Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

for his ambitions. Bale plays Arthur Stuart, a
journalist and former superfan of Brian Slade, the
film’s Bowie figure (played by Jonathan Rhys Myers),
who creates and then destroys (literally, via an
assassin’s bullet) an alter ego named Maxwell
Demon (the Ziggy figure). On the anniversary of the
stunt, Bale is assigned to retrace the history of
Slade’s rise and fall and answer all the questions left
unresolved by interviewing figures from his past,
including Toni Collette’s Angie figure, Mandy Slade,
and Ewan MacGregor’s Curt Wild, purported to be a
mash-up of both Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, but given
McGregor’s costume (nicked directly from the Mick
Rock–shot Raw Power sleeve), lithe body and recreation
of the Stooges’ “TV Eye,” it’s, visually at
least, more uncut Iggy than Lou. The relationship
between Slade and Wild, however, may be more
Bowie/Reed at its core. “The infatuation between the
two of them,” Haynes says, “draws more directly
from the Lou Reed and Bowie lore, which they very
well may have been performing for the public—
performed a romance, whether it was consummated
or not. That became the sort of fantasy romance in
my film.”
Haynes translates the Bowie history to suit a
somewhat overwrought detective story, having his
young journalist reveal an allegorical right-wing
conspiracy that links Slade to a toothy, blond,
heterosexual Reaganite pop star named Tommy
Stone, a cartoon blow-up of Bowie’s Serious
Moonlight-era persona. The Oscar-nominated