“Commencing countdown”
News.com.au has published a brief snippet of an interview with Kristen Wiig, star of the new Ben Stiller movie: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Here’s an excerpt from the piece.
Wiig sings Bowie’s Space Oddity in the movie, but had no inkling when she recorded her rendition of the song at New York’s famed Electric Lady studio that it would be overlaid with Bowie’s original – creating the virtual duet.
“I just found that out a couple of weeks ago – I guess they talked to him and it’s now a duet on the soundtrack. It’s so weird. I have to pinch myself.
“It was really fun recording that. I can’t even describe it, just singing that song, it’s David Bowie and I’m such a huge Bowie fan, it was intimidating.
“I’ve caught the bug now. I want to go on tour!”
Strictly speaking this soundtrack version of Space Oddity is a segue as opposed to a true duet.
The track starts with Wiig’s new version up to the commencement of the countdown, when the original Bowie recording is faded in until it takes over at the lift-off sequence.
The film is a remake of the original which was released in the year of Bowie’s birth, 1947.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is due in cinemas on Chrsimas Day in the US. (Territorial variations apply) Visit the official site here.