Both during his lifetime and since his untimely death in 2016, David Bowie has inspired perhaps more fascination than just about any other pop culture figure from the 20th Century.
Through his music, film performances and fashion, the singer-songwriter crafted an ever-evolving persona that made him one of the most respected artists on the planet – and his influence can still be keenly felt in much of the art we see today.
Of course, given his enigmatic nature, it would be hard for any documentarian to cover everything about the man in just one film – and this is something that acclaimed filmaker Brett Morgen quickly discovered when making his new documentary, Moonage Daydream.
“[The original title for the film] was Bowie in Quotations, but then I was nervous that people would think it was definitive,” he tells RadioTimes.com in an exclusive interview ahead of the documentary’s release.
“And I did not want people to think that I was presenting the definitive film on David Bowie. I’d love to see the guy who thinks they’re doing the definitive film on David Bowie – it’s not to be captured, it’s a fool’s errand!”
The film is a two-and-a-half hour immersive experience that includes a raft of never-before-seen footage and interviews, and Morgen said it was essential for him to find a focus before he dug into the archive – to which he was granted access by Bill Zysblat, the executor of Bowie’s estate.
“My rule for making films, going back to The Kid Stays in the Picture [about Hollywood producer Bob Evans],” he says, “is like… Bob Evans lived one of the greatest lives of the 20th Century – how do you package that in 90 minutes?
“I learned on that film something I’ve carried with me throughout my whole career, which is, you have to pick a lane. You’re not gonna get everything in, so you need your throughline.”
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On this occasion, though, creating a throughline proved “a little bit elusive” for Morgen. He intended his film to be first and foremost a cinematic experience and wasn’t interested in being beholden to the traditional rules of narrative – something which made the process rather tricky.
“That f**ked with my head,” he explains. “I didn’t know how to do that. I was like, I knew the throughline was transience and chaos and fragmentation, and the various kind of iterations of that. But I’d spent eight months trying to crack the script after I went through all the material, and I just couldn’t figure out how to write the experience.
“And so then I needed to reorientate how I worked and the answer ended up being kind of simple: I reached on my bookshelf and pulled up Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And I was like, ‘Let me see what happens when I drop Bowie into the hero’s myth.’
“So I basically adopted this idea that it’s like Ulysses, except he’s creating his own storms: he’s creating Berlin, he’s creating the mainstream success, he’s creating all of these challenges for himself.
“And then the next thing I did was I played a game – I was like, let me take three songs from each album that relate to transience in whatever variation, and then sort of lined those up and created a playlist. And so in a way, it’s kind of like a jukebox musical with a really rich subtext.”
The film is mainly concerned with the mythology of Bowie as a performer and an artist, with little time given to his personal life – although it does feature segments from interviews in which he talks about his parents and his second wife, Iman.
So, was Morgen tempted to dig deeper into the personal side of things?
“David was so generous and giving, but he wanted to keep something for himself,” he responds. “And I don’t feel that revealing that would provide any deeper insight.
“I did feel I needed to explore his family origin story in just the broadest strokes, but there’s nothing there that he hasn’t spoken about publicly. It feels very intimate when you’re watching and because of the context in which it’s presented.”
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He continues: “But I did feel that if you’re going to have your subject talking about alienation and isolation, at some point we need to have at least some indicators as to what this might be rooted in.
“More importantly, the reason I brought in the family, and presented them as a mum and dad who didn’t have love in the house, is that it makes the film even more relatable to the viewer.
“You can now project your own story onto the canvas because, in my view most of us have that sort of childhood, and those who didn’t, God bless ’em. So I felt that wasn’t revealing much about him really, wasn’t saying that much.”
Morgen adds: “But it was just enough to invite the audience to fill in the blanks. And the key to Bowie, one of the keys to Bowie, is understanding his conviction and his awareness of projection and his invitation to invite us to project. The more we listen to David Bowie, the more we learn about ourselves.”
Moonage Daydream is released in UK cinemas on Friday 16th September 2022. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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