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. When he comes to the United States, he seeks out American rock star Curt Wild and they become involved in each other's lives. The vignettes show Wild and Slade becoming increasingly difficult to work with as they become more famous. They suffer breakdowns in their personal and professional relationships. Eventually, Slade's career ends following the critical and fan backlash from his 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 been assigned to the Tommy Stone tour, which coincidentally is Brian Slade's new identity. It is revealed that Stuart was also at the concert where Slade faked his 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 jewellery from Oscar Wilde.
The film centers on Brian Slade, a bisexual and androgynous glam rock icon who was patterned after David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Jobriath and Marc Bolan.[3] Director Todd Haynes requested access to Bowie's song catalogue along with a personal blessing to make the film, but Bowie refused, saying that he intended to make a similar film about the time.[3]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 Michigan trailer park) and Lou Reed (whose parents sent him to electroshock therapy to 'cure' his homosexual feelings).[4][5] 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.[6]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 stage persona of "Maxwell Demon" and his backing band, "Venus in Furs", resemble Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona and backing band the Spiders from Mars. As with Slade and Wild, Bowie produced records for and with, Pop and Reed. The band name "Venus in Furs" is taken from a song by Lou Reed's early band, the Velvet Underground, which was taken from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's eponymous novel, 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.[7]Little Richard is shown as an early influence on Brian Slade. 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.[7]
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 modelled on that of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, in that the reporter Stuart tries to solve a mystery about Slade, travelling to interview Slade's lovers and colleagues, whose recollections are shown in 1950s, 1960s and 1970s flashbacks.[8]
David Bowie was ambivalent about Velvet Goldmine upon release.[9] According to Bowie, "When I saw the film I thought the best thing about it was the gay scenes. They were the only successful part of the film, frankly."[9]
Although the character of Brian Slade is based mainly on David Bowie, Bowie vetoed the proposal that his songs appear in the film.[3] 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.
All three members of the band Placebo 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.
Shudder to Think: "Ballad of Maxwell Demon" (Based on David Bowie's "All the Young Dudes" and Brian Eno's band Maxwell Demon) (Craig Wedren, Shudder to Think) – 4:47
"Band of Gold" (Ronald Dunbar, Edythe Wayne) – performed by Freda Payne
"2HB" (Ferry) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Thom Yorke
"Sebastian" (Harley) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
"T.V. Eye" (Alexander, S. Asheton, R. Asheton, Osterberg Jr.) – performed by Wylde Ratttz, vocals by Ewan McGregor
"Ballad of Maxwell Demon" (Wedren, Shudder to Think) – performed by Shudder to Think
"The Whole Shebang" (Phillips) – performed by Grant Lee Buffalo
"Symphony No. 6 in A Minor" (Gustav Mahler) – performed by Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
"Get in the Groove" (James Timothy Shaw) – performed by The Mighty Hannibal
"Ladytron" (Ferry) – performed by The Venus In Furs, vocals by Thom Yorke
"We Are the Boys" (Cocker, Banks, Doyle, Mackey, Webber) – performed by Pulp
"Cosmic Dancer" (Bolan) – performed by T. Rex
"Virginia Plain" (Ferry) – performed by Roxy Music
"Personality Crisis" (Johansen, Thunders) – performed by Teenage Fanclub & Donna Matthews
"Satellite of Love" (Reed) – performed by Lou Reed
"Diamond Meadows" (Bolan) – performed by T. Rex
"Bitters End" (Ferry) – performed by Paul Kimble
"Baby's on Fire" (Eno) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
"My Unclean" (R. Asheton, Mark Arm) – performed by Wylde Ratz, vocals by Ewan McGregor
"Bitter-Sweet" (Mackay, Ferry) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Thom Yorke
"20th Century Boy" (Bolan) – performed by Placebo
"Dead Finks Don't Talk" (Eno) -performed by Brian Eno
"Gimme Danger" (Iggy Pop, James Williamson) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Ewan McGregor
"Tumbling Down" (Harley) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
"2HB" (Ferry) – performed by The Venus in Furs, vocals by Paul Kimble
"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" (Harley) – performed by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
Alternate versions
The international cut of the film which premiered at Cannes runs 123 minutes,[11] while the US cut released theatrically later that year by Miramax was re-edited and runs 118 minutes.[12][13]
Reception
Box office
The film opened in the United Kingdom on 23 October 1998 and grossed over $700,000.[14] 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.[15] It would ultimately gross $1,053,788 in the United States and Canada and $4,313,644 worldwide.[2]
Critical response
Velvet Goldmine received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 62% rating based on 50 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".[16] Metacritic reports a 65 out of 100 score based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[17]
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."[18] 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."[19] 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.[20] 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."[21]
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".[22] 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.[23]
In an interview with GQ, Jonathan Rhys Meyers criticized the decision to use a different actor to play Tommy Stone at the end of the film: "... it's very hard for the audience to get that, which I think, I'm not quite sure did we make the right move there. Because I would have preferred to play Tommy Stone myself. You would have got more of the connection."[24]
Home media
Since its 1999 DVD release, the film has become a cult classic[25] and has been described as having "an obsessive following among younger audiences."[26]
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."[27]
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.[28]
The soundtrack to Velvet Goldmine was released on vinyl in 2019.[29]
^ abMoverman, Oren (1998) "Superstardust: Talking Glam with Todd Haynes", an interview in the introduction of Velvet Goldmine, A Screenplay by Todd Haynes, Hyperion: New York
