Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

Bale and McGregor, and Toni Collette and multiple
partners in a hazy orgy scene. “But I thought the rest
of it was garbage.” Haynes is naturally
“disappointed” by this. “The thing that always made
me sad about Bowie’s reaction to my film—and I
understand everyone is protecting their own public
depiction—but I just feel like I took everything he
created with a great sense of freedom of invention. I
took it to task and basically accepted it as a
delicious fiction of his own making.”
Perhaps the ultimate verdict on Velvet Goldmine
goes to Bob Dylan, who was impressed enough by
Haynes’s body of work to allow total access to his
own equally vast myth and Earth-changing music. “I
thought Dylan would be the hardest of all, thought I’d
truly lost my marbles even presuming. My career sort
of began with some adversarial reaction—the
Carpenters being my first denial, then Bowie,” says
Haynes. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, now I’m taking on the
meanest guy of all,’ but instead he said, ‘Sure, use
whatever you want, you’ve got life rights and music
rights. Pick any song from the canon.’” Asked if he
applied any of the mistakes he may have made on
Goldmine to I’m Not There, Haynes replies, “I think I
just repeated all my mistakes and stand by them in
both films.”
In 2001, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a sister film
of sorts to Velvet Goldmine (they also share a
producer) was released. Based on John Cameron
Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s hit off-Broadway play,
the film also traffics heavily in Bowie myth and