Velvet Goldmine

Are they banging on the roof at the end? I don’t remember. Jonathan Reese Myers was so hot in that movie.

Bale walks into a bar years after the roof banging. He talks to McGregor who doesn't seem to remember him. When McGregor leaves there is a piece of jewelry in Bale's beer. He takes it out and then smiles and laughs.

Bale was really sweet and appealing in this film .

Baby's on fire, better throw her in the water...

Look at her laughing, like a heifer to the slaughter.

When I hear this song, I always think of Datalounge.

I enjoyed the movie except for one thing - their vision of New York was closer to Soviet-era Poland. The Brits always. always, always get New York wrong, but that time felt particularly annoying.

"their vision of New York was closer to Soviet-era Poland. "

It was supposed to be reminiscent of the drab Reagan era cold war years and how Bowie (a.k.a. Maxwell Demon) did a somewhat right wing pivot away from his previous comments about his sexuality and parlayed that into the most lucrative U.S. tour.

The jewel was the one Lady Wilde found on the baby Oscar Wilde which eventually wound up with the Jack Fairy character. Brian Slade stole it from Fairy then gave it to Curt Wild who then gave it to Arthur Stuart in the beer bottle.

I get that, [R5], but whatever New York in the Reagan era was, it was not drab. It was tinsel Trump-land and Cyndi Lauper's hairstyles and tropical graffiti everywhere. And they didn't even try to find architecture that remotely matched the real place.

R5 I know right?

The film was directed by Todd Haynes, an American raised in California.

I knew his brother in Los Angeles in the 90s.

My bad! I thought it was a British film. But that just makes the tonal shift even weirder. Someone from LA should have known that NYC in the 80s was a toxic candyland, not the ass-end of Stalingrad.

Brian Molko showed up to suck all the dicks

The art direction was stunning. A GREAT film. If the subject matter was straight it would be infinitely more lauded.

Fantastic acting all round, and music as well.

I think the Citizen Kane references were a bit of a thud.

Ewan McGregor definitely remembers Christian Bale - it’s why he gives him the ‘pin’. But he’s been threatened by the corporate powers behind the Brian Slade Tour.

The film isn’t meant to be realistic. It’s an alternate version of New York. Todd Haynes said the film was, in part, a love story between London and NYC. The passing of the brooch between characters is that spark of imagination and glamour in dystopian times (like the re-imagined New York).

It was the Iggy Pop character growing up in a trailer in the woods surrounded by wolves that got to me. The only wolves in Michigan are on Isle Royale.

[quote] Bale walks into a bar years after the roof banging. He talks to McGregor who doesn't seem to remember him. When McGregor leaves there is a piece of jewelry in Bale's beer. He takes it out and then smiles and laughs.

The green jewel is the same one the aliens left in the film's opening sequence with the infant on the Dublin doorstep who grew up to be Oscar Wilde. the jewel eventually got passed down to Curt Wild (the McGregor character), and from thence to the Christian Bale character.

The implication is that the kind of queer dandy aesthetic energies owned by Wilde has been passed down to the glam rockers, and then to people like the Bale character (or director/writer Todd Haynes, for whom the Bale character is clearly a surrogate) to then pass on to other younger queer men.

I really miss movies that were proudly, happily faggy. I even tolerate het actors in the roles. Today's movie gays are so picket fenced and white washed they're boring.

i love curt wild so much he’s just like bro i am so stupid and i am not having a good time right now. and that hits

he’s just a sad confused dog but he’s very gay and he’s t r y ing. protect the wolfman

Love this film. Still a fav. Agree with R15

[quote]The film was directed by Todd Haynes, an American raised in California.

Never trust a Californian to depict New York accurately.

They'll depict Manhattan like going on a stroll at the Santa Monica pier.

OP Curt Wild is a bit..addled, to say the least, what with his junky lifestyle and his traumatic childhood stints in electroshock. It’s a wonder he can remember his own name day to day, let alone the face of one anonymous groupie twink he shagged a decade previously (while he was definitely drunk and probably high).

