#velvetgoldmine25th

[transjackfairy]

happy 25th birthday to my favourite film ever

[gayalienwilde]

[mangle-my-mind]

Todd Haynes on Arthur Stuart

OM: I think you would agree that the character who most personalizes the film and makes it so emotional is Arthur. He's not just the guy who walks around asking what Rosebud is.

TH: Arthur is me. He's you. He's the fan who becomes part of the story, the silhouette who has the light turned onto him. I still have a crush on him, the character, and it's largely due to Christian [Bale's] performance - there's just something so heartbreaking about it. I still can't be completely objective about Arthur. It is a very difficult part to play, and much less inviting than the more colorful roles in the film. But the weight on that character/actor to carry the film and ground you emotionally, and give you a consistent point of entry into the story - through all of these flashbacks and dizzying whirlwind of memories - was enormous. I think Christian rose to the occasion and presented us with a consistent point of ourselves as the public who buys the music. The film had to have a really strong fan point of view, not just as a framework for letting Mandy and the rest tell the story. He is there for us as a reminder of our place in the cycle of pop and consumer culture, that we're really central to it. Something about that cycle - where the kiss between Brian and Curt is photographed, the photograph gets printed, it goes through the press, it gets sold at the newsstand, some little kid in Manchester buys it, he takes it home, he opens it up, and it gives him an erection - is very real. There's something palpable about intercutting the public sexuality of the rock stars with the very private, unknown sexuality of the consumer, and how one directly affects the other. I think it all has to do with the tremendous joy that rock performers get from performing their music, the sexual connection to the audience, which film-makers cannot experience. To have lived a live moment with an audience, where some kind of charge is being let out on one end and taken in on the other, is pretty amazing. It's also why rock speaks to adolescents. They are most in need and most open to all kinds of charges like that, because it's not yet codified, or genderized or labelled.

Source - Superstardust: Talking Glam with Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman

Emphasis my own :)

[holy-loki]

i am so so happy to announce…. THE 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY FAN CELEBRATION OF “VELVET GOLDMINE” !!

i’m really excited to be putting this together with the support of such a wonderful community! i wanted to share it with you all before i share it on other platforms! please let me know if you’re interested in helping at all, and - of course - please feel encouraged to participate in any way you can!!! it’s going to be so much fun! save the date(s) !

happy (almost) 25 years ! 🎉

[starboystudios]

posting this triptych i did in 2020 as the final piece for the @25yearsofvelvetgoldmine event.

this is about a complicated emotional period in my life, in which i used the character of malcolm as an outlet for my difficulties and as a aid to work through them. as pictured is an acrylic painting of my room at the time, and each of the three images are it modified in somewhat different ways to reflect different elements of that period of time. the only colour in the piece is within the lettering of the phrase “i will do anything for you”, a line i found incredibly evocative from the roxy music song if there is something (there is actually one exception to that, in the nail polish on a pinky finger in the third painting)

this film is so important to me and formative to the person i am and this period of time is part of that impact. thank you velvet goldmine, thank you todd haynes, and most of all, thank you malcolm.

bonus: this sketch i did MONTHS before that was the starting point for the piece.

[didntyoubelieveinme]

happy mandy slade!!!!! love of my life

[25yearsofvelvetgoldmine]

Introducing…

🎉The 25 Years of Velvet Goldmine Challenge 🎉

(Thank you so much to @mangle-my-mind for organizing this!)

Come and celebrate 25 Years of this incredible film by engaging with these weekly prompts! Share your art, your stories, and all your Wildean musings! Don’t forget to tag your posts (#25YearsOfVelvetGoldmine #VelvetGoldmine25th) !

Please share and spread the word! Any and everyone is welcome to participate! ♥️

[tenderandalsotired]

This week is "Make a Wish" week AKA fan week for @25yearsofvelvetgoldmine so I can do whatever I want!

yeah I wrote vg fan fictions, mostly curt/arthur. some are good and some.... not so much. but the ones that I felt pround of are sometimes, you get so lonely and backstage. (still haven't finished the translation yet)

[holy-loki]

reblogging for the VG25 challenge ! ♥️

red + velvet goldmine (1998)

[transjackfairy]

scanned from select magazine, october 1998

[gayalienwilde]

I love that everyone I've seen discuss Velvet Goldmine's soundtrack has said that Bowie refusing to let his songs be used was actually a blessing for the movie, because it's 100% true, but what's funny to me is that, even after all that, Bowie still ended up making it into the soundtrack since he does the backing vocals on "Satellite of Love". I think that's even more perfect than if his songs had been used because it shows how much Bowie was involved in the 70s scene and that it didn't matter if he wouldn't let his music be used, since he'd worked with so many people it makes sense for him to be somewhere in a song of that era used in this movie, so of course legally names and songs have to be replaced but the artistic influence cannot be escaped.

