Bowie’s 1971 trip to the US – the inspiration for his Ziggy Stardust persona – is reimagined as a
comedy road trip with his hopelessly uncool publicist
The very talented
Actor and musician Johnny Flynn here makes a perfectly game attempt to impersonate the young David Bowie in this ironised and fictionalised account of Bowie’s 1971 US publicity tour which – partly – inspired his Ziggy Stardust persona. Flynn carries off Bowie’s clothes and delicate mannerisms plausibly enough and, impressively, he does his own singing. But, all too often, this Bowie looks as if he is presenting TV’s Bake Off.
Bowie arrived at
Washington DC’s Dulles airport where an
immigration official called him a “fag”, and where Mercury Records publicity man Ron Oberman (played here by comic Marc Maron) arrived to meet him, having got a lift to the airport from his mum and dad, and took the bemused Bowie back for a home-cooked family meal, like a 13-year-old foreign exchange student. The movie shows this, but where in reality the tour saw Bowie fly to major cities, meeting with Oberman a few times and doing interviews, the movie escalates this to a huge comedy-odd-couple road trip. Oberman and Bowie head across the country in Ron’s uncool, un-rock’n’roll station wagon, with Bowie playing disastrous, low-key gigs and Ron becoming a Spinal Tap-type PR goof who is mortified at the poor turnout.