bowie plays the wonderfully named Vendice Partners – an advertising mogul who is happy to get rich from evil schemes, and tries to entice Colin to sell his soul to the advertising industry.

Any musical that attempts to tackle race riots (in this class the real-life Notting Hill riots of 1958) is likely to fall down somewhat, as it’s such a tonal tight-rope that is difficult to walk. The film certainly falters in its third act, when Temple bites off more than he can chew. Absolute Beginners is definitely messy, but also worth watching, especially if you are a fan of unusual musicals.

Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014)

Bowie playing a Cajun FBI agent sounds extremely unlikely, but as soon as you mention David Lynch, it starts to kinda make sense. Bowie has a small but pivotal role as Agent Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks prequel movie Fire Walk with Me, and crucially his role is explored further if you also watch The Missing Pieces.

Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper isn’t really the focus of Fire Walk with Me – as its mostly concerned with Chester Desmond’s (Chris Isaak) investigation of the murder of Teresa Banks, and then with the last days of Laura Palmer. However, Cooper gets some fun office-based scenes with Lynch’s perpetually shouting Chief Cole and Miguel Ferrer’s Agent Rosenfield. And this is where Jeffries comes in. 

Jeffries is an agent who has been missing for some time, and he returns ranting and raving about the visions he’s seen. In The Missing Pieces, it’s revealed that he’s been in the Red Room/Black Lodge.

David Bowie and David Lynch are a match made in heaven and I can think of no one better to burst out of nowhere, deliver indecipherable dialogue and then vanish.

Basquiat (1996)

This sort-of biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat (in a mesmerizing turn from Jeffrey Wright) is another multi-layered film featuring Bowie. Bowie was an admirer of both Warhol and Basquiat in real life. Bowie wrote the song Andy Warhol, and rather awkwardly performed it for him during their only encounter.

Donning one of Warhol’s own wigs, Bowie plays a great Bowie-Warhol hybrid – in a mentorship role to Basquiat. This exploration of fame in the art world – which was one of the many areas Bowie explored in his life – is fascinating and multi-faceted. The supporting cast is impressive – there’s Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Benicio Del Toro – as well as Nope’s Michael Wincott. And there’s even more – Parker Posey, Courtney Love, Tatum O’Neal, and ultimate 90s babe Claire Forlani as Basquiat’s girlfriend.

Warhol feels like a role that Bowie was destined to play. He undoubtedly greatly influenced him, and then he got to inhabit him. An essential part of the Bowie filmography.

The Prestige (2006)

Christopher Nolan’s tale of two rival magicians in Victorian London is known for its ingeniously twisty plot. It’s easy to forget that there’s a sci-fi element to it, introduced with a fictitious version of real-life engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla. Nolan was determined to have Bowie for the part, and this was absolutely the right call.

Bowie takes his four minutes of screen-time and makes it seem as though there is much more, and he makes a great little double-act with Andy Serkis as his assistant. Tesla is tasked by Hugh Jackman’s Angier to make a version of the vanishing cabinet which is at the center of his rivalry with Christian Bale’s Borden. 

What Tesla actually creates is a duplicating device, which has horrific moral implications the more you think about it. Tesla is an interesting take on the mogul/Svengali role that Bowie frequently plays when he pops up in cameo parts. Tesla protests and tries to persuade Angier not to go through with his plans, but Tesla’s hubris ultimately gets the better of him. He will pursue scientific innovation, whatever the cost.

August (2008)

One of Bowie’s last film roles (where he’s playing a character, not himself) is this underseen thriller about an internet start-up entrepreneur – Tom Sterling (Josh Hartnett - not the only time he’s played one) and his brother Josh (Adam Scott) disagreeing over how to keep their company afloat. The supporting cast includes Rip Torn as their father, and Naomie Harris as Tom’s ex-girlfriend. Robin Tunney and Andre Royo play the CFO and COO, who also enter disputes with Tom about the direction of the company.

Bowie only has one scene – as the mysterious mogul (yes, you guessed it) with another fantastic name – Cyrus Ogilvie. Bowie is as commanding as ever, and Hartnett has to hold his own in his intimidating presence. It’s fascinating how often Bowie’s cameo roles were as powerful men who swoop in for one or two scenes and often lead the protagonist down a morally gray path. The suggestion of course, is that they were headed there anyway, but Bowie is there to give them a little nudge. This kind of character is not unlike one of Bowie’s best-known roles – as the mischievous Goblin King Jareth, who is constantly making Sarah question herself.