[mangle-my-mind]

Todd Haynes on Mandy Slade

OM: How did you come to cast Toni Collette as Mandy? She doesn't strike me as an obvious choice for the role as it is written; her most famous part was in Muriel's Wedding where she played the podgy, Abba-obsessed ultra-hetero outcast.

TH: Mandy was the hardest part to cast in the film. It's a particularly demanding role due to the range Mandy has to display as she changes from the seventies to the eighties. This type of camp female character has basically vanished from our cultural landscape, as far as I can tell. The closest equivalent today is probably a Parker Posey-type character, but she's still quite different from the Liza Minnelli of Cabaret or the Angela Bowie of the glam era. Mandy has a theatrical, campy party girl persona that can be turned on and off at will, and owes a great deal to the gay male sensibility of the time. I think women around the world were liberated from all kinds of highly codified notions of femininity when people like Patti Smith entered the pop cultural arena. It had such a profound effect on women but girls today have no memory of that kind of camp femininity.

I saw so many strong actresses for Mandy, both in the US and the UK, and it was really tough to find the right one. We came close a few times, but it wasn't until I met Toni that it all clicked. I had no doubt about her acting ability, but the question was how to transform Toni Collette psychically, both for the camera and in her own self-regard into this very different, very confident, overly sexual creature. She really had to go off the cliff; I'm sure it was terrifying. And what you see in the film is such a transformation, such a complete commitment to the role that she almost becomes unrecognizable as Muriel in Muriel's Wedding. After a certain point, nothing was too scary for Toni. What you get with the character is what you get with the actress playing her - this range of changes and the effects of various cultures and various experiences on one extraordinary woman.

OM: Although the script informs you of Mandy being an American bisexual who reinvented herself, you get the sense of invention fully in the scene where she presents Brian with the divorce papers. She breaks down and you see the façade in a seventies context. It's a very moving moment and it's contrasted with Brian's coked-up emptiness. What did you discover in your research about the 'back-stage' women of the glam era?

TH: I guess Mandy's basic expression of real needs is made more vivid by that scene, but the beaten-down, hard-boiled Mandy of the eighties gives you the framework for that. She was definitely one of those people who was feeling and hurting and acting out at the same time. Often the casualties were the women of the male rock world. I really feel the film builds and develops complex sympathies for Mandy that you won't necessarily feel going in. The character is loosely inspired by aspects of Angela Bowie, and it's very easy to make fun of that kind of pop creature after the fact. But in all the books I read there was no argument on how fundamentally essential Angela Bowie was to the invention of Ziggy Stardust and to glam rock in general. She inspired risk-taking and flamboyance to a degree no one else can claim credit for. It wouldn't have happened without her.

Source - "Superstardust: Talking Glam with Todd Haynes", Oren Moverman.

Photo source

Emphases my own :)

[holy-loki]

so i’m sure someone might have mentioned this before and i’ve just missed it, but. i just noticed something .

so of course we remember the prelude to the circus scene, where everyone in brian’s entourage (+ curt) form this beautiful royal-esque gaudy portrait (pictured below):

but upon reexamination of the orgy scene… (pictured below):

obviously it’s not the EXACT same furniture (and this shot is much less vibrantly lit) but. the red and gold furniture is similar enough to suggest to me that… that the orgy is still a performance in the same (or at least similar) way the circus prelude was.

which is why brian and curt leaving the performance space and going into a private, intimate moment seems illicit. at least in the circus, the press and the people get to take part in the ‘strange’ intimacy, and make a commodity of it. but in the orgy scene? when curt gets up and goes to another room, and brian follows??? they, essentially, are leaving the stage entirely. they exist as only they will ever know, and not even us - the secret 4th wall audience - get to experience that.

[starboystudios]

a faux polaroid i drew of malcolm and curt circa the late 80s in mid-2021 that i subsequently mailed to @ant1christsuperstar. and yes, i gave malcolm an overgrown mullet, as mentioned in prior posts. i think he'd still be kind of gothy, though.

like its film of origin, this one is chock-full of little easter eggs. the illustration itself is referenced from this picture of brian molko, malcolm here being about the same age as brian was there. the framed prints are an andy warhol piece and a photo of marlene dietrich. malcolm's sweater is in reference to that one sweater robert smith had with the cat motif. curt's shirt is a really early photo of shudder to think - they had just started up in the DC post-hardcore scene the year prior and i feel like he would be in the know about those acts. and, as a personal touch, mal's necklace is based on one i own.

[eddiestardust]

For the 25 years of Velvet Goldmine, i drew Brian Slade!! :) been a year since i first saw this film, and every rewatch somehow made it better!!

(Do excuse the sloppiness of the drawing, it was late at night lol)

[25yearsofvelvetgoldmine]

What is the best scene in Velvet Goldmine?

Reblog & tag and/or reply with your answers!