http://www.missmoss.co.za/2017/05/03/david-bowie-unseen/

FILM 1535: THE HUNGER

TRIVIA: David Bowie said that, in order to make his voice suitably hoarse for when he aged so drastically in the movie, he stood on the George Washington Bridge every night and screamed all the punk rock songs he knew.

In The Celluloid Closet (1995), the 1995 documentary about the history of homosexuality in film, actress Susan Sarandon said that the screenplay for The Hunger (1983) originally called for her to be demonstrably drunk in the lead-up to her sex scene with Catherine Deneuve, but Sarandon asked for it to be changed so that her character had only a single sip of wine and then spilled the rest of the glass. She said she wanted to make it clear that her character was choosing to have sex with Miriam instead of doing it because of the alcohol, and also because "you wouldn't have to get drunk to bed Catherine Deneuve, I don't care what your sexual history to that point had been".

David Bowie actually learned to play the cello for his music scenes.

Tony Scott discovered the rock group Bauhaus in a London nightclub and decided to put them in the movie.

In an interview with The Daily Beast in late July, 2014, Susan Sarandon revealed that she had an affair with David Bowie while the two were working on this film.

One day during filming, costume designer Milena Canonero, who is famously dedicated to her craft, disappeared and was nowhere to be found. It was discovered eventually that she had flown to Rome to purchase fabric for a handkerchief David Bowie is supposed to wear. Unable to find fabric she liked in London, Canonero had flown to Rome at her own expense to find the fabric she needed instead.

The age of female vampire Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) was six thousand years. The amount of time she had been lovers with John Blaylock (David Bowie) was three hundred years.

Though set in New York, nearly all of the picture was shot in London.

The 19th Century mansion seen in the movie was a house located in the affluent London suburb of Mayfair.

The film spurred a short-lived TV series of the same name The Hunger (1997) which ran for around three years. The series, first broadcast fourteen years after this movie, utilized the same title and vampire lore, but had no plot or character connections with this film.

Director Tony Scott's first theatrical feature.

CAMEO: Willem Dafoe: As a youth at a phone booth.

FILM 1527: THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH 

TRIVIA: Costume designer May Routh has said that David Bowie was so thin that some of his the outfits he was fitted with were boys' clothes.

Between takes and when not filming, lead actor David Bowie composed songs; sketched drawings; wrote short stories; planned an autobiography to be titled "The Return of the Thin White Duke"; filmed on a 16mm newsreel camera that director Nicolas Roeg had given him; and read books, such as a biography of silent film comedian Buster Keaton. This was in preparation for a then being developed biopic of Keaton whom Bowie was to play.

Candy Clark also played the wife on the other planet.

David Bowie said of this film in Kurt Loder's article "Straight Time" published in the 12th May 1983 edition of 'Rolling Stone' magazine: "I'm so pleased I made that [movie], but I didn't really know what was being made at all". Further, in the article "Bowie at the Bijou" published in the April 1982 edition of 'Movieline' magazine, Bowie said: "I just threw my real self into that movie as I was at that time. It was the first thing I'd ever done. I was virtually ignorant of the established procedure [of making movies], so I was going a lot on instinct, and my instinct was pretty dissipated. I just learned the lines for that day and did them the way I was feeling. It wasn't that far off. I actually was feeling as alienated as that character was. It was a pretty natural performance. ... a good exhibition of somebody literally falling apart in front of you. I was totally insecure with about 10 grams [of cocaine] a day in me. I was stoned out of my mind from beginning to end". Moreover, in the same article, Bowie said of his relationship with director Nicolas Roeg: " . . . we got on rather well. I think I was fulfilling what he needed from me for that role. I wasn't disrupting . . . I wasn't disrupted. In fact, I was very eager to please. And amazingly enough, I was able to carry out everything I was asked to do. I was quite willing to stay up as long as anybody".

Toward the end of the film, in the record store, Bryce walks past a display for David Bowie's "Young Americans" album.

One of a number of films that director Nicolas Roeg made with a lead star from the music business. The movies include Performance (1970) [Mick Jagger], Bad Timing (1980) [Art Garfunkel] and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) [David Bowie].

The production had to deal with a boisterous "Hells' Angels" motorcycle gang who were camping nearby to the shoot whilst filming a scene at an old Aztec burial ground in the New Mexico desert.

Apparently, David Bowie was unable to work on the movie for two days because he had drunk some "bad milk". Bowie saw "some gold liquid swimming around in shiny swirls inside the glass". According to the 'Bowie Golden Years' website, Bowie is "still to this day unsure of what actually happened. No trace of any foreign element was detected in tests though there were six witnesses who said they had seen the strange matter in the bottom of the glass. Already in an extremely fragile state, Bowie felt the whole location had 'very bad Karma'".

David Bowie worked on a soundtrack for the film that was rejected. Many of the ideas he had for the soundtrack would later be utilized in his 1977 album 'Low'.

