Velvet Goldmine. The Cult Classic that Almost was.
70's glam has come back into the mainstream at the most perfect time. The rock and roll and LGBTQ+ aesthetic has been adopted by chart topping artists all along the sexual spectrum. Although glam has existed proudly in within queer communities for decades, it took an entirely new form when introduced to music through artists and groups such as Little Richard, Elton John, David Bowie, Queen and The Rolling Stones. It saw its most mainstream exposure in the start of the 70s up until the second half of the decade. When it definitely did not see any significant interest was during the punk, grunge, and R&B dominated years of the late 90s-- yet this did not deter director Todd Haynes from creating "Velvet Goldmine'' an unabashed ode to 70s glam rock and sexuality, in a time were neither were all too popular (to put it kindly).
The movie stars Jonathon Rhyse Meyers as the fictional David Bowie-adjacent rockstar Brian Slade, Ewan McGregor as punk rocker Curt Wilde, "Hereditary's" Toni Collette as eccentric wife Mandy Slade, and a young Christian Bale as a teenager exploring his sexuality during the glam era. A cast that would spend the next two decades proving the potential they showed in this film.
Although, the focus of this movie is less on the larger than life characters and much more in the music. The soundtrack is a personal favorite of my own. It includes 70s classics such as Gary Glitter's "Oh Yeah", T-Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" and Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love". But more uniquely, it includes original written and sung by Radiohead's Thom Yorke for the main character Brian Slade, as well as covers of 70s songs and other original content by a handful of Y2K bands.
When I first watched this movie, I did not recognize much of the music that the characters were performing and assumed that they were all original songs. Then-- what is now my favorite scene happened. A young Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhyse Meyers) is booed off a stage in 1969, as the audience is simply not ready for his feminine sound and appearance. He storms backstage and eventually out to the back of the crowd to leave. Suddenly, Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) is introduced with the subtlety of shattered glass. He then lets out the war cry of The Stooges' "T.V. Eye" before his band The Ratz plays it out.
This is when I realized that this movie adopted many real life iconic songs as the creation of the movie's characters; something I had never seen done-- or at least done well in a movie, and it mesmerized me. In this movie there was no David Bowie, there was only Brian Slade. There was no Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, or Iggy Pop; their energy became the restless anger and stage presence of Curt Wilde.
The movie “Velvet Goldmine” is like finding the most gorgeous piece of costume jewellery in your grandmother's house. It's so clearly not meant to be the real thing, but it's so beautifully made that it's easy to mistake it for something much more recognizable. The 13k emerald earring that “Velvet Goldmine” is so close to being? A David Bowie biopic.
Although Bowie's estate has consistently denied the rights to his music, the parallels to his life and Brian Slade's life are quite clear, from the makeup and outfits that are directly meant to be Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" (which is replaced by Slade's "Maxwell Demon" persona), to his androgynous looks and chaotic love life.
Though the movie's most compelling storyline is one that is based off of an equally compelling love affair between David Bowie and Mick Jagger. As previously mentioned, there is no David Bowie or Mick Jagger in that canon of the film, so Brian Slade's relationship with Curt Wilde tells the story vicariously. The film mentions and explores sexuality openly, openly refers to Brian Slade as a bisexual pop star and shows the open relationship Slade had with both men and women while with his wife-- which David Bowie in fact had with his wife Angie. While many insecure fans may paint the relationship Bowie had with Mick Jagger as either fiction or a close friendship at most, in "Velvet Goldmine" the relationship between the two androgynous rockstars is very open and twisted into a media stunt. In one particular scene, Curt crashes an interview to bring his lover some chardonnay on a silver platter. He compliments Slade sarcastically but sincerely, before Slade quips "And they say it isn't natural!"
This movie belongs on a shelf next to “Rocketman”, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Cabaret”; though the dust on this glam rock Shakespeare play would be significantly thicker. Despite having arguably more charisma and glitter than the previously mentioned films, it's stayed as just barely a cult classic in a particular circle of film fans. Perhaps it was the openness of discussing bisexuality and LGBTQ+ topics which was seen as offsetting deep into the 2000s, or the unpopular setting of the early 70s glam rock scene for a film made during an era that rejected outrageous colors and garments made from outrages fabrics which had dominated the previous decades.
Its relatively obscure status aside, it is an important film in the LGBTQ+ canon, for its daringness to so unapologetically explore queer characters and homosexuality during a time when most aspects of its culture were frowned heavily upon, as well as exploring bisexuality when the "you're either gay or straight" mentality was dominant.