But I’ll be there for you-oo-oo…
There is yet another feature related to David Bowie in the current edition of SFX magazine, it seems there really must be a Bowie fan on the editorial staff of this publication. This issue (October 2001) has a three page feature on Labyrinth, and I know how popular this film is with a lot of you second-generation Bowie fans. Actually, I know too, how popular it is with a few of us first-generation fans who’d just rather not admit such a thing.
It seems that David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth had the same sort of effect on the awakening puberty of young girls all over the world, as Ziggy performing ‘Starman’ on TOTPs did for similarly emotionally unbalanced teenagers all over the UK…I blame the tights!
Anyway, the three-page article is part of the continuing SFX series of classic films in a feature called Past Perfect. While it’s short on Bowie pix, (just one in fact) the piece is an entertaining read with a few quotes worth mentioning here:
David Bowie: “Jim (Henson) gave me the script, which I found very amusing. It was Terry Jones, of Monty Python, and it has that kind of slightly inane insanity running through it. When I read the script and saw that Jim wanted to put music to it, it just felt as though it could be a really nice, funny thing to do. One feels that Jareth rather reluctantly inherited the position of being Goblin King as though he would really like to be, I don’t know, down in Soho or something.”
Jennifer Connelly on her favourite scene: “I wore a beautiful silver ballgown, which was a refreshing change from the blue jeans I wore in almost every other scene. It was a really gorgeous set, with masses of huge chandeliers and thousands of flickering candles, hundreds of silken cushions and curtains, and masses of people in strange masks and ornate dresses. There was the thrill of dancing with David Bowie to one of the songs he composed especially for the film. There wasn’t enough room – for technical reasons – to really dance around properly, but we just drifted slowly and gracefully (I hope!) to David’s music, and he looked fabulous! It’s all a sort of magical fantasy sequence inside a huge bubble.”
On a final note, we can be thankful that our mental image of the proud Jareth (no, I’m not talking tights again) wasn’t destroyed by the use of Terry Jones’ original script, wherein Jareth turns into a Goblin when defeated…Phew!
Thanx to young Alecz for the pointer, and to Susans for typing up the quotes…in fact I really had very little to do with this piece come to think of it.