Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine is a 1998 musical drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes from a story by Haynes and James Lyons. It is set in Britain during the glam rock days of the early 1970s; it tells the story of a fictional pop star, Brian Slade. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and won the award for the Best Artistic Contribution. Sandy Powell received a BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. The film utilizes non-linear storytelling to achieve exposition while interweaving the vignettes of its various characters.
Plot.
Set in 1984, British journalist Arthur Stuart is writing an article about the withdrawal from public life of 1970s glam rock star Brian Slade following a death hoax ten years earlier, and is interviewing those who had a part in the entertainer's career. As each person recalls their thoughts, it becomes the introduction of the vignette for that particular segment in Slade's personal and professional life.
Part of the story involves Stuart's family's reaction to his homosexuality, and how the gay and bisexual glam rock stars and music scene gave him the strength to come out. Rock shows, fashion, and rock journalism all play a role in showing the youth culture of 1970s Britain, as well as the gay culture of the time.
At the beginning of his career, Slade is married to Mandy. But when he comes to the United States, he seeks out American rock star Curt Wild, and they become involved in each other's lives on a personal and creative level.
The vignettes show both Wild and Slade becoming increasingly difficult to work with as they become more famous. They suffer breakdowns in both their personal and professional relationships. Eventually, Slade's career ends following the critical and fan backlash from his on-stage publicity stunt where he faked his own murder.
As he gets closer to the truth of where Slade is now, Stuart is suddenly told by his editor that the story is no longer of public interest, and Stuart has now been assigned to the Tommy Stone tour, which coincidentally is Brian Slade's new identity. We discover Stuart was also at the concert where Slade faked his own death, and that after seeing Wild perform on another night, Wild and Stuart had a sexual encounter.
Eventually, Stuart confronts Tommy Stone and once again encounters Wild, who casually passes on a piece of jewelry from Oscar Wilde.
Production.
The film centers on Brian Slade, a sexually fluid and androgynous glam rock icon who was patterned after David Bowie, Jobriath and, to a lesser extent, Marc Bolan. Bowie initially disapproved of the film and its many similarities with his life story, and threatened to sue, resulting in substantial rewrites to create more distance between the character and the real man. Ewan McGregor co-stars in the role of Curt Wild, a genre-defying performer who doesn't back down from sex, nudity, or drugs on or off stage, and whose biographical details are based on Iggy Pop (who grew up in a trailer park) and Lou Reed (whose parents sent him to electroshock therapy to 'cure' his homosexual feelings). Also featured are Christian Bale as the young glam rock fan and reporter, Arthur Stuart, and Toni Collette as Slade's wife, Mandy, who is based on Bowie's first wife, Angela. Eddie Izzard stars as Slade's manager, Jerry Devine.
The tale strongly parallels Bowie's relationships with Reed and Pop in the 1970s and 1980s. Brian Slade's gradually overwhelming on-stage persona of "Maxwell Demon" and his backing band, "Venus in Furs", likewise bear a resemblance to Bowie's persona and backing band. The album "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" tells a similar story of a rock star gone over the edge, and culminates in his assassination. As with Slade and Wild, Bowie produced records for, and with, both Pop and Reed. The band name "Venus in Furs" is taken from a song by Lou Reed's early band, The Velvet Underground, which itself was taken from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel by the same name, which appeared on their first album. Maxwell Demon was the name of an early band of Brian Eno, a long-time Bowie associate, whose music is heard at various points in the film.
Haynes has said that the story is also about the love affair between America and Britain, New York City and London, in the way each music scene feeds off and influences each other. Little Richard is shown as an early influence on Brian Slade. In real life Little Richard inspired the Beatles and Bowie, who in turn inspired many other bands. Little Richard has also been cited by Haynes as the inspiration for Jack Fairy.
The film is strongly influenced by the ideas and life of Oscar Wilde (seen in the film as a progenitor of glam rock), and refers to events in his life and quotes his work on dozens of occasions. Jean Genet (the subject of Haynes' previous film, "Poison", and the putative inspiration for the title of Bowie's song "The Jean Genie") is referred to in imagery and also quoted in dialogue.
The film's narrative structure is modeled on that of Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane", in that the reporter Stuart tries to solve a mystery about Slade, traveling around to interview Slade's lovers and colleagues, whose recollections are shown in 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s flashback sequences.
Reception.
Box office.
The film opened in the United Kingdom on 23 October 1998 and grossed over $700,000. It was released in the United States on 6 November 1998 in 85 venues, grossing $301,787 in its opening weekend and ranking sixteenth at the box office, and fifth among the week's new releases. It would ultimately gross $1,053,788 in the United States and Canada and $4,313,644 worldwide.
Critical response.
