‘Forgotten’ Bowie movie resurfaces in GOMA film season

During his movie career, David Bowie played aliens, goblins, vampires, artists and gigolos. But Australian Cinematheque assistant curator Dr Victoria Wareham is most excited about the film in which the Thin White Duke plays a romantic leading man – The Linguini Incident.

“It’s actually a bit of a hidden gem,” Wareham said. “He’s not playing any otherworldly creature. He’s playing a charismatic bartender in a trendy New York restaurant.

“He stars opposite Rosanna Arquette, who’s a waitress. They both end up in this utterly farcical heist, which is totally absurd, but so much fun to watch on the big screen.”

“The Linguini Incident” is unusual in David Bowie’s filmography as his character is neither enigmatic nor strange. Credit: Courtesy Park Circus/ITV Studios

Bowie’s own production company co-funded the rom-com, which is regarded as his first on-screen comedic role.

Unfortunately released in the US in 1992 during the Rodney King riots, The Linguini Incident opened to meagre box office and mixed reviews and has been largely forgotten.

But its director, Richard Shepherd, recently completed a director’s cut, which Wareham has secured for her Bowie retrospective at GOMA, beginning on Saturday, August 17.

Wareham said Bowie, who died in 2016, enjoyed a cinema career every bit as worthy of attention as his musical one.

“There’s something really intangible about the way he is on screen. It’s really compelling, he’s just so wonderful to watch,” she said.

Bowie began acting when his musical aspirations seemed to have stalled in the late 1960s, before the release of his first hit, Space Oddity. He took lessons with mime artist Lindsay Kemp, and accepted a role in a short horror film called The Image.

“It’s a fantastic little short. Bowie plays this painting that mysteriously comes to life and haunts the painter,” Wareham said.

The Image will screen with The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie’s well-regarded 1976 feature debut in which he plays an alien who visits Earth in search of water but falls prey to human vices.

A 20-year-old David Bowie in his first screen role, a wordless but evocative short called “The Image”. Credit: Courtesy Paper Dragon Productions

The part of the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986) endeared him to children, and his vampire in The Hunger (1983) added to his mystique. But Wareham said the polymath would choose film roles mainly to learn from their directors.

“So he took a bit part for David Lynch in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and it’s the same with Martin Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ. He was thinking, ‘maybe I want to become a director’.”

As with Bowie’s music, not all of his choices were successful. In 1996, he donned one of Andy Warhol’s platinum wigs to play the late pop artist in Basquiat.

“It’s this really weird situation where you have a celebrity playing a celebrity, and it makes your head hurt a bit,” Wareham says.

The Cracked Actor: Bowie on Screen runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Gallery of Modern Art’s Cinema A from August 17 to October 5. Bookings are essential and adult tickets are $10.