The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 47

FRIDAY I 1 6 NOVEMBER 1998 1 1 THE AGE 3 princsUng Brian Slide (Jonathan Rhyi Mayan) ki Velvet BoUmkie flamboyant, sexually ambiguous icon. "He's meant to stand for the instinctive origin to the glam idea, of which Brian Slade was the more self-conscious appropriator. Haynes's private fantasy has drawn mixed reactions from bemused novices and diehard glam fans alike. Velvet Goldmine is neither literal biography nor linear fiction, but a collision of reality and imagination both faithful to the glam ethos and unashamedly smitten with its history, music and style. "I never attempted to approach glam rock from any objective perspective, trying to tell what really happened behind closed doors like you often see in bio-pics that assume an intimacy with the superstar," he says.

"I wanted everything to be filtered through the perspective of the fan, and what consumers do with the images that rock stars put out there, the way we embellish and supplement and fill in the gaps and construct our own I'ictive relationships to the work. "I wanted the film to feel like a dream in a way, a dream of glam rock, something more sumptuous and rich and multi-textured than it was for people who might have lived through it." 'Velvet Goldmine' is now screening. mythological archetypes: Bowie, Iggy Pop, l.ou Reed and their various associates are recreated in daring historical detail and woven into fiction. It's an ingenious reflection of the process in which the glam stars engaged 25 years ago. "Bowie was weaving his narratives around these characters he was portraying on stage," Haynes says.

There was no ground zero with him. David lones turned into David Bowie turned into Ziggy Stardust turned into Aladdin Sane etc. And if that's the real-life material, it gave me great freedom to continue that process and make the next version Brian Slade perhaps." Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is the ambitious, bisexual, self-obsessed rock star at the core of Velvet Goldmine. Kssentially, he is Bowie, just as Kwan McGregor as Curt Wild is a composite of Pop and Heed. Haynes depicts the pals and colleagues as lovers and super-heroes, recreated through the dark lens of retrospect but with a wealth of detail lifted wholesale from rock history.

For Bowie aficionados, Velvet Goldmine is a mixed pleasure. The evolution of Slade's hair, wardrobe, music and lives, both public and private, draw obvious parallels at every turn. But fans will note deeper, darker insights on Haynes's part; inspired allusions such as the rock chameleon's old mime teacher, accent). The journalist's involvement adds another layer of perspective to a film essentially about identity and perception: Arthur Stuart is the bit player with a crucial role to play in the glam-rock drama. The reserved, sexually-frustrated investigator turns out to be a link in a legacy extending back to Oscar Wilde, a century before Marc Bolan first donned lipstick and glitter eyeshadow.

"My research process was retracing the steps of what I understood Bowie and Bryan Ferry and a lot of the key architects of the glam sound and ethic went through," Haynes says. "The way they arrived at what they were doing was through a great many cultural references, from literary to cinematic to pop, particularly the Warhol scene. And in a way, all roads kept leading back to Oscar Wilde. "I saw a parallel between the ways Oscar Wilde was attacking the romantic tradition that preceded him, inverting these precious notions of the artist in nature and the direct, authentic expression of the soul. He asserted the external, the artificial, the surface elements of personality and pose and made that the place you looked for meaning as opposed to this notion of depth.

I saw that echoed in the glam era." In Velvet Goldmine, Haynes anchors the Wildean thread to the enigmatic figure of Jack Fairy, a Lindsay Kemp in a cameo appearance as Slade's influential transvestite uncle. The film's sinister conclusions about Brian Slade's true character and motives are, no doubt, among the reasons Bowie refused producers (chiefly HF.M's Michael Stipe) access to his music. "I never did have a discussion with Bowie," Haynes sighs. "I sent a fax to him originally, introducing the concept and the rest of the communication was through Michael. I'll never truly know what motivated his decision." Although stock in Bowie's company will probably soar regardless, his shoes on the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack are admirably filled by vintage Hoxy Music, T-liex, Brian Kno and Steve Harley tunes, both original recordings and covers.

There's also new material in the glam mould from Pulp, Grant Lee Buffalo and others. Haynes's narrative deepens the blur between reality and invention. It's told in a style recalling Citizen Kane, 10 years after Brian Slade's rock'n'roll suicide on stage. New York Herald reporter Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) sets out to find his former idol, piecing the story together through flashbacks, largely narrated by Slade's former wife Mandy (Ton! Collette as an Angle Bowie-type complete with schizoid, trans-Atlantic TqM Haynes turned his fantasies about tits uSm rock era into a ISn ki wNch the real and mads-up C(Oe. IVttHAR DWYER aSows hbnsell to sink into the Velvet BoUmhe Todd Haynes was too young to queue in platform boots outside London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July, 1973.

He wasn't in the crowd in feather boa, orange hair and lipstick when bisexual alien-rock-star Ziggy Stardust announced his shock retirement from the stage that night. It wasn't until the end of the 70s, when the future film maker was in college, that he started listening to the early work of David Howie and Hoxy Music, reading and fantasising about the glam rock movement that flowered in the UK between 71 and 74. In that dream state between history and romance began an obsession that would culminate in Haynes's film, Velvet Goldmine. "I definitely responded to the theatrical address of glam rock and its almost melodramatic tone," reflects the US writer-director of Safe and Poison. "It excited me musically, and Bowie's procession of masks and personas was alluring and captivating but still retained a dangerousness maybe because glam wasn't subject to the recycling that you see in other rock moments." Indeed, Velvet Goldmine depicts a bizarre, curiously isolated development in pop culture that even today requires a leap of faith to understand.

Haynes turns real figures of the period into II' THE CITY Subscribe to City AH Houn Magazine for regular upditct on ntw, unique Interesting things to do the Chy. i (Includes bonus otter AH ctrd). Ph: (03) 9454 2288 lBtekMtiuei Ride Get Date: Tel: Date: Tel: Enjoy Twilight Stroll Special Walk Take a relaxing and rejuvenating stroll amongst the beautiful gardens during the quiet Spring twilight hours as a guide informs you of botanic secrets. Date: 10, 18 26 November, 6pm Venue: Royal Botanic Gardens, City Tel: 9252 2300 (bookings are essential) Countdown -The Musical Comedy Get ready to rock with this exciting new musical based on the successful pop show of the 70s and 80s Countdown. Date: Starts 12 November Venue: The Comedy Club, 360 Lygon St, Carlton Tel: 9654 4880 Live Jazz at Bar Deco Enjoy Bar Deco's bar-like ambience amongst the cool sounds of great jazz.

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