When influential British musician David Bowie lost his battle with cancer last week at the age of 69, many encomiums were rightly written about his musical legacy. He also left behind a rich film legacy. Born David Robert Haywood Jones, he changed his name to Bowie, so as not to get confused with Davy Jones, the popular lead singer of The Monkees . After some television and short film appearances, Bowie shone through in two documentaries. Bowie had taken on the androgynous stage persona Ziggy Stardust, and D. A. Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973), part-documentary, part-concert movie showcased this to the hilt. Alan Yentob’s Cracked Actor (1975) was a BBC look at Bowie in his drug heydays.
As an actor, Bowie’s breakthrough film performance was as the lead in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), where he played an alien who comes to earth to get water for his dying planet. He won the Golden Scroll for Best Actor at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films for this role. In David Hemmings’ Just a Gigolo (1978), he played a war veteran whose military skills are of no use at peacetime, and ends up a gigolo. Bowie was mesmerising as a centuries-old vampire in Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983), but it was his turn as a rebellious British prisoner of war with a dark secret in Nagisa Ôshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence the same year that won him accolades. Bowie made a mark as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), as Andy Warhol in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat (1996) and as Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006). In later years, Bowie gleefully played himself, notably in Ben Stiller’s Zoolander (2001) and Bandslam (2009).
For those of you who delighted in the humorous insults that Ricky Gervais, the host, dished out at the recent Golden Globes, do seek out a 2006 episode of the television series Extras titled ‘David Bowie’ to see Gervais get a taste of his own medicine. In the series, Gervais plays a self-absorbed actor. When he spots Bowie in a bar, he heroically decides to dump all his concerns and neuroses upon the musical legend. After listening to Gervais’ lament with the patience of a saint, Bowie launches into ‘Little Fat Man’, a hilarious musical takedown on Gervais’ character.
Besides his many music awards, Bowie was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Song for Paul Schrader’s Cat People (1982), and he was also nominated for a BAFTA television award for Best Original Television Music for The Buddha of Suburbia (1993).
For those who came in late, Bowie’s son is the filmmaker Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, better known simply as Duncan Jones, director of successful films like Moon (2009) and Source Code (2011). His adaptation of Warcraft , based on the popular video game, is out this year. Our David has left behind a film legacy in more ways than one.