Songs That Could Be Movies: David Bowie
7 fantastic Bowie tracks that should be scripts…
BY Jun 23rd 2009 9:09AMFILED UNDER: Features
Hollywood has covered all the major adaptations.
It won’t be long before they run out of books, comics and other films to nick ideas from. Then they'll have to turn to much shorter narratives for inspiration.
One day, studio suits will be weaving movie trilogies from three-minute pop songs.
In that spirit, welcome to the first instalment of our new regular feature – Songs That Could Be Movies.
And who better to begin with than the king of the kooky narrative, David Bowie?
The Song: Diamond Dogs
Possibly one of the richest, most complex narratives of all of Bowie’s songs, Diamond Dogs features Halloween Jack, a character on the run from the law in a futuristic, dystopian Manhattan.
Released in 1974, the lyrics are super-visual, super-slick and super-duper.
Bowie gets extra brownie points (or should we say, Browning points…) for referencing Freaks, the 1932 masterpiece by Tod Browning.
It’s gothic, sinister, and very, very screenplay-adaptation-friendly.
The Movie:
Halloween Jack is a notorious criminal, living on the rooftops of a post-apocalyptic metropolis and getting up to all sorts of mischievous scrapes.
The Diamond Dogs enforce the law, yet they’re horrifically corrupt. Think Blade Runner meets Sin City meets Batman Begins.
It’s slick and noirish with a voice-over and lots of rain. Beautiful women pout and purr. Expendable characters are created and expended. Baddies are brutally butchered and Halloween Jack twists and turns, in and out of danger, like a twisty turny thing.
The Cast:
Crafty old Hollywood casts the prince of gothic heroism (and of hysterical teenage goths), Robert Pattinson, in the lead role. It works, but only because there are dozens more interesting characters to soup it up a bit.
It’s a star-studded cast, with Harvey Keitel as the lead ‘Dog’ and bit-parts going to Brittany Murphy, Salma Hayek and other busty lovelies. Tarantino cameos, because he’s directing, and can’t help himself.
Sample Dialogue:
Some Hussy: (To Jack) Come out of the garden, baby. You’ll catch your death in the fog.
Next: Love You Till Tuesday
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