This clumsy fictionalised account of Bowie’s formative first US tour is as pedestrian as its subject was remarkable
The year is 1971 and David Bowie (Johnny Flynn) is about to embark on his first US tour. Except he only has a tourist visa and so he’s not supposed to perform – convenient, given that the film-makers were unable to secure the rights to any of Bowie’s original
music.
Its omission is noticeably awkward, with Flynn doing inert versions of tracks Bowie covered, such as Jacques Brel’s My Death, as a clumsy workaround. The narrative centres around a supposedly formative road trip Bowie took with his
American publicist Ron Oberman (Marc Maron), suggesting that encounters with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground helped give birth to Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust.