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A velvet goldmine's worth of good press
in an interview with glam's screen author
by Gabriel Klinger, 24FPS Movie Fanzine

Los Angeles born Todd Haynes made his debut in 1987 with Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a Barbie doll-cast short whose heroine dies of anorexia. Poison, his subsequent full-length feature, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The film is divided into three separate stories and the last segment, "Homo", was the subject of much controversy when Rev. Donald Widmon condemned it because it was funded by The National Endowment for the Arts. Haynes, a proud member of the AIDS coalition group Act-Up, subtly referred to AIDS in his 1995 Safe. In 1998 his new film Velvet Goldmine created a considerable stir at the Cannes festival and received a prize for artistic contribution. Todd, with his "cool" apparel, was nice when I talked to him but fucking spelled my name wrong when signing my press-kit/record compilation. Oh- check this out. He also wrote XX.

Velvet Goldmine was ranked the 8th best film of the year in Cahiers du Cinema's year-end "definitive" list. Martin Scorsese, last year's Cannes jury president, said it was the film that inspired him to go back to directing. While the Oscars have ignored it (though that does not mean shit), Goldmine really made a mark in 1998 with its pretentious poster advising us to leave our expectations at the door. Well, I did. And I have to tell you I wasn't entirely satisfied. 

Gabriel Klinger: You said that you were miserable during the making of Velvet Goldmine. Do you think this misery reflects in your film and is this going to make you masochistic about future projects? Todd Haynes: (Laughs) I'm probably too masochistic already. But...no, I think ironically this film does not show the hatred of filmmaking whereas Safe and Poison may to a larger degree. It is really one of the most pleasurable, affirmative films I have made and in many ways that makes me slightly uncomfortable because I don't really believe in films that give you the right answer or tell you how to behave. You know. It's simply the discrepancy between an incredibly demanding script and the money we were ultimately able to get. So, it's tough. 

The first 15 minutes finish off with some celluloid burning only to reveal a bunch of journalists in a room. One guy, a resident Brit, is assigned to investigate the fake killing of a glam rock idol ten years after it happened. He talks to a wheel chair-bound manager, a washed up singer and a beat-up women doing nights at a sleazy club. All of them were important figures in glam god Brian Slade's life. It's told in flashbacks a la Citizen Kane but with the addition of the journalist's coming of age. The script, lubed-up and coated with glitter, isn't substantial enough to stand on it's own. Maryse Alberti's cinematography, the art direction and the Wylde Ratzz swingin' songs almost save it. Todd Haynes' direction: good. So, yeah, it's the script that's cheap. 

GK: You had some trouble raising money for Safe after Poison. Now, there was a three year period in between Safe and Velvet Goldmine. Did you run into any problems? TH: Todd: No, actually not. The money for Velvet Goldmine came in more quickly than anything I've done. I think it was simply due to the fact that it had music, youth culture themes. I mean, the film sold to like every country, globally, while we were shooting- like they didn't even see the finished film. And it's a period script so it must be for those reasons. But between Safe and Velvet Goldmine I just promoted Safe and as soon as I was done I got fully into the script and basically had a finished draft that I started to show people at Cannes in '95. So it happened fairly quickly. 

Maryse Alberti, the cinematographer of Crumb, worked beautifully with a lot of types of shots that aren't exactly considered modern nowadays. Eddie Izzard, playing cigar tuttin' manager, says to Brian Slade's entourage, "The secret of becoming a star is knowing how to act like one." One of the poseurs goes, "We gonna put on a show then!?" Izzard responds, "Exactly." Watch out for this scene. The use of zoom is awesome. Few know about The Wylde Ratzz, the band that got together especially to compose some of the Bowie/Stooges-esque songs in the film. Members include Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Steve Shelly, Mike Watt of Firehose fame and Mark Arm, Ron Asheton, Jim Dunbar and Don Fleming. In an interview with Ray Gun magazine Moore said, "The movie was just an excuse for us to come together." Two Ratzz tunes are on the soundtrack: T.V. Eye and My Unclean (both sung by Ewan McGregor). Ratzz plan to put out a record sometime in 1999 and it'll probably be pretty damned interesting. I'm looking forward to it. The film is now nominated for costume design at the Academy Awards, deservedly. I especially like it when Ewan McGregor (playing Curt Wild) jumps in a chimney clad in furry brown bear pants. On the internet I was looking at some pictures of Haynes arm in arm with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Bottled water in hand, Haynes looked like quite the trend-setter. And he said he was miserable during the making of the film (see above interview question). 

GK: Compare glam rock to hair metal. TH: I think hair metal was inspired by glam rock to large degree. It's just that a lot of the ambiguity went away and the sexual irony kind of went away and you're just left with bad hair and loud rock. But, yeah, I don't think it could've happened without glam rock. 

His direction is excellent- forte being all the stage antics in the film. Although we do wonder whether the maniacal Iggy Pop moves are really Ewan McGregor's input. Still, he tops himself with grease and throws some sparkles on him with a soda fountain style salt shaker then puts penis on amp to vibrate. In another scene Rhys Meyers performs fellatio on McGregor's guitar, a lil' something Bowie once did. Fact is Haynes studied D.A. Pennebaker's 1982 Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars documentary meticulously, using a lot of inspired concert scenes in Goldmine. Oh no! I'm nearing the end of this review and I haven't even mentioned the stuff about Oscar Wilde and the little Esmeralde jewel. Ah. That's exactly the problem with the jumbled script. Its structure doesn't allow for it to aspire for what it really is. 

GK: Does it make you angry when people come up to you and ask why Ewan McGregor looks like Kurt Cobain? TH: No, it doesn't make me angry (laughs). It's just funny, we didn't even think about it while we were shooting the film- which is hard to imagine. Obviously he shares physical characteristics with Cobain. Cobain died his hair silver a la Iggy Pop and when Ewan did his hair a la Iggy Pop it was like, "Oh wow." But no, it's okay and it helps to blur that character a bit away from just the Iggy Pop references. 

Here, if what I said before doesn't make sense I'll explain: the story has 5 different layers- the manager's story, the wife's story, the journalist's story, the lover's story and the Oscar Wilde insights. They are all neighboring each other throughout the film and then try to connect by a series of poorly thought-out coincidences. At the end, Velvet Goldmine cries for substance. Does Haynes do this on purpose for some kind of hallucinatory effect (like the journalist running into McGregor in the back of the bar)? Anyway, I thought the film's outcome to be pretty shallow and Haynes laces it with pretty music and photography to divert from the weak story.

For some reason I still recommend this film as it is a nice little addition to the rise and fall genre. I guess it's the kind of movie where everybody says, "I would've made it like this, and this and this..." **1/2 out of ****

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