A studio was hired for one day so that Bowie could re-create one of his 1978 concerts for a sequence in the German film 'Christiane F'. A story about an unfortunate young girl who has a surname consisting of only one letter.
Bowie's performance and songs were used in the film and on a soundtrack LP that he delivered to RCA with the note 'Gimme gimme gimme!' The film went on to become one of the most successful German films ever :
Das Berliner - Gut!
Deutsch Film - Ja!
Rezension - Gut!
Three more truckloads of cash arrived outside his chalet in Switzerland when K-Tel released their 'The Very Best of David Bowie' album in agreement with RCA. It sold over one million copies and reached No 3 in the British charts. The cash was shovelled onto the big heap out the back, Bowie was running out of places to put it all.
He briefly stopped swimming and cavorting in his money pool to travel to London to recieve 'Best Male Singer' and 'The Year's Best Video' from Dave Lee Travis and Lulu at the New London Theatre. He quickly pawned the statuettes on his way home and added the coins to his pile.
Two new singles had been released thus far in the year, 'Scary Monsters/Because You're Young' on January 2nd, and 'Up The Hill Backwards/Crystal Japan' on March 20th. By now the money pile had become the second man made object visible from space. David toyed with the idea of changing his name to 'McScrooge'.
In July David got bored and called Roger Deacon, the drummer for Queen, on the phone. He had been a friend of David's for some time and they arranged a get-together for lunch with all the members of Queen. David ordered a salad and egg roll, Freddie Mercury a toasted tomato and cheese sandwich. The resultant stomach cramps promted the band and Bowie to record 'Under Pressure' at Queens studio in Montreux.
Also recorded in July is a track for the film 'Cat People'. 'I'm thinking of doing a much inferior version for one of my albums, to piss my fans off', he told NME.
David was spending much time in his dungeon, brooding and carving, painting and muttering to himself. BBC TV producer Louis Marks and director Alan Clarke tried to lure him out with a fat juicy slice of Bertolt Brecht. They left trails of Brecht all the way from Switzerland to London.
No wonder then that a shifty bearded character could be spotted lurking in shadows and moving secretly and silently around the London streets at this time. Once lured into the television studio they quickly locked the doors and soothed the shy panicky Bowie with a script from one of Bertolt's first plays 'Baal'.
Bowie would play the role of Baal himself, an anarchist poet who goes through life abusing women, working in sleazy bars, murdering friends, using a mobile phone while driving and losing all sense of personal values. Bowie would come in each day, and then vanish. There would be much hand-clapping and 'hurrah's' at such a splendid magic trick.
Bowie called in Visconti, lighting up the night sky with a big 'V' like in Batman, and got his help in producing his versions of the songs in Baal to be released next year. Visconti talks of 'Baal' :
'One violin, one viola, one trumpet and one accordion. We all felt German that day, my German felt very nice indeed.'
On 2nd November Bowie and Queen released 'Under Pressure' much to Freddie and David's intense relief after holding it in for so long. No wonder then that it immediately made number 1. Also released in November (on the 19th) was RCA's second Bowie compilation, 'Changestwobowie'. Some residents in Switzerland started to complain that the money pile was blocking out the sun.
Meanwhile David would lurk in his dungeon carving and painting. Occasionally venturing out to climb the pile.