Rocket Man: On David Bowie’s Fall to Earth

Elon Musk, a canny combo of Thomas Edison and P.T. Barnum, has done it again. His SpaceX has just launched from Cape Canaveral the Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket. The biggest news for science geeks is that two of the three Falcon first-stage rocket boosters were successfully returned to earth, to be reused in future. But the rest of us are probably more keen on the rocket’s payload: Musk’s own cherry-red Tesla, complete with a helmeted dummy in the driver’s seat. And, yes, the car’s audio system was said to be blasting out David Bowie’s “ Space Oddity.”  Ground Control to Major Tom, indeed!

It’s a lovely coincidence that I’ve just finished reading my colleague Susan Compo’s new Earthbound: David Bowie and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Susan’s book gave me the opportunity to explore the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film that some cinéastes remember with affection, some with puzzlement, others with major annoyance. To my surprise, I learned that the film’s source novel is by Walter Tevis, far better known for a much more down-to-earth work, The Hustler. That novel, of course, inspired the award-winning 1961 classic in which Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, and George C. Scott risk their souls in a pool hall. Though The Man Who Fell to Earth contains undeniable science fiction elements, it shares with The Hustler Tevis’s interest in men  (whether earthly or from outer space) who destroy themselves through excess. The otherworldly character played by Bowie -- an alien confined to earth because he can’t find his way back to his home planet -- is in the course of the film irredeemably corrupted by the intoxicating things (and people) he encounters in his new earthly surroundings.  

The British director of The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nicolas Roeg, was not without experience coaxing screen performances out of rock stars. He made his directorial debut with Performance, about a bizarre encounter between an East London gangster on the lam (James Fox) and a fading musical idol (Mick Jagger) bent on returning to his former glory. He also helmed an admired Australian film, Walkabout, and just prior to The Man Who Fell to Earth he made a major splash with the enigmatic 1973 thriller, Don’t Look Now. Starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as bereaved parents mourning their drowned little girl, it is perhaps best remembered for its eerie atmosphere and frank sex scenes. (Sexual frankness, including no-holds-barred nudity, also marks the screen encounters between Bowie and earthling Candy Clark in The Man Who Fell to Earth.) 

A Roeg film is always visually striking. Roeg started out as a cinematographer, working second unit on Lawrence of Arabia and taking charge of the inspired cinematography for one of Roger Corman’s very best Poe films, The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Author Susan Compo, who seems to have spoken to all the living survivors of The Man Who Fell to Earth, emphasizes the impact made on the filmmakers by the picturesque state of New Mexico, where the film was almost entirely shot. As a “right-to-work” state, New Mexico was able to welcome an almost entirely British film crew without concern about union restrictions. The state’s stark landscapes, picturesque mining towns, and general sense of isolation work brilliantly, especially the use of White Sands National Monument to simulate the arid reaches of the Bowie character’s home planet. 

Still, in narrative terms the film doesn’t always make sense, partly due to Roeg’s insistence on avoiding strict chronology. Bowie, though, makes a perfect alien, with his off-camera excesses doubtlessly contributing to his otherworldly air. 

Super Bowl LII: Touchdowns for Movie Fans

So we’ve survived another Super Bowl Sunday, one that was more exciting than most. No, I’m not much of a football fan, though I like to look in on big national sporting events from time to time. Like most people, I generally find myself rooting for the underdog, and so the victory of the Philadelphia Eagles—following lots of twists and turns on the field—of course appealed to my sense of drama. (I especially liked the sleight of hand that had Eagles replacement quarterback Nick Foles sneaking the pigskin into the possession of a teammate, then moving down the field to catch the pass and run it into the end zone for a touchdown.) 

The Eagles’ victory, the team’s first national championship since 1960, also served to remind me of one of my favorite recent movies, David O. Russell’s 2012 domestic comedy, Silver Linings Playbook. If you’ve seen the film you remember the dynamic within the Philadelphia household of a troubled young man, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), who has managed to extricate himself from a mental institution and come home in search of his estranged wife. His father, Pat Sr. (played by a predictably intense Robert De Niro) rules the roost, and the focus of his energies is the local football team. This means the entire family unit must wear Eagles jerseys, participate in earnest pre-game rituals, and otherwise ensure good luck for the team. Things come to a head during an outing to Lincoln Financial Field for a home game. The famously rabid Eagles fans are out in force, well-lubricated and slathered in green paint, to cheer on their boys. Inevitably, the younger Pat gets into a fracas with some especially obnoxious (and racist) fans, and is hauled off by the cops. Which leads Pat’s father to make a bet (or “parlay”) he cannot afford to lose. Somehow it all ends on a positive note, having proven that sports fanatics and romance fanatics are not so very different after all. (Especially when there’s a cagey but complicated young woman like Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany around.)

