Thoughts on David Bowie

By now you've probably heard the news that David Bowie died; it's been a good 24 hours since the news hit. Bowie was of course best known as a singer. I think I first became acquainted with his work when I was about 10 years old and "Let's Dance" was a huge hit. But that was one of his more pop-oriented tunes and Bowie did a whole bunch of stuff in other genres.

Bowie did some acting too, most notably in The Man Who Fell to Earth. That's one of those movies that I seem to recall showing up someplace on late night TV back when I was a teen, probably on my local PBS station which at the time was showing movies at about 11:30 PM on Saturdays. I believe I've mentioned before that's where I first ran across such classics as Kurosawa's Ikiru or the Soviet war film The Cranes Are Flying. I never stayed up to watch the end of The Man Who Fell to Earth, and it's something that I've never gotten around to doing since. The Man Who Fell to Earth, as I understand it, is the sort of thing that would fit in well on TCM Underground, although I don't know that TCM has ever run it. I did a search of the schedules on my computer which go back to July 2007, and didn't get a hit.

Bowie was also in the Jim Henson-directed Labyrinth, a fantasy film that I haven't seen but from the description looks as though it would be a suitable double bill for Th eMan Who Fell to Earth if TCM ever got around to running stuff like this in TCM Underground. And then he was Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ.