Sunday, January 16, 2011

Elephant Bowie


After you watch this please search on youtube "david bowie elephant man" you will find better, more in depth fottage covering that. For unknown reasons, the embebed feature for me to display them were all asked to be removed....... by whome? mystery.
I cant tell how I feel entirely about the concept of the direction being that Bowie was made to act with no prosthetics or make up. The challenge for the actor (Bowie) is obvious, and would be very difficult being that you must convey the characters physical troubles through emotions, exaggerated movement, and vocal stability. Also it lends itself thematicly to the story with the statement of John Merrick (the elephant man) bieng a normal man like any man, his appearance aside. However David Bowie himself is not just some normal man. I feel like ticket sales to see Bowie acting with little clothes on, the actractive pop sex symbol he is best known as, was likely the best option for ticket sales. The interest in seeing Bowie in extensive makeup to be disfigured would certainly draw audiences who were not regular theater gowers, along with regular ones skeptickle of its stars credibility. But I cant help but think, they figured this way would draw more, and would apear complelling. To me it seem to actually be weakening your ability to truly fathom John Merrick's troulbles. I do however love what I can see of the performance and am captivated by its oddity on so many levels that it seems to function, maybe even better on other planes. Magic!

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