Nicolas Roeg originally wanted to cast the 6-foot-10 author Michael Crichton as Thomas Jerome Newton.

FILM 1462: LABYRINTH

TRIVIA: The various things that Jareth does with the crystal balls (rolling them around his arms and in his hands and so forth) are not camera tricks or any other kind of special effect. They are actually done by choreographer Michael Moschen, who is an accomplished juggler. Moschen was actually crouched behind Bowie with his arm(s) replacing Bowie's. Unlike a typical Muppet performance, however, he had no video screen to view his performance. In other words, his manipulations were performed completely blind.

The owl in the title sequence is computer generated - the first attempt at a photo-realistic CGI animal character in a feature film.

The full costume for Hoggle was lost for some time. It turns out that it was lost on an airplane and later bought from the airline by 'The Unclaimed Baggage Center', a store in Scottsboro Alabama. It is now on display in their museum.

In the scene where Toby is seated on Jareth's lap, the baby has a fixed and hypnotized look off-camera as Jareth murmurs evilly into his ear. In fact, Toby screamed so much during the many takes of this scene, that something had to be done to keep him quiet. Fortunately, a crew member had a glove-puppet Sooty. For the duration of Jareth's speech, David Bowie had the Sooty puppet on one hand (out of shot) gently wiggling to distract Toby. The child was entranced, hence the hypnotic stare, and the perfect silence.

The "Dance Magic" scene consisted of over 48 puppets, 52 puppeteers, and 8 people in goblin costumes (as revealed by Brian Henson in the "Inside the Labyrinth" special).

The sources of the characters can be seen in Sarah's bedroom at the beginning of the movie. She has a stuffed animal that looks like Sir Didymus on her dresser, a doll that looks like Ludo on the shelves next to her door (along with the book "Where the Wild Things Are" as the camera pans across her desk), a Firey doll on a shelves next to her bed, bookends with with Goblins reminiscent of Hoggle on her dresser, and figurine of Jareth on the right hand side of her desk. After you see the Hoggle bookend, there is a scrapbook shown. It shows newspaper clippings of Sarah's famous actress mom with another man, David Bowie. In addition, the dress that she wears in the ballroom scene can also been seen adorning the miniature doll in her music box, and a wooden maze game on her dresser next to her books is reminiscent of the hedge section of the Labyrinth. There is also a small painting on her wall that depicts a contraption much like the one operated by the "Cleaners" that Sarah and Hoggle had to escape from. And there is a copy of the famous picture by M.C. Esher which is used in the room where the final confrontation with Jareth occurs.

Final feature film directed by Jim Henson.

In the DVD version, there are hidden faces in seven scenes. In general, they resemble the head that Jareth leans against before giving Hoggle the peach (David Bowie's actual face at that time). The faces can be found: Upper right corner of the [stone] maze, just after the worm shakes its head and says "If she'd have kept on going down that way..." To the right of the screen, after the rung under Hoggle breaks, as he watches it fall. Upper left corner of the hedge maze, as Hoggle is muttering "Get through the labyrinth, get through the labyrinth, one thing's for sure... " Lower right corner of the wall bordering the Bog of Eternal Stench, just after the ledge breaks under Sarah and Hoggle for the first time. During the wide shot of the hedge maze in the middle left on the stony floor just after the hat says, "It's so stimulating being your hat." In the forest as Sir Didymus says "We should reach the castle well before day."

David Bowie did the voice (gurgling) for the baby in the song "Magic Dance".

Sarah's dog "Merlin" is also used for Sir Didymus' mount "Ambrosius". In Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain, Merlin is called "Merlin Ambrosius".

Michael Jackson was strongly considered to play Jareth. Jim Henson preferred Sting, until his kids convinced him that David Bowie would have more lasting appeal.

After solving the problem of the guards who lie or tell the truth, Sarah falls into an oubliette, which Hoggle describes: "It's a place where you put people...to forget about 'em!" Oubliettes were a type of dungeon where the only entry was through an opening high in the ceiling. To leave an oubliette was practically impossible without external assistance. The word "oubliette" comes from the French word "oublier' meaning 'to forget". The basic premise was that an oubliette was a dungeon for prisoners that the captor(s) wished to forget. Prisoners were often left to starve to death in an oubliette.

Hoggle consisted of 1 actor inside the suit: actress Shari Weiser, along with 4 puppeteers led by Brian Henson controlling 18 motors inside the face rig. Manipulating a mechanical mitt on his right hand, Henson controlled Hoggle's jaw movements and provided the voice. Another puppeteer provided further lip movements with another mitt. The third member of the team used a fingertip joystick lever to control Hoggle's eyes and eyelids. The fourth used a similar mechanism to animate the eyebrows and a foot pedal to control the skin around Hoggle's eyes. The puppeteers had to rehearse together for weeks in order to anticipate each other's movements.

Director Trademark: Jim Henson:  [milk bottles]  During the Goblin Battle scene, while Sarah and the gang opens the door to the Goblin Castle, you can see milk bottles near the door.

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