"Velvet Goldmine" received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 58% rating based on 45 reviews, with an average of 6.5/10. The critical consensus reads: ""Velvet Goldmine" takes a visual and narrative approach befitting its larger-than-life subject, although it's still disappointingly less than the sum of its parts". Metacritic reports a 65 out of 100 score based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Janet Maslin, having seen the film at the New York Film Festival, made it a "NYT Critics' Pick," calling it a "dazzlingly surreal" rock version of ""Citizen Kane" with an extraterrestrial Rosebud" and saying it "brilliantly reimagines the glam rock ‘70s as a brave new world of electrifying theatricality and sexual possibility, to the point where identifying precise figures in this neo-psychedelic landscape is almost beside the point. "Velvet Goldmine" tells a story the way operas do: blazing with exquisite yet abstract passions, and with quite a lot to look at on the side." According to Peter Travers, "Haynes creates "Velvet Goldmine"...with a masturbatory fervor that demands dead-on details" and "fashions a structure out of "Citizen Kane""; it's a film that "works best as a feast of sight and sound...re-creating an era as a gorgeous carnal dream...celebrat[ing] the art of the possible." In a less enthusiastic review, Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film two out of four stars and found its plot too discursive and confusingly assorted because of how it "bogs down in the apparatus of the search for Slade" by clumsily using scenes from "Citizen Kane". David Sterritt from "The Christian Science Monitor" wrote "The music and camera work are dazzling, and the story has solid sociological insights into a fascinating pop-culture period."
In a retrospective review, "Slant Magazine"'s Jeremiah Kipp gave "Velvet Goldmine" four out of four stars and said that, although unsupportive critics may be "terrified of a movie with so many ideas", the film successfully shows a "melancholic ode to freedom, and those who fight for it through art", because of Haynes' detailed imagery and the cast's "expressive, soulful performances". Scott Tobias of "The A.V. Club" felt that Haynes' appropriation of structural elements from "Citizen Kane" is the film's "masterstroke", as it helps "evoke the glam rock movement without destroying the all-important mystique that sustains it." Tobias argued that, like Haynes' Bob Dylan-inspired 2007 film "I'm Not There", "Velvet Goldmine" deals with a famously enigmatic figure indirectly through allusion and imagery, and consequently succeeds more than a simpler biopic could.
Home media.
Since its 1999 DVD release, the film has become a cult classic and has been described as having "an obsessive following among younger audiences."
Haynes said in a 2007 interview, "A film that had the hardest time, at least initially, was "Velvet Goldmine", and it's the film that seems to mean the most to a lot of teenagers and young people, who are just obsessed with that movie. They're exactly who I was thinking about when I made "Velvet Goldmine", but it just didn't get to them the first time around."
A Blu-ray was released in Region A on 13 December 2011, and includes a newly recorded commentary track by Haynes and Vachon. In it, Haynes thanks the fansites for helping him compile the notes for the commentary.
Soundtrack.
Although the character of Brian Slade is heavily based on David Bowie, Bowie himself disliked the script and vetoed the proposal that his songs appear in the film. However, as producer of Lou Reed's 1972 "Transformer" album, his backing vocals (mainly consisting of "bum-bum-bum"s and "ooh-ooh"s) can be heard on "Satellite of Love".
The finished soundtrack includes songs by glam rock and glam-influenced bands, past and present.
The English musicians who played under the name The Venus in Furs on the soundtrack were Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, David Gray Band's Clune, Suede's Bernard Butler, and Roxy Music's Andy Mackay. The American musicians who played as Curt Wild's Wylde Ratttz on the soundtrack were The Stooges' Ron Asheton, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley, Minutemen's Mike Watt, Gumball's Don Fleming, and Mark Arm of Mudhoney.
The soundtrack features new songs written for the film by Pulp, Shudder to Think and Grant Lee Buffalo, as well as many early glam rock compositions, both covers and original versions. The Venus in Furs covers several Roxy Music songs with Thom Yorke channeling Bryan Ferry on vocals, Placebo covers T. Rex's "20th Century Boy," Wylde Ratttz and Ewan McGregor cover The Stooges' "T.V. Eye" and "Gimme Danger", and Teenage Fanclub and Donna Matthews cover the New York Dolls' "Personality Crisis". Lou Reed, Brian Eno, T. Rex, and Steve Harley songs from the period are also included. The album is rounded out by a piece of Carter Burwell's score.
All three members of the band Placebo also appeared in the film, with Brian Molko and Steve Hewitt playing members of the Flaming Creatures (Malcolm and Billy respectively) and Stefan Olsdal playing Polly Small's bassist. Another member of the Flaming Creatures, Pearl, was played by Xavior (Paul Wilkinson), former lead singer of Romo band DexDexTer and later a keyboard player for Placebo and Rachel Stamp.
A more extensive selection of music was used for the movie soundtrack.
References.
Bibliography.
"Velvet Goldmine". In Padva, Gilad, "Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture", pp. 72–97 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ).