Writer-director Todd Haynes created an original and visually stunning faux-documentary charting the rise and fall of a fictional glam-rock star – clearly using David Bowie as a role model, although Bowie vetoed the use of any of his music in the film.
Starting out with a reference to the poet Oscar Wilde, Velvet Goldmine is set mostly in Britain at the height of the 1970s Glam Rock era, where Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) takes the charts by storm.
Slade is involved in a unique love triangle; married to an American woman named Mandy (Toni Collette) but having an affair with a rising rock star named Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), who is so original onstage that he upstages Slade.
Unable to cope with the fame and fortune, he fakes his own death onstage. When his fans find out it was a hoax he is finished, his drug use increases, his record sales plummet, and so he disappears from view.
Years later on the 10th anniversary of Slade’s faked death, a journalist named Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) is asked to investigate the Brian Slade phenomenon.
The film then examines Brian’s life in a series of flashbacks and shock revelations.
Director Todd Haynes and soundtrack co-producers Randall Poster and Michael Stipe enlisted a dream team of Bowie-inspired rockers, and others steeped in the glitz and grit of the early Seventies to provide a suitable soundtrack.
Art-punk eccentrics Shudder to Think brilliantly evoked the Ziggy Stardust era on Hot One and Ballad of Maxwell Demon, while the Venus in Furs – led by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood – expertly inhabited Bryan Ferry’s high camp on a handful of Roxy Music covers.
Elsewhere, Wylde Rattz – a supergroup featuring members of the Stooges, Sonic Youth, and Mudhoney – backed Iggy-embodying co-star Ewan McGregor on a raucous cover of TV Eye, bringing the proto-punk era yowling back to life.
Curt Wild Ewan McGregor
Brian Slade
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Arthur Stuart
Christian Bale
Mandy Slade
Toni Collette
Jerry Devine
Eddie Izzard
Shannon
Emily Woof
Director
Todd Haynes
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Starting out with a reference to the poet Oscar Wilde, Velvet Goldmine is set mostly in Britain at the height of the 1970s Glam Rock era, where Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) takes the charts by storm.
Director Todd Haynes and soundtrack co-producers Randall Poster and Michael Stipe enlisted a dream team of Bowie-inspired rockers, and others steeped in the glitz and grit of the early Seventies to provide a suitable soundtrack.