With that said, I think the way the scenes between him & Arthur unfold imply that somehow Curt does recognise his old one-night lover, to his own surprise. Watch for the moment when they pass each other on the subway for the first time in ten years; Curt looks at Arthur for long seconds like he’s trying to place him.

The fact that Curt insistently gives Oscar/Jack/Brian’s cabochon pin to Arthur (twice!) is another clue. Haynes’ implies it’s an intimate important object that passes between gay men who have a close connection either physical or spiritual and that the characters understand this implicitly (as when Brian steals it from Jack), so would Curt really pass it on to some journo he was meeting for the first time and didn’t know or care for in the least?

Finally, Ewan McGregor (who so memorably played Curt) seems to believe that his character did remember Arthur, and more than that the pair thereafter became life-partners leading a sober happy family life.

R19 strangely enough Todd did a fine job of characterising London, Birmingham and whichever Northern town it was Bale’s character hailed from. 70s England really looks and feels and sounds like 70s England -or at least damn well close enough - in his vision. How come he got that so right and the American bit so wrong?

It’s odd too that Aussie Collette and Irish Meyers managed convincing accents (American & English, respectively), but Scot McGregor’s ended up drowning somewhere in the Northern Sea. And I find it funny that Bale had to change his from Central to Northern (English) for no tea necessary plot or characterisation reason; it was more “well he can do it and everyone else has done theirs, so why not”.

Fascinating trivia has come out about VG over the years.

The role of Jack Fairy was first offered to Jarvis Cocker and may have been designed with him in mind (though the character was based more on Jobriath & Brian Eno), but he turned it down. By contrast the part of Malcolm O’Hara went to Brian Molko (vocalist of the band Placebo) rather than an actor because he was so enthusiastic about the project and wanted to do more that just sing on a track for it as he’d been asked.

The singing voice for Jonathan Rhys-Meyers’ character Brian Slade eas comprised of all different vocalists. JRM contributed one vocal cut (a cover of a Cockney Rebel number), while Thom Yorke & Craig Wedren (Shudder To Think) among others cut vocals the rest of his tracks. Ewan McGregor on the other hand sung every Curt Wild song; in fact, he sung two different solo parts for ‘Gimme Danger’ that were then mixed together by sound editors for maximum resonance and weirdness.

The scene of Curt Wild’s first appearance in the film, playing onstage at the same festival as Brian Slade, was largely improvised by Ewan McGregor. He was only asked by the Director to moon the crowd if he felt like it, but Ewan took this note the extra mile and showed full-frontal cock complete with a shimmy-dance and a death-jump from the stage into the crowd.

Then there’s the famous and sexy anecdote about Ewan & Christian Bale filming their rooftop tryst toward the end of the film, where the camera crew kept quiet and let them hump each other tenderly some ten or twenty minutes after rolling ended.

The film was originally titled GLAM!, then GLITTER KIDS. Doesn’t quite play, does it?

For years I’ve pondered what green cabochon set in the glorious hat pin might be. It’s such a lovely understated piece, and completely believable as a Wolfe heirloom.

Best guess is that it’s merely lucite or polished glass/crystal, but I like think it’s a real gem; perhaps a clear dark onyx or chalcedony. Suppose it was meant to look like emerald, which I highly doubt the props department acquired.

R9 was Molko still entrenched in his Kinsey 5 phase at that point? I lose track with him.

This is one of my favourite films.

JRM was 19 when VG was filmed which is pretty impressive as he had to play Slade as more knowing and older for a good part of the movie.

I always thought JRM and Collette were an odd couple but apparently filming the love scenes carried over to real life.

This movie is a Todd Haynes movie.

You aren't supposed to question the plot or the psychology of any characters in a Todd Haynes movie.

Todd Haynes cares ONLY about decor, color and costumes.

Though derided as trash, I feel the lack of pretension in this film makes it somewhat timeless and accomplished.

The snobbiest plainest most antisocial student I have ever met spent the entire time I screened it to her sneering that it was a shoddy take on CITIZEN KANE. Even as a self-professed bisexual and lover of pop music she still didn’t get it emotionally. I couldn’t believe that a film & music buff couldn’t extract a drop of enjoyment from such a delicious movie. It was that evening I realised the depths of the true gulf between gays and straights.