A surprising number of people tune in to the Super Bowl for its commercials, and as always I was struck by the number of elaborate Hollywood-related ads that popped up on my TV screen. A new twist was the Netflix gimmick of surprising viewers with the news that a new sci fi film, The Cloverfield Paradox, would screen immediately after the game. (I didn’t watch it, but commentators seemed to agree that the industry was trying to hustle out this follow-up to the well-received Cloverfield before word got out that the film was pretty bad.) Some lively ads used familiar actors in unexpected ways – like Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman rapping on behalf of a new Doritos flavor, and Rebel Wilson and a Hannibal Lecter-ish Anthony Hopkins (among others) replacing the voice of Alexa. Elsewhere, Jeff Goldblum relived Jurassic Park’s scary T-Rex chase (complete with John Williams music) in a commercial for Jeep. Quite amusing was an apparent movie promo, featuring Danny McBride and Chris Hemsworth introducing what seems to be a Son of Crocodile Dundee flick. McBride’s dressed for the part of Dundee’s offspring, and he covers a lot of terrain before realizing the truth: “It’s not a movie. It’s a commercial.” Yes, this spot promoting Australian tourism makes its point about the charms of the land down under, with tongue firmly in cheek. 

 But I can’t say I feel good about the sonorous voice of the Reverend Martin Luther King essentially shilling for Dodge Ram trucks. Does King’s 50-year legacy deserve this?

Here's a compilation of some of the most memorable 2018 Super Bowl commercials:

  

Willam Fox: Twentieth-Century Man

When I was growing up in West L.A., Twentieth Century-Fox Studio was just down the road from my suburban neighborhood. It always seemed incredibly glamorous to me to pass the studio gates, catching a glimpse of the make-believe inside. (For the longest time, you could see the Old New York sets used in Hello, Dolly!, an overblown musical in which many of my neighbors got hired to fill out the ranks of parade-watchers for a humongous production number.)

For all my interest in the studio, I was never clear on the Fox part of its name. Now, however, I feel like an expert. Of course, the REAL expert is Vanda Krefft, a fellow Santa Monican who’s my colleague in BIO, the Biographers International Organization. Vanda, a longtime entertainment journalist, was lucky enough to know Angela Fox Dunn, a niece of William Fox and what Vanda describes as “the keeper of the flame.” Dunn was the one who started Vanda on her quest to discover everything about William Fox—how he lived, how he worked, what he contributed.  In Vanda’s telling, Fox was so important to the early development of the film industry that she calls her book The Man Who Made the Movies. That’s a big claim, given that Fox was part of the era that also included such major figures as Adolph Zukor and Louis B. Mayer. But the list of his accomplishments, as the head of the Fox Film Corporation, is remarkable. Among other achievements, he introduced the first Hollywood sex symbol, Theda Bara, gave a start to director John Ford, and produced the first Hollywood feature with an (almost) all-black cast,  He also controlled a vast chain of Fox theatres, pioneered the development of foreign markets for American movies, and  spearheaded the development of sound-on-film, a technique that (in preference to the sound-on-disk method used by Warner Bros. for The Jazz Singer) quickly became the industry standard. At the very first Academy Awards event, five of  the twelve honors handed out were connected with such Fox films as Sunrise and Seventh Heaven.

Despite all his grand successes within the film industry (he personally received an Academy Award for producing Sunrise), Fox was not a contented man. Like the other  early moguls of the film industry, he was a Jewish immigrant who had overcome poverty, anti-semitism, and family misfortune by dint of a fiercely competitive spirit. Though he adored his wife, he ruled his household with an iron fist. Among his fellow filmmakers he made lifelong enemies. The same energy that led him to high achievements also drove him to overreach, and ultimately landed him in deep financial trouble. Though he had always been a man of strong moral and religious conviction, his desperate efforts to right his sinking ship resulted in actions that were frankly dishonest. In 1942, at the age of 64, he was sentenced to prison, while other equally guilty parties apparently got off scot-free. In the meantime, his namesake companies passed into the hands of others, shysters who knew nothing about the movie business and quickly drove them into the ground. (One of many short-sighted goofs: refusing to extend the contract of the young John Wayne) . Fox Films finally survived only by linking with an upstart company, Twentieth Century Pictures. 

 If the story of Fox’s rise is an exhilarating one, his fall is sad indeed. But Vanda Krefft (through her diligent research and her lucid writing style) makes us care about this flawed but memorable man. Her book’s subtitle—The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox—is apt indeed