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

[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.