Funeral At The Movies
The Man Who Fell To Earth
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Nonetheless, Mr. Shepard's IMDB user comments certainly encouraged me to revisit the 1976 science fiction film, but more importantly it rekindled my interest rock n' roll related movies, specifically the cult classics.
When the lines between rock stars and actors are blurred on the big screen, the end result often goes awry, but that same fledgling end result is usually far more entertaining then a slick and successful rock vehicle.
Take "Head," starring The Monkees, for example. The fact that the Monkees tried to destroy their squeaky clean (and extremely lucrative) image by purposely making an incoherent psychedelic full-length feature is just plain ridiculous. The fact that it failed miserably, and that the Monkees (sans Nesmith) are probably playing "Daydream Believer" at a casino on an Indian reservation near you at this very minute is even more ridiculous. But how much more interesting is "Head" in this context?
In this day and age not many rock stars even attempt to make mainstream movies let alone avant-garde movies, and that's too bad. While my take on this "The Man Who Fell To Earth" may not be the most flattering, just know that watching this was a labor of love, and I appreciate the fact that Bowie and Rip Torn were able to settle their lovers' quarrels for the sake of art (okay, they weren't actually lovers, but how much more interesting is this paragraph in this context?).
As Ziggy Stardust, intergalactic rocker and leader of the Spiders From Mars, David Bowie was unstoppable, unitards and all. Watch the 1973 documentary "Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars" and one cannot deny Bowie's showmanship. He does his own make-up, sings with the confidence of a veteran lounge singer, and stalks the stage as if he were Mick Jagger thrown into a cockfight. So when it came for director Nicolas Roeg to start production on "The Man Who Fell To Earth," casting the role of eccentric Englishman tycoon/humanoid-alien Thomas Jerome Newton was a no-brainer. It had to be David Bowie.
In one of the opening scenes, we see Bowie hiring patent lawyer Buck Henry to head up a new corporation called World Enterprises, a company funded on a slew of Bowie's electronics patents; the biggest seller being one for self developing film. Right away there is this weird vibe, almost a sexual tension, between Bowie and Henry. At first I wasn't sure if it was bad acting or just bad editing that was causing this tension, but I think it was combination of both.
Bowie mumbles through many of his scenes and Henry is this strange near-blind lapdog who fawns over every word that comes out of anyone's mouth, his man-servant's included. The out-of-sync extreme close-ups and abrupt cuts don't help either, as they only give the film a cheap faux-artsy feel. Later in the film the alleged sexual tension returns, this time between Buck Henry and Bernie Casey, and yes, it is creepy.
Soon after becoming President of World Enterprises, Buck Henry gets a call from CEO Bowie informing him that he must run the company while Bowie retreats to a podunk New Mexican town. Henry is to receive instructions on a need to know basis.
(On the subject of instructions, at this point in the piece, I would like to instruct you, the reader, to start reading the taglines of movies before renting them. The tagline for "The Man Who Fell To Earth" is "You have to believe it to see it." What exactly does that mean? Isn't that what we are instructed to do in order to keep Tinkerbell going in the play version of "Peter Pan?" This tagline was a good Caveat Emptor that I Caveat Ignored. But I digress.)
Within the first half-hour of the movie, we are constantly hit over the head by the fact that Bowie, unlike most corporate millionaires, is not money and power driven. In fact once in New Mexico Bowie holes up in a seedy motel room to watch TV. He forms a close bond with the local yokel housekeeper (Candy Clark) and she brings him a small army of television sets, so he can watch six stations at once (apparently this is how aliens take in information; by watching TV, and by reading newspapers and books! That is some cutting edge sci-fi stuff.) Yokel starts hanging around more and more. This eventually leads them to getting a house together, on a lake.
On Bowie's request, Buck Henry hires Rip Torn (who starts out the movie as a suave Hugh Hefner-like college chemistry professor who has sex with his students) to be a researcher, and sends him down to Podunk until he hears from Bowie. Torn ends up living in a house next to Bowie's for months with no contact. He more or less just spies on him, until eventually Bowie comes for him and takes him to an abandoned power plant (like any good neighbor should). The power plant houses a spaceship that Bowie has been building. Bowie asks Torn to help him with the spacecraft, and they have a heart to heart.
We find out that Bowie's home planet is suffering from a severe drought, and his family and people are dying from a lack of water. We also find out, via flashbacks, that inhabitants on other planets wear silver wetsuits with vacuum hoses on their backs, with perhaps some papier-mache layers as well.
By this time Bowie and Yokel's home life is in a rut, and it turns into this kind of sci-fi episode of "COPS," with a surreal domestic dispute. Bowie is now drinking like a fish, and Yokel's nagging drives him to tune-out and watch TV (he is now viewing on a wall of about 24 sets.) The TVs freak him out to the point where he stands up and yells the film's best line: "Stay out of my mind, all of you!" By this point in the movie Yokel figures out that he is an alien.
This all culminates with Bowie knocking a tray of freshly baked cookies out of Yokel's hands and locking himself into the bathroom. After a few minutes of soul searching, Bowie decides to peel off his human disguise, scale down to alien form, and show Yokel his true self.
He apparently also decides now would be a good time for some make-up sex, cause he goes for it. Surprisingly Yokel seems into the idea, but after some kissing and some groping she breaks down and leaves the room crying. You have to give him credit for trying.
That's a tough make-up sex situation to pull off. The old "Honey I'm sorry I yelled at you and knocked those cookies onto the floor, but I'm an alien away from my home planet and my alien wife and kids. By the way, this is what I look like as an alien. Let's have sex!!" I think that has only been attempted one other time in the film world, in 1981's "Possession.
Yokel wasn't the only one to reject Bowie's alien advances though, because the only other person he told the alien truth to turned him in. Torn, the Benedict Arnold that he is, turned him into the government, just as he was to board his ship and fly home. Ultimately Bowie gets free again, but is it too late? You will have to watch for yourself to find out (and to find out how Torn "tracks him down." It is some of the worst screenwriting I have ever witnessed).
Roeg's camera tricks and editing style might have been cutting edge at time, but they don't quite hold up today and overall the film looks pretty amateurish. But despite what this movie lacks, it is extremely entertaining. Fans of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" will find it especially delicious, and despite his constant mumbling David Bowie gives quite a good performance in this film.
An added bonus to watching this movie is that for the next three weeks you will be singing Bowie's classic "The Man Who Sold The World" for no apparent reason other than you just watched a movie, starring Bowie, with similar words in its title.
MARK GROESCHNER | Mark Groeschner is the creator of the late, great satirical Web site Public Nigmity. When not soothing the nerves of his pudgy cat Yoda or harassing people from afar on the Internet, he works for the commercial/video production company Brand New School.