Varda the Message

Dear Sweet Darlings,

Long time since we've been together!

I thought I should let you know about a brilliant podcast - The Whole Shebang is discussing Velvet Goldmine minute by minute, each weekday. A glittery way to start the day! The erudite hosts, Jenny and Mike, are fascinating and funny as they treat us to their take on the details in and behind our favorite film. Find them here, with links to other platforms. (Remember when platforms referred to shoes!?)

One ingenious piece of the VG puzzle was explained by Mike who identified the mysterious voice that starts the film as Amelia Earhart from a 1935 radio broadcast, "A Woman's Place in Science". Hence, the film begins and ends with radio!

So I was reading an excellent interview with Todd Haynes about his new glorious film, Carol. The article had an overview of Todd's work, so he was asked about his earliest influences, which of course includes Mary Poppins. Those who know have been aware of the MP/VG links via the now decade old Mary Poppins/Velvet Goldmine Gallery.

From the article:
Can he remember the first film he saw? He makes a noise that’s close to a squeal. “Yes, I can, and it was Mary Poppins, and it conducted an intense power over me. Oh, my God. Something about it conspired to make it an indelible piece of… psychic formative work for me. It produced obsession, utter obsession. I was only three, and this was a time [before video] when you saw a film only once. I would spend days drawing pictures of it, and acting it out, and dressing up, making everyone into Mary Poppins: ‘Mom, put this hat on and then I’m going to put flowers on it!’ It was a way of life.”

To a greater or lesser degree, all his films can be traced back to Mary Poppins. “After I did Velvet Goldmine, which is also set in London and a fantasy, a crazy but well informed fan made me a T-shirt that had Jane and Michael Banks [the children in Mary Poppins] looking up at the star next to a picture of Ewan McGregor and Christian Bale [who appear in Velvet Goldmine] looking up at the spaceship. They all have the exact same expression, the same lighting… Yes, I see the continuum.”

Crazy but well informed. That's me that!

And, yes, I gave that T shirt to Todd when he was in my neighborhood shooting Mildred Pierce.

Dear Sweet Darlings,

So many of our obsessions are represented at museums this year. The academics have analyzed Glam Rock and now the curators have at it. There's a Bowie retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Glam! The Performance of Style is now at the Tate Liverpool. Stateside we've got Punk: Chaos to Couture at The Metropolitan Museum this summer.

There's a thrill to hear this and then almost immediately a critique of what they will get right and get wrong. Of course this is a highly opinionated and totally subjective topic. The V&A show seems to anticipate that with the title "David Bowie is". As he once said, "I guess I am what the greatest number of people think I am. I have no control over that at all." As the owner of a $500 book about Ziggy Stardust who has never seen Labyrinth, I understand that Bowie fans share a quirky demographic. No matter what the exhibition is about, it's damn thrilling to have the new album.

Glam! The Performance of Style seems like it's throwing a very wide net to be able to make it about ART rather than NME. The curator, Darren Pih, certainly has read "Please Kill Me," and includes the Max's Kansas City/ Warhol scene as the beginning part of the story. And while several films are included in the show, as well as screenings of others, there's apparently not a mention of Velvet Goldmine, which certainly was a landmark in the reassessment and appreciation of the Glam era, in particular noting the origins of glam in the drag, underground and art school scenes. We can't imagine the curator hasn't seen it.

vardathemessage started on the fifth anniversary of the VHS release of Velvet Goldmine*. At that time it was difficult to find links to illustrate and illuminate the entries - Wikipedia was just emerging, Tumblr was lightyears away in internet time - and you can see that it still has some not so fab images, sorry. Now that VG love is all over the internet, let's not forget that in many ways Todd Haynes rediscovered the era and put it back on the cultural map as something more than a punchline. Glam was out of fashion in 1998 - this was the year Madonna was wearing cowboy boots afterall, and even Bowie was chuckling as David Letterman mocked a photo of Ziggy Stardust. Now that TRAFOZSATSFM is 40, Bowie has a new album and a retrospective at the V&A, it's hard to believe that for a very long time Bowie was considered a weirdo rather than a pioneering artist. And even then, when he was at the height of his fame during the 80s, many considered Ziggy just a slightly embarrassing best ignored experiment of his early career.

