Cameron Crowe: David Bowie Was the 'Anti-Branding Artist'

Imagine being a teenage journalist and getting to hang out for months with David Bowie. That was a formative experience for writer-director Cameron Crowe, who Tuesday at the TCA Winter Press Tour framed Bowie as someone whose stardust was scattered very much at the "A" end of the art-vs.-commerce axiom: “David Bowie’s impact is so huge in that he presents himself now as a role model to artists that may need to remember that it’s not about branding. It’s about a restless need to be creative and to continue being creative, and David Bowie was the anti-branding artist... It’s great to look to Bowie and see that seismic effect he’s had on people, not because he kept doing the same thing that worked again and again, but because he always shook it up and he always served the gods of creativity, and that was the lesson I got from him then and today.” At the TCA and also in a brief blog essay, Crowe rated Bowie as the most generous and entertaining interview subject he ever worked with. The Almost Famous filmmaker also shared this wonderful self-assessment from Bowie: In our last conversation, I read him back some of his quotes from the “wild years in L.A.” period. Looking back was not his game, but he listened patiently. Some of the quotes were spectacularly profound, but Bowie took no ownership. “It really represents the morbid and misdirected enthusiasm of a young man with too much time on his hands and too many grams of PCP, amphetamine or cocaine or maybe all three in my system, really.” Below the Jan. 11 blog post, Crowe responded to one particular reader comment with "nice one... you don't miss much." He's referring to Joseph Brunetta’s observation about Untitled: Almost Famous the Bootleg Cut: That was lovely. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, remembrance, and his “self-portrait”. Even though the Bowie sequence might have taken up around a minute of screen time in Untitled, that sequence in the extended cut, I thought, really nailed Bowie to me, tying him into the theme and structure of the film’s story. The comedy of Nick Swardson’s “Insane Bowie Fan,” who starts off dismissive of Bowie when trying to analyze Ziggy Stardust, looking masculine and secure in his posture, as if what he’s speaking is assuredly grounded in truth, before Bowie appears and all of a sudden Swardson is screaming at the top of his lungs, jumping and waiving his arms in an effeminate manner, switching from would-be critic to would-be Band Aid, from masculine to feminine–is not only a great laugh but also captures the duality of Bowie and the essence of the movie at the same time. And that it’s all done to a song of Lou Reed’s as sung by Bowie, curtailing the discussion that sort of cements the bond between William and Lester earlier, is just a sly kicker. Previously on FishbowlNY: Entertainment Weekly, SiriusXM Pay Tribute to David Bowie David Bowie and the Golden Globes

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Cameron Crowe: David Bowie Was the 'Anti-Branding Artist'

Another great aspect of the singer's "Sound and Vision."

Richard Horgan

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Richard Horgan