Bowie: "Get your own pig!"

February 2, 2013 9:39 AM

"There are reasons why this film is obscure. It is, in the most charitable possible evaluation, a mess: Bowie has described it as "my 32 Elvis films rolled into one." And yet life on that ever-dwindling island of not-on-region-one DVD films is a harsh fate for any film and particularly for this one, which is at least as interesting as its cast suggests and a good deal more. You don't need to dig out the VHS player to watch Mick Jagger run an agency of gigolos in The Man From Elysian Fields—you shouldn't have to do so to watch Bowie play one. " David Bowie's Lost 70s-era Weimar Berlin Movie: Just a Gigalo.
posted by The Whelk (17 comments total)

I've always thought that Bowie's blonde drag in the Boys Keep Swinging video was his homage to Dietrich.
posted by brujita at 10:33 AM on February 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

whoa how had I never seen that video before?
posted by The Whelk at 10:55 AM on February 2, 2013

I read about this and image-Googled David Hemmings, on whom I had a crush when I was in my 20s. That was a bad idea.
posted by pxe2000 at 11:20 AM on February 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wow, Hemmings went from Blow Up to Puffed Out.
posted by bendybendy at 11:57 AM on February 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oof. Never, ever where-are-they-now your teenage crushes, male or female. The few times it goes well will be drowned in a sea of "Uugh!"
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:25 PM on February 2, 2013

I think there's a BBC news segment circa the Stage tour where this film is spoken of in highly optimistic terms, and most poignantly, they speak to a tux-wearing fan at the show who had already adapated his look to Bowie's character in the film, as though it were the "next" Bowie incarnation after The Thin White Duke, et al.
posted by anazgnos at 12:28 PM on February 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yes, well, some Bowie fans ran with that one.
posted by Grangousier at 2:10 PM on February 2, 2013

Oof. Never,ever where-are-they-now your teenage crushes,male or female.

Appropriately enough for the thread, David Bowie is the exception to that rule.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:31 PM on February 2, 2013 [4 favorites]

David Bowie's dada tux.
posted by zippy at 6:06 PM on February 2, 2013

If you want to watch this obscure film, it's on Youtube.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:14 PM on February 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

David Bowie's dada tux.

Did Klaus Nomi know David Bowie was raiding his closet?
posted by Redfield at 9:13 PM on February 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh, dear, do I have to watch this one again, to see if I get something out of it this time? I almost fell asleep the first time, honestly.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:43 PM on February 2, 2013

Sure, MCMikeNamara, I was aware that Bowie is one of the rare exceptions as I wrote it. But they are super rare.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:14 PM on February 2, 2013

Did Klaus Nomi know David Bowie was raiding his closet?

Nomi was so impressed with the plastic quasi-tuxedo suit that Bowie wore during "The Man Who Sold the World" that he commissioned one to be made for himself.
posted by Grangousier at 11:38 PM on February 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

David Bowie, Klaus Nomi, and Joey Arias on Saturday Night Live
posted by speicus at 12:06 AM on February 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

My god, speicus, everything about that video is perfect, down to the tiny pipe in Bowie's mouth in the card that introduces the video and even the fact that Martin Sheen (probably best known at that point in time for Apocalypse Now) is hosting. And that keyboard player, who keeps turning to glare at the camera when it's on him as if he's watching a monitor to catch when that happens! Perfect.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:24 AM on February 3, 2013

I watched Just a Gigolo a few months ago on YouTube and found it very disappointing. Poor acting from most - though how much was down to the directing I'm not quite sure. And not enough Bowie in a state of undress, given what one may expect from the subject. But the whole film was a bit of a mess, and too serious to be so bad it's good.
The man himself described the film as "cack" a few years later.

The German version is longer and apparently better than the English language one, but I haven't seen it.
posted by Antonomasia at 10:09 AM on February 16, 2013