Being on the wrong side of the pond, I won't be able to see the V&A and Tate shows, so those of you who have seen them, please free free to give us your take. And certainly correct me if I'm wrong about the Glam! exhibition having no mention of Velvet Goldmine.


*To give you an idea of how ancient history that is, the VHS was available for $125.00! This is because the first buyers of the VHS were the rental shops who were expected to recoup the cost in rentals. So the next best thing was later that summer when the used copies of VG were put on sale for something like $14.99.

Rocking the VG purple and orange (is he wearing nail polish?)

and delirious! There is something surreal and thrilling hearing Todd Haynes say this at the beginning of the commentary:

"We're going to take a little trip through memory lane. A ton of great music and history is crammed into Velvet Goldmine. In fact virtually every line of the dialog comes from something. And more than what I would have been able to remember without the work of some amazing websites like vardathemessage, which have been annotating the film closely for years. And I just felt that the film and the fans deserved as thorough a recollection as I could muster, so I do have a bunch of notes I'll be referring to, but I want to thank those sites for helping me collect this stuff."

Swooning as I type....

The commentary is a treat and the picture quality is just breathtaking.

Blu-rays play on a PS3 by the way.

There is a wonderful interview with Todd Haynes over at The Onion AV Club about I’m Not There. He was asked about the reception his films have received.

I think all my films can be enjoyed. In fact, they've often surprised me with how they're received. A film that had the hardest time, at least initially, was Velvet Goldmine, and it's the film that seems to mean the most to a lot of teenagers and young people, who are just obsessed with that movie. They're exactly who I was thinking about when I made Velvet Goldmine, but it just didn't get to them the first time around. Now we have all these different ways for movies to get to people. People can live with them over time and pass them around like special secrets. The movies all live their own weird lives, which is so cool.

Fittingly, we end with what Todd has been doing since he made Velvet Goldmine. Happily, he had a critical success with Far From Heaven. This February 2003 article from The Independent at the release of Far From Heaven explains what we have to look forward to:

At the start of 2000, he drove to Portland, Oregon, and wrote Far From Heaven in 10 days in a friend's house. "I started to meet all these awesome people there – musicians, painters, weirdos, just these great minds. So I stayed. Sometimes I've thrown parties for 300 people, half of whom I don't even know." He chuckles at the naughtiness of it.

On that drive to Portland, Haynes played Bob Dylan tapes for the first time since college. Now he's preparing to make him the subject of his next picture. There are two kinds of Todd Haynes film. The female ones – Superstar, Safe, Far From Heaven – have rigidly controlled, almost fetishistic visual surfaces, and heroines with harshly chiming names. These alternate with wild, flamboyant, male-oriented works: Poison draws from three contrasting genres, while the various tones and textures of Velvet Goldmine could not be counted on all your fingers and toes. Haynes tries to offer an explanation for this pattern of neat film/messy film – "In those that deal with women, the references are more singular than multiple ... the male films have more erotic pleasure I think" – but it doesn't get us terribly far.

Still, the cycle continues. The Dylan film will be sprawling and multi-layered. "Seven characters will share the film, and they'll represent aspects of Dylan during different periods. But they'll look nothing like him. One will be an 11-year-old black kid. The one who most resembles Dylan will be a woman. It's going to be a multiple refracted biopic." Far out. The amazing thing is that, unlike David Bowie, who threw a hissy fit when Haynes asked to use his songs in Velvet Goldmine, Dylan himself has given the project his blessing – and, more importantly, his music. "I can use whatever I like," beams Haynes, returning to fan mode. "It's in ink!"