Starring roles

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

David Bowie and Nicolas Roeg is another partnership that really works and makes total sense (like Bowie and Lynch). The role of an alien who comes to earth as Thomas Jerome Newton is also absolutely perfect for Bowie. He later claimed that he was doing so much cocaine at the time, that he naturally felt otherworldly and disjointed from reality. Bowie’s permanently dilated left pupil and the fact he was in his ‘Thin White Duke’ era also helped him create this alien persona.

Of course, the film takes a pretty dim view of earth, with Newton very quickly becoming dulled by addictions to alcohol and television, and he is later held captive and experimented on. The irony is that Newton visits earth because his home planet needs water, whereas now we can foresee a future where we may need to venture to other planets for water.

Bowie’s hats, coats, sunglasses and other attire in this movie are enduringly cool and iconic. The Man Who Fell to Earth is an important feature of the decade most strongly associated with Bowie – the 70s. It was the first time he carried a movie, and remains one of his best.

The Hunger (1983)

Unusually for Bowie, his role as an ancient vampire in The Hunger is neither a cameo or a starring role. He has a substantial supporting role to two women – Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. This being an 80s Tony Scott movie, there is a generous helping of neo-noir and erotic thriller to go along with the supernatural horror elements at play here. Deneuve is very much playing a femme fatale and is styled to the nines – in black or white suits, black hats with veils and red lips.

Bowie’s John is a 200-year-old cellist who has been happily living with the woman who turned him, and subsisting on the blood of anyone they can lure to their New York townhouse. But he suddenly begins to rapidly age and deteriorate and realizes that he has been gifted eternal life, not eternal youth.

Deneuve’s Miriam must eventually add John to her attic full of coffins, which contain the agonized screams of her former lovers, who cannot die. Miriam tries to make Sarandon’s doctor Sarah her new companion, but things don’t go as planned.

The Hunger has a fantastically 80s opening in a nightclub, which could be self-contained music video, it’s that cool and stylish. It’s a shame that Bowie’s character is dispatched fairly early on, but the movie is still deliciously entertaining all the way through.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

While it’s not as well-known as some of his other movies, Bowie’s best film and performance is set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War Two. His other large roles are as an alien, a vampire, and a Goblin King – but in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, Bowie has his most ‘normal’ role, as a soldier who tries to remain defiant and upbeat despite the horrific conditions surrounding him. 

Directed by Nagisa Oshima and based on the (probably only semi-autobiographical) memoirs of Laurens van der Post, the film focuses on four men – firstly, there’s Sgt Hara (Takeshi Kitano) and the titular Lawrence (Tom Conti), who can speak Japanese and acts as a go-between between the Japanese and allied officers. Then there’s Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto), who becomes obsessed with Jack Celliers (a very blonde Bowie, playing ‘posher’ than he was in real life).

Celliers remains resilient, such as when the men are denied food – he manages to source some and sneak it into them. He also stands up to interrogation and torture. There are flashbacks to Celliers’ childhood and an incident with his brother that haunts him. Conti also gives a delicate performance as the man in the middle, who has sympathies with all sides and believes it’s the war that’s wrong, not one side or the other.

As well as delivering a complex performance as Yonoi, Sakamoto also composed the film’s unforgettable, hypnotic score. Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence should be held up alongside David Lean’s Bridge Over the River Kwai and Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun as one of the great POW films. Bowie is truly great here and fully demonstrates his skills as an actor.

Labyrinth (1986)

Possibly Bowie’s best-known role is as Jareth the Goblin King – owner of the best mullet and codpiece in cinema history. When 16-year-old Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) wishes her baby half-brother away, Jareth is ready to swoop in and take him to the Goblin City and the center of his fiendish labyrinth.

Jim Henson’s creatures are the real draw here and Labyrinth has some of the most endearing and memorable puppets he ever created – there’s Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus and his trusty steed Ambrosius. There’s also the more irritating end of the spectrum – the Junk Lady, the fieries and Jareth’s goblin minions.

Sarah has a love-hate relationship with Jareth. She hates him and will do anything to thwart him so she can get her brother back, but is also irresistibly drawn to his power…and the fact that he’s well, Bowie in extremely tight pants. If you watched the fantasy dream sequence in which Sarah dons an enormous white princess dress and waltzes with Jareth and didn’t feel something stirring and awakening within you – you’re a stronger person than I.

Of course, the movie is also packed full of Bowie songs, just for an additional treat. The standouts are probably “Within You,” performed while Sarah attempts to navigate an Escher’s staircase, and of course “Magic Dance” – a bop to this day. What an absolute gift Labyrinth is - it deserves to be treasured.