The director Nicolas Roeg wanted to cast David Bowie as the lead in his next film The Man Who Fell to Earth—the story of humanoid alien called Thomas Jerome Newton, who comes to this world in search of water. A copy of the script was sent to the singer and a meeting arranged. Roeg arrived at a recording studio in New York where Bowie was working on his next album. “David will be finished by ten, so if you come round about nine-thirty….” Roeg wanted to cast Bowie after seeing him in the BBC Arena documentary Cracked Actor. There was something ethereal about him, something alien, he seemed isolated in the world around him, traveling in a limo, drinking milk from a carton, watching the world go by. As Roeg later said:

“[Bowie’s} actual social behaviour was extraordinary—he hardly mixed with anyone at all. He seemed to be alone—which is what Newton is in the film—isolated and alone.”

Roeg waited, drank a couple of Martinis, met some exotic people, and wondered what was going on? Ten o’clock. No Bowie. Another call came through: “David will be finished by eleven.” Half-past eleven, no Bowie. Twelve, no Bowie. “He’ll be with you by two.” Five in the morning Bowie arrived. He was pale thin strange looking. Roeg started talking to him about the film. Did he want to do it? What did he think about the script? What about that scene where…? Bowie seemed keen, agreed with most of Roeg’s points, but was also nervous. He said he would do the film, yes, he’d be there. But he seemed more in a hurry to get Roeg out of the studio. Bowie was worried that if the director asked any more questions he would get wise to the fact he hadn’t as yet read the script.

Bowie was writing his own film scripts. He moved to L.A. with some vague idea of getting into movies. “Me and rock-and-roll have parted company,” he told Tina Brown from the Sunday Times.

“Don’t worry, I’ll still make albums with love and with fun, but my effect is finished. I’m very pleased. I think I’ve caused quite enough rumpus for someone who’s not even convinced he’s a good musician. Now I’m going to be a film director.

“I’ve always been a screen writer, my songs have just been practice for scripts.”

Bowie read the script and watched one of Roeg’s previous films Walkabout—a movie based on a fourteen page screenplay by playwright Edward Bond. He liked both and signed-up to play Newton.

Filming took place over eleven weeks in New Mexico starting in July 1975. According to Bowie, he was “blasted” off his tits on cocaine, snorting ten grams a day. This runs counter to what his co-star Candy Clark claimed. She said Bowie gave a vow to Roeg he would take “no drugs.” Bowie was focussed, on the mark, and “luminescent.” Though Bowie later fessed up:

“I just learned the lines for that day and did them the way I was feeling. It wasn’t that far off. I actually was feeling as alienated as that character was. It was a pretty natural performance—a good exhibition of somebody literally falling apart in front of you. I was totally insecure with about ten grams a day in me. I was stoned out of my mind from beginning to end.”

Whatever the truth, Bowie gave (arguably) his best performance. Bowie liked Roeg, they got on well together, with the singer desperate to please the director. The New York Times noted:

Mr. Roeg has chosen the garish, translucent, androgynous‐mannered rock‐star, David Bowie, for his space visitor. The choice is inspired. Mr. Bowie gives an extraordinary performance. The details, the chemistry of this tall pale figure with black‐rimmed eyes are clearly not human. Yet he acquires a moving, tragic force as the stranger caught and destroyed in a strange land.

When Roeg delivered the finished film to Paramount, the studio refused to pay for it, saying it was not the movie they had agreed upon. It was eventually distributed by British Lion Films. Critical reception was mixed. Some thought it “preposterous and posturing” (Roger Ebert), others (Richard Eder) thought it “absorbing” and “beautiful.” From its initial release, The Man Who Fell to Earth gained a cult status, and a fanbase that has grown to the point where the movie is now considered one of Roeg’s and Bowie’s best work.

In February 1976, Films and Filming magazine gave a sneak preview of Roeg’s latest “masterpiece,” which was followed by a four star (“not to be missed”) review in the May issue from that year.
 

 

 

 
More pages of Bowie and ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth,’ after the jump….
 

Joe Dallesandro, April 1971.
 
Films and Filming was a middle-brow, high-quality monthly movie magazine published in the UK between October 1953 to March 1990. It was a special interest magazine for film-lovers who thought “Picturegoer unsatisfying and Sight and Sound unintelligible.” Set up by publisher Philip Dosse Films and Filming was a stablemate to his other mags like Books and Bookmen, Dance and Dancers, Plays and Players, Art and Artists, and so on. It was, in many respects, one of the best and most subversive film magazines around as Dosse had an agenda of promoting difficult and controversial subject matter, in particular, homosexuality which was then a criminal offense in Britain punishable by imprisonment or chemical castration.

Films and Filming or rather F&F’s first editor was Peter Brinson, a smart young man who made no attempt to disguise his sexuality. He successfully edited the magazine to woo the gay market by including pictures of beefcake actors and personal ads for lonely bachelors to hook-up. It was the magazine’s second editor, Peter Baker, that moved F&F away from a coded gay film zine to a thoughtful, glossy, and well-written magazine that became the must-read of every serious cinephile.

I knew fuck all about any of this fascinating backstory when I picked secondhand copies of F&F up in the seventies and eighties from Bobbies Bookshop. I bought the magazine because it featured the movies, writers, and directors I liked: Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Fellini, Derek Jarman, and Martin Scorsese. It also boasted several great photospreads per issue usually lifted from some of the strangest movies on release that month and some very good writing by the likes of Raymond Durgnat—though there were some reviewers who always seemed to focus on every movie having a homosexual subtext whether it was valid or not. F&F’s covers eschewed the usual box office fodder—though occasional they did feature the odd one like Star Wars—and instead focused on gay/cult films like Myra Breckinridge, The Night Porter, Lisztomania, Loot, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Last Detail, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Salo: 120 days of Sodom.

I have a stack of old F&F’s stored away, and have previously shared some of the magazine’s photospreads of my favorite films/directors, but the following largely comes from the Twitter feed of Films and Filming, which I suggest you follow if you have an interest cult and classic films, big screen stars and memorabilia from a golden age of movies.
 

Monica Vitti, April 1966.
 

Donald Sutherland, May 1975.
 

Bridget Bardot and Jeanne Moreau, March 1966.
 

Batman and Robin, October 1966.
 

Sophia Loren, September 1966.
 
More classy covers, after the jump…