I am watching Velvet Goldmine right now...

[permetaform]

AND I AM SO CONFUSED.

Is this the feeling people get when first watching anime?

Well, and it also reminds me of the distinctly confused feeling mixed with mild boredness born of excessive wtf-ness that I'd also felt in my avant-garde film class.

I mean, I read the wiki and I'm STILL confused. o.0 thank god there's pretty people who frequently get naked.

[edit] ::ponders:: this might also be because my musical background is more 'classical' than 'rock', I know that glam rock in general goes whoooosh over my head.

Comments

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I've never seen Velvet Goldmine. I assumed, from what little I knew, that it was about pretty people getting naked.

[permetaform]

it's reaaally really freaking bizarre. Like, and there isn't even enough nakedness (semi or full) for me to call it a pwp. o.0

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

I'm confused as to how you're confused.

[permetaform]

it...looks like they're trying to do...I dunno, SOMETHING and I kinda just feel like I'm scratching my head.

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

...Nope, still confused! Here, here's my version of what's going on, how's that?

So. When Todd Haynes (the director) was a little bitty Haines, he had a raging hardon for Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and the whole eyeliner-wearing, hair-lacquering lot of 'em. He grew up to make movies (including Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which everyone should see), and for one of his movies, he decided to write a homage to Davie Bowie and Iggy Pop.

Neither David Bowie nor Iggy Pop were particularly thrilled with this idea, seeing as how the premise had them snogging on a regular basis. Bowie even went so far as to refuse Haynes rights to any of his fifty billion songs for the movie.

So, Haynes did what any fanboy would do: he took the story to just this side of satire, renamed the main characters, and ended up with a pretty pretty fairy-tale-esque version of what the glam scene was like, from the very beginning, all the way through it's death at the hands of Reaganomics. And, like a good fanboy, he even included a self-insert. Hi, Mr. Bale!

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

And oh, was he a pretty, pretty self-insert. ;)

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

He waaaas... although, watching Christian Bale jerk off like a teenager? Not so much.

[text-isle.livejournal.com]

Uncomfortable scene, yeah, definitely not pretty. But I thought Bale's acting in that scene was great.

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

Completely fantastic, I totally agree.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Any idea where to see "Superstar"? SINCE YOU'RE HERE.

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

WHY YES, AKTUALLIE! (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=622130510713940545)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Oh internets. I luv you.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I felt the same way when I saw the movie - and I still feel the same way about anime. My brain is wired for traditional western story arcs!

[permetaform]

I mean, I think that the traditional story arc is there for a *reason*, the escalation to a peak and then a fall happens everywhere in nature and like, even when things are out of temporal sequence there's still *patterns*...

And like, see I LIKE crack, but...it just...::TILTS HEAD:: I can't make heads or tails of it. It's style reminds me of Monty Python and Eternal Sunshine and of various types of dream sequences and yet...yet I can't find it funny or serious or ?? wah. ::brainhurts::

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

*nods* Exactly. In terms of naked!EwanMcGregor movies, I actually found The Pillow Book more absorbing and easier to follow, which seems to be the opposite of most people.

[aliaswestgate.livejournal.com]

It's glam. *grins* I was never really into it as a genre of rock, but i understood it. Half the fun of it, apparrently was the getting naked in the background of things and then implying it on stage. The fangirls ate it up then, and they still do now at the thought of it. Part of the whole reason 'GLAM' is what it is. Rap is in the middle of it's own glam period right now--but ye gods. It's too homophobic to want the ambiguous and not so ambiguous aspect of it. *makes a face* Such a loss... About all they've got right is the bling and that variation of excessive pretty. But no bed hopping unless it's between the sheets with girls.

Confusing yes, but i find most confusing things fun. *shrugs and grins*

[permetaform]

huh, rap being in a state of GLAM does explain alot. Although methinks I just don't particularly get glam in general. ::still confuddled::

[aliaswestgate.livejournal.com]

Pretty illusions with music, that about covers it in my mind. Granted, David Bowie was also smack right in the middle of the Glam period. He lived on the ambiguity along with his incredible songs. Pretty illusions, a dash of storytelling and a lot of ambiguity. That's the glam idea for me.

