“It will tumble from the sky”
TASCHEN’s The Man Who Fell To Earth book presents a wealth of stills and behind-the-scenes images by unit photographer David James, including numerous shots of Bowie at work, rest and play, peppered with quotations from all involved, including Bowie himself.
Published next week, this weighty 480 page tome (albeit a compact 14 x 19.5 cm), includes a superb new essay by Paul Duncan which explores the shooting of the film and its lasting impact, drawing upon an exclusive interview with David James, who brings first-hand insights into the making of this sci-fi masterwork.
Here’s a particularly funny excerpt from it in which Bowie remembers the alien ‘train’…
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There are visual and textual references to trains throughout the film, since, for Newton, it represents the last time he saw his family, when he departed on the alien train. To visualize this scene in the film, Brian Eatwell laid a monorail track on the desert floor, and built the alien train around an old tractor.
The train had an organic surface and was fitted with solar sails. Bowie: “When the train turned up, it was nothing like what Nic had envisaged. He went blue in the face, then he went red, then white and he said, ‘What is that?’ ‘It’s your train, sir.’ ‘That’s not a train, it’s a fucking dog kennel!’ But we lived with it.”
The shoot was further complicated when the tractor broke down. Unable to replace the parts, they attached ropes to the train and had horses pull it out of shot. James: “Such problems are normal on a film.”
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Well, whatever the on-set problems, we here at DBFBHQ thought the train was quite convincing, possibly because it was so different to any Earth train, or dog kennel for that matter.
Stay tuned for your chance to win copies of the book along with other TMWFTE goodies.
See the dedicated TASCHEN page here.
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