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Director Debuts Decadent Goldmine
by Sharon Knolle
Friday, November 6, 1998 11:40 AM

Moviegoers who felt cheated by the studio cuts to the disco tale 54 can revel in the upcoming release of Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes' valentine to the decadent glitter rock era. The new film, which takes its name from a David Bowie B-side, features all the male-to-male kisses, full-frontal nudity, and drug usage missing from 54, presented with all the visual excesses and refracted story line befitting a film about the over-the-top '70s. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers stars as Brian Slade, a Bowie-esque gender-bending superstar who sports wigs, glitter, makeup, skin-tight clothes, and even wings. Ewan McGregor, as an Iggy Pop-like American singer, wears leather pants, and not much else (sometimes, not even that). Working well outside the mainstream as usual, Haynes had no studio bosses to please with Goldmine, which earned an R rating. "We were free from any outside interference, luckily," he says.

At 37, the filmmaker—best known for the provocative art-house hits Poison and Safe—is a little too young to have fully experienced the era he's depicting. He says his film is just a "dream" of the glam scene: "There's nothing authoritative or definitive about it at all. It's subjective in every way. And it's definitely filtered through a fan's perspective." His own lifestyle, he says, is basically decadence-free. "I wish I was bisexual," he laments. "I wish I was much more of a wild man. I wish I was a rock 'n' roller. I wish I was into everything: drugs, sex, all of it…but I'm not." In fact, the only glam aspect of Haynes' appearance is his silver nail polish. "The fact that I made the film is about as ridiculous and decadent as I'll ever get," he laughs.

Today, there's a strong resurgence of interest in the '70s, but Haynes believes that the freewheeling essence of glam has somehow been lost. "Everything [from the past] is available at once," he says, "but completely out of context, so that the meaning that produced each thing is gone." (Having studied semiotics, the theory of signs and symbols, at Brown University, Haynes can talk theory with the best of them.) The result is a situation he describes as a "hodge-podge of thrift-store culture," which is either completely decadent, or not decadent at all. Today, he points out, "Marilyn Manson is as decadent as Kenneth Starr."

Asked to comment about Manson's recent foray into glitter rock, Haynes says, "There's been a pervasive return to a glam-rock sound and styles in England since 1992, when Suede put out their first record. In America it's really only when Marilyn Manson slips into a glitter outfit that people in America go, 'Oh, wow, glitter rock, cool!'"

So maybe the timing is right for Velvet Goldmine. The director says his "biggest dream" is for the film to become a Rocky Horror-style cult sensation, inspiring legions of fans to dress up and play along. Or, at the very least, inspiring the same fervent discussion and obsession produced by some of his influential films, including Performance and A Clockwork Orange. "Those films were like 'trip' movies that took you somewhere else, like dropping acid," he recalls. "That's what you wanted from a movie, that's why you went to the theater, was to experience something like that. I don't think they make movies like that anymore."

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