[permetaform]

so.....it's a metaphor? o.0

[klia.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge VG fan, and have seen it a gazillion times, so I wish I could help, but I'm not sure what you're not understanding. It's somewhat surreal (the pin that was supposedly passed down from Oscar Wilde, the spaceship stuff, the very Orwellian present day scenes), but mostly it's about an ambitious singer (Brian Slade) who's trying to find a way to fame by having a unique persona, ends up sort of ripping off another singer's (Jack Fairy) originality, and rockets to the top of the charts largely because of his outrageousness and open sexuality. From the moment Brian sees Curt, he has a thing for him, and eventually they get together, with Brian flaunting their relationship to generate press. Eventually, Brian's ambition divides them, and he later realizes fame isn't all it's cracked up to be, so he fakes his own death/fall from grace, and re-emerges years later as corporate-created superstar Tommy Stone (his original persona has been buried and, hopefully, forgotten).

Arthur is a reporter who's assigned a story about the anniversary of Brian's faked death stunt, and who happened to be a fan and fairly close observer at the time. As he interviews various people who knew Brian, he pieces together what happened, figures out Brian's become Tommy Stone, and basically outs him in front of other reporters.

Brian is basically Bowie, whom some people think ripped off Brian Eno (the Jack Fairy character) and went on to huge fame, eclipsing the man with the true originality. Curt is sort of Lou Reed offstage and Iggy Pop onstage (AFAIK, Iggy's not bi or gay, and Lou didn't do the crazy onstage performances). The idea put across in VG about glam rock was that it was totally shallow -- style over substance -- which I don't really agree with. There were a lot of terrifically talented glam bands and singers. And yes, I started listening to it when I was around 12 -- Queen sort of came out of that wave.

I don't know if this helps at all. If there's anything specific you don't understand, I'll try to explain that.

[permetaform]

ohhhhhhh, Stone was Brian, I thought he was Curt and then I thought he was Brian and then I thought that maybe Arthur was in a fantasy and then I thought Brian was Arthur and I was confused as to whether Jack Fairy was real or not or if he was a lie as well.

In between this I was trying to figure out if it was figurative or literal or figuratively literal (or is that literally figurative?)...especially 'cause I tracked down Bowie's wiki and then got more confused.....

Granted, it probably didn't help that alot of the white peoples look alike to me -_- Then again, alot of people in general look alike to me.

[fred-god-of.livejournal.com]

I think there needs to be a rule that every person in a movie must have at least one distinguishing feature specific to them, perhaps post it notes. I was watching Heroes the other day where they had a african bald guy and a skinny white blonde girl in love in one scenceand then the next scene was a different african bald guy and skinny white blonde girl trying to kill each other and that managed to completely screw up the whole thing.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I am almost as lily white as they come and could hardly make it through Ronin because the characters looked too alike to me.

Also, a lot of the things in the movie are from real rock n' roll events-- the part where not!Bowie has onstage oral sex with not!Iggy's guitar was based on a real bit with Bowie and his bassist. And Iggy Pop's actual onstage behavior was even wilder than Ewan's in the movie.

There were apparently rumors about Iggy and both Bowie and Mick Jagger, though I didn't know there were Iggy/Jagger rumors until Iggy Pop publicly denied them. O Iggy I luv you.

[andmydog.livejournal.com]

There were apparently rumors about Iggy and both Bowie and Mick Jagger

And, in fact, the quote from the movie where Mrs Slade says something like, "Now, just because you see two naked people in bed doesn't necessarily mean sex was involved..." is supposedly a real quote from, hell, I don't remember. Somebody involved.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

That's pretty awesome.

[wee-warrior.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen Citizen Kane? If so, try to transport the overall structure - reporter is searching for famous man's secret, talks to a lot of people from his past, at the end audience finds out secret - onto Velvet Goldmine, it might make it less confusing. (VG has a few additions, the one I remember most prominently being that the reporter - Christian Bale - also used to be a groupie of the singer who had mysteriously disappeared.)

(Also, this is a very random drive-by comment - I was drawn to "Velvet Goldmine" in your headline. *g*)

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

I will never get Velvet Goldmine, and I like glam rock and pretty, pretty people.

I think I had to watch it twice to really take it in. I won't say it's the best movie in the world, though.

[ladyagnew.livejournal.com]

Me too--I wanted to like it, because hello: pretty people, often naked, glam and slash and Oscar Wilde, but the movie is so static and dull, it defeats the whole spirit of what it's trying to convey. The movie is about joyful things but lacks the spirit of actual joy. Haynes is a director more interested in the look and the conceptual ideas behind a movie than in anything else--see his Bob Dylan movie of 2007, where a bunch of actors, male and female, took turns playing Dylan. Interesting idea leading to an uneven result.