Bowie.

As a few of you know, David Bowie is my favorite recording artist of all time. Not only do I appreciate his music, he is one of my greatest inspirations as an icon. In my junior year of high school, the year I also decided I wanted to go into the film and television industry, I was at the peak of my obsession with Bowie. My friends made me a Ziggy Stardust cake for my birthday, I dressed up as him for Halloween, contributed to his fan sites, had a fish named Ziggy, watched hundreds of youtube videos, and watched a few of the movies he has appeared in. Since I have been listening to him practically non-stop for the past two weeks, I felt the need to talk about him so I will discuss his appearances in movies and television. As you know from a previous post, David Bowie was in Labyrinth, a film that was directed by Jim Henson and released in 1986. Some of the other movies he has been in include The Prestige (2006), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and The Hunger (1983). David Bowie also appeared in a television show years later with the same name in 1999.
The first time I saw him in The Prestige I barely recognized him at first! Before seeing the film somehow I had no idea that he was going to be in it. One of my friends had to say, "Hey Danielle, who is that?!" in order for me to come to the realization and scream at the top of my lungs because that is what happens when I see him unexpectedly.
For the others, however, I was expecting to see him when I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger. Sadly, The Man Who Fell to Earth took me awhile to get through. For some reason I kept getting interrupted while watching it so I had to pause it quite a bit, but also some of the time I actually had little idea what was going on because it was hard to follow. Since David Bowie was very fascinated with aliens and even adopted an alien persona, Ziggy Stardust in 1972, with his concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, he was asked to play this alien character called Thomas Jerome Newton who is an alien who has 'fallen to Earth' from his home planet Anthea, which is suffering from a draught. On Earth he takes the form of a human and becomes head of a large technology corporation. One scene that I remember I enjoyed in particular was the scene where Bowie's character, Thomas, is watching about 30 television sets at once as a way to soak up knowledge about the Earth. I would really like to watch this movie again and I am ashamed I have only seen it once. It is a cult classic and I am proud to say that I have one of the original promotional film posters.
In The Hunger, Miriam, a centuries-old vampire played by Catherine Deneuve, has converted her lover John, played by David Bowie, into a vampire. Unfortunately, John unexpectedly begins to age and waste away one day. Miriam tries to find the source of this problem since this has happened to her lovers before. Although David Bowie is mainly just in the first half of the movie, I found the movie quite enjoyable because of the performances of Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and its Neo-Gothic style.
Although I have only seen one episode from the series, the television show of the same name was completely different from the film. In the episode that I saw there were no vampires just David Bowie playing this genius artist, Julian Priest, who had gone crazy. I must say it was a very disturbing episode for me at the time when I watched it in high school.
David Bowie, I will admit, is not the greatest actor, but I do highly recommend his music.