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script:
INT. BIJOU OFFICES – DAY – 1975
Inside, the office’s musical comedy ambience has turned film noir: shadows engulf the cavernous space where desks are piled with boxes, and chairs stacked or overturned.
She [Mandy] walks through the deserted cubicles, passing shady remnants of the past.
Against a far wall, the TV monitor is playing more silent footage from the Slade protests.
There is a sudden bang and Mandy jolts, turning to the French doors hitting the wall with the wind. White curtains blow into the room.
Mandy looks down.
There, in the far corner of the room on a large mattress sits Brian. Shirtless, he is snorting cocaine off the ass of a nude black girl (Coco), who is dead asleep. On a lone coffee table – the only other furniture in sight – a mountain of cocaine has spilled over paraphernalia and hundred-dollar bills.
Snorting coke off a woman's body is just one of those time-worn rock star cliches. The woman here may be named Coco (presumably after Bowie's long time real life Shannon, Coco Schwab) but she is based on Bowie's platinum afro'ed backup singer, Ava Cherry, who can be seen in the 1980 Floor Show, and here on the cover of a 1974 Melody Maker:
(from the Uncut/NME Glam Issue montage of covers, hence the odd cropping).
Although Angela is usually quite open-minded about David's many paramours, she has a decided dislike of Ms. Cherry. She looked great, wonderfully eccentric and exotic in her bowling-ball fuzz of tight bleached-blond curls – just the item to dress up a Bowie stage show – but after studying her performance as a (backup) singer, I had to conclude that her primary talents must lie in other areas. She could, I'm told, do extraordinary things with apparatuses close to, thought not actually in, her vocal chords, but I'm not so sure about that. Her singing voice certainly didn't suggest the presence of anything interesting in its vicinity.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Ava a coke whore, however. Bigger, better benefits came with the job of being David’s mistress than a healthy share of the daily white powder. David, after all, had told her, "You could be the next Josephine Baker! You could be star!” when he'd run into her in France during the recording of the Pin-Ups album and until that happy day (which of course never arrived) he had Main Man maintain her in an apartment, fund her singing and dancing lessons and her wardrobe, commit to financing a solo album, and pay her a weekly allowance generous enough for a girl with no living expenses.
INT. BIJOU OFFICES – DAY – 1975
Inside, the office’s musical comedy ambience has turned film noir: shadows engulf the cavernous space where desks are piled with boxes, and chairs stacked or overturned.
She [Mandy] walks through the deserted cubicles, passing shady remnants of the past.
Against a far wall, the TV monitor is playing more silent footage from the Slade protests.
There is a sudden bang and Mandy jolts, turning to the French doors hitting the wall with the wind. White curtains blow into the room.
Mandy looks down.
There, in the far corner of the room on a large mattress sits Brian. Shirtless, he is snorting cocaine off the ass of a nude black girl (Coco), who is dead asleep. On a lone coffee table – the only other furniture in sight – a mountain of cocaine has spilled over paraphernalia and hundred-dollar bills.
Snorting coke off a woman's body is just one of those time-worn rock star cliches. The woman here may be named Coco (presumably after Bowie's long time real life Shannon, Coco Schwab) but she is based on Bowie's platinum afro'ed backup singer, Ava Cherry, who can be seen in the 1980 Floor Show, and here on the cover of a 1974 Melody Maker:
 |
(from the Uncut/NME Glam Issue montage of covers, hence the odd cropping).
Although Angela is usually quite open-minded about David's many paramours, she has a decided dislike of Ms. Cherry. She looked great, wonderfully eccentric and exotic in her bowling-ball fuzz of tight bleached-blond curls – just the item to dress up a Bowie stage show – but after studying her performance as a (backup) singer, I had to conclude that her primary talents must lie in other areas. She could, I'm told, do extraordinary things with apparatuses close to, thought not actually in, her vocal chords, but I'm not so sure about that. Her singing voice certainly didn't suggest the presence of anything interesting in its vicinity.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Ava a coke whore, however. Bigger, better benefits came with the job of being David’s mistress than a healthy share of the daily white powder. David, after all, had told her, "You could be the next Josephine Baker! You could be star!” when he'd run into her in France during the recording of the Pin-Ups album and until that happy day (which of course never arrived) he had Main Man maintain her in an apartment, fund her singing and dancing lessons and her wardrobe, commit to financing a solo album, and pay her a weekly allowance generous enough for a girl with no living expenses.
