I have a complaint about this magazine, ie: I want my money back! The poster does not make up for it. I expected this to be the Labyrinth issue of Film Review, ie: it would have previews, pics and info. Instead I get an article slagging David Bowie off as an actor, which bewilders me why they stuck him on the cover with the words Labyrinth there because the writer obviously forgot what he was paid to do. This article has severe lapse in logic. The writer complains that film directors hire Bowie to sell movies. And his own magazine sticks Bowie on the front …. but not to sell the magazine of course. Go figure.




Article by Neil Norman:

If David Bowie was sealed in a paper bag and told to act his way out of it, there are those who would argue he’d die of suffocation. For those of us who would take issue with such views, may I direct your attention towards Labyrinth, the latest Jim Henson movie featuring a variety of SuperMuppets and the Thin White Duke himself, in the guise of Jareth, King of the Goblins.

Bowie’s persistent appearance in ‘starring’ roles in big budget movies is the tip of an iceberg which looms in the oceans of the film industry both here and in America. Bowie’s name is a guaranteed audience-puller and producers will apparently fight tooth and nail to have him waltz across the screen and provide a possible video by means of a self-penned song irrespective of whether he is suitable for the part or not. That said, casting Bowie as King of the Goblins must have seen like a good idea at the time, as it allowed the film makers to draw on pervious Bowie reincarnations in his ‘pop’ life to flesh out a fairytale cartoon character; the fact that he comes across as a combination of Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust is therefore quote inevitable. And there’s the rub.

Figures like Bowie are often cast for no other reason than their semi-mythical status in their own fields; this usually accounts for the fact that their first films are their most successful. Given that pop stars are performers and not actors , when called upon to perform their act (or in Bowie’s case, acts) they can cope pretty well; but when called upon to act, ie: create a character, that’s a different matter.

When Bowie made his screen debut in The Man Who Fell To Earth, he was perfectly cast for the first and perhaps the last time, as the alien condemned to live forever on the hostile planet Earth, Bowie gave a touching performance that played convincingly on his otherworldliness and his ability to look good in strange and stylish clothes. Rather than seeing the role as a one-off designed for him, Bowie then decided that he was an actor after all and promptly tried again and again to convince us that he was an actor, not a poser. The closest he got to it as far is a cameo role in Into The Night, in which he is cast against type as a seedy British assassin, while his ‘acclaimed’ performance in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence fell to pieces as soon as he had to compete with real, actors like Tom Conti and Jack Thompson. But while David Bowie is still a name that will pull in the punters, I expect he will be cast in ever more unsuitable roles.


Editor Note: I for one believed that Bowie did an extraordinary job as Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. He played a very brave, yet fragile character. I cried. The writer is wrong in assuming that the only thing that Bowie can play is the rock star. David was into theatre long before he hit it big. Early on in his career, he studied mime under the artist Lindsay Kemp and as a result has always been very multi-media orientated, incorporating stage craft and theatre in all his concerts. When he was younger, Dave use to open concerts for other musicians with bizzaire mime productions playing among other things - clouds! In fact, before his music career took off, David was going to give music all up because it was beginning to bore him. His biggest theatre performance to date is in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man, which won him critical acclaim.