The Linguine Incident
About ten minutes into the 1991 David Bowie film The Linguine Incident, ten minutes which has consisted of Rosanna Arquette dressed as Betty Boo in a bacofoil dress being bullied by a pair of modishly dressed middle-aged men in a cavernous soundstage full of melting clocks, a halfway cross between a Peter Greenaway film and Joel Schumaker's Batman and Robin, when I think who the fuck was this film made for?
About twenty minutes later as David Bowie swaggers up Coney Island beach with three sticks of Candy Floss and a gun gaffa-taped to his chest to meet Rosanna Arquette (obsessed with Mrs Harry Houdini) and Ezter Balint (a designer of self-defence underwear) that I realise: its me. This film is for me.
In 1991 I was twenty and no Bowie fan. Dave had spent the last decade being rather embarrassing. Smash Hits had had him pegged as "The Dame" and obsessed about his Swiss Chalet lifestyle and his food sculpture exhibitions. That was how my generation knew him: dicking around with Mick Jagger in a pyjamas and flasher's mac combo with too much harmony spray in his hair. He'd also made some films: he'd been a Goblin King with a prodigious penis and Spagna fright-wig. He'd been, or was about to be, a man walking down a corridor in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
But then he made The Linguine Incident specifically for me. I didn't know. I'd heard of it, of course. Around this sort of time I'd got a cassette of Changes: Bowie from somewhere and a love affair had begun, but that was with old Bowie, cool Bowie, young Bowie. Bowie was in Tin Machine at this point: it felt like an old man's folly. (He was 44) I wasn't about to see this elderly fool dick around in a big restaurant.
It is an odd film. The Dali is a huge restaurant where the waitresses are constantly insulted by the customers in a sassy Manhattan manner. The owners are a pair of camp sociopaths, the brothers from Trading Places but with the fabulousness cranked up. They are obsessed by betting, we know this because they tell us, but this is a film where every body is obsessed with something: Rosanna Arquette wants to be a female Houdini (she is thwarted, she claims, by "her tits"), her flat-mate Vivian is obsessed with designing anti-personnel pants. Dave as Monte is obsessed with getting married to someone, anyone for reasons which become clear-ish by the end of the film. For some reason they stage a robbery. Predictably it goes wrong. There is a happy ending. The video title for this film was "Shag-O-Rama" which relates to precisely nothing in the film.
It was made in the early 90's but it has an 80's vibe: New York is cold and grimy. Steam is always rising from vents in the street. The colour palette is all blacks and greys like a boy's bedroom set. Clothes are layered: gloves and hats are worn. Dave appears to have different hair in every scene. He also has his original teeth: all jagged incisors, the overlapping bottom teeth looking particularly sinister when he is under-lit at the bar. Dave is actually pretty scary for the first third of the film. He is small and pock-marked and staring as he propositions every woman he meets. After her escapology act goes wrong he bursts into Rosanna's apartment but, instead of helping her, he manacles himself to her until they both fall asleep on the bed. She isn't released until Vivian returns at which point, as he slumbers on, they don't call the police but discuss which of them gets to have sex with him. Because, you know, films...
The pace is ponderous and the dialogue jarring and arch. Scenes hang around for a long time, the director Dick Shepherd unable to remember the word you have to say to stop filming and too shy to ask. It has a Hal Hartley vibe: the stilted dialogue, the non-actors in acting roles, the stroppy protagonist. It also reminds you of Desperately Seeking Susan, another would-be wacky Rosaanna Arquette in a funny-costume-with-a-pop-star-role, though no one drys their armpits in a hand-dryer here. It reminds me in no particular order of the comics of Enki Bilal, W.R. Mysteries of the organism and the films of Jean Rollin.
Its also hysterically funny. Not as a whole but taken as individual scenes this film is a laugh riot. And most of that is down to Dave Bowie. He gives this film his everything: he's never not doing something, tiny bits of business. He doesn't care: he'll do funny walks, he'll GO BIG on a scream, he'll deliver the line "Why don't you set light to my balls with a match!" with brio. I haven't laughed so much at a film in years. All of this weird nonsense stacked high with nuance and meaning and out and out ridiculousness. It was a gift. For me.
Thanks Dave. It was worth the wait.
About twenty minutes later as David Bowie swaggers up Coney Island beach with three sticks of Candy Floss and a gun gaffa-taped to his chest to meet Rosanna Arquette (obsessed with Mrs Harry Houdini) and Ezter Balint (a designer of self-defence underwear) that I realise: its me. This film is for me.
 |
| "Why don't we do the sophisticated thing and sleep with each other?" |
In 1991 I was twenty and no Bowie fan. Dave had spent the last decade being rather embarrassing. Smash Hits had had him pegged as "The Dame" and obsessed about his Swiss Chalet lifestyle and his food sculpture exhibitions. That was how my generation knew him: dicking around with Mick Jagger in a pyjamas and flasher's mac combo with too much harmony spray in his hair. He'd also made some films: he'd been a Goblin King with a prodigious penis and Spagna fright-wig. He'd been, or was about to be, a man walking down a corridor in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
But then he made The Linguine Incident specifically for me. I didn't know. I'd heard of it, of course. Around this sort of time I'd got a cassette of Changes: Bowie from somewhere and a love affair had begun, but that was with old Bowie, cool Bowie, young Bowie. Bowie was in Tin Machine at this point: it felt like an old man's folly. (He was 44) I wasn't about to see this elderly fool dick around in a big restaurant.
It is an odd film. The Dali is a huge restaurant where the waitresses are constantly insulted by the customers in a sassy Manhattan manner. The owners are a pair of camp sociopaths, the brothers from Trading Places but with the fabulousness cranked up. They are obsessed by betting, we know this because they tell us, but this is a film where every body is obsessed with something: Rosanna Arquette wants to be a female Houdini (she is thwarted, she claims, by "her tits"), her flat-mate Vivian is obsessed with designing anti-personnel pants. Dave as Monte is obsessed with getting married to someone, anyone for reasons which become clear-ish by the end of the film. For some reason they stage a robbery. Predictably it goes wrong. There is a happy ending. The video title for this film was "Shag-O-Rama" which relates to precisely nothing in the film.
It was made in the early 90's but it has an 80's vibe: New York is cold and grimy. Steam is always rising from vents in the street. The colour palette is all blacks and greys like a boy's bedroom set. Clothes are layered: gloves and hats are worn. Dave appears to have different hair in every scene. He also has his original teeth: all jagged incisors, the overlapping bottom teeth looking particularly sinister when he is under-lit at the bar. Dave is actually pretty scary for the first third of the film. He is small and pock-marked and staring as he propositions every woman he meets. After her escapology act goes wrong he bursts into Rosanna's apartment but, instead of helping her, he manacles himself to her until they both fall asleep on the bed. She isn't released until Vivian returns at which point, as he slumbers on, they don't call the police but discuss which of them gets to have sex with him. Because, you know, films...
The pace is ponderous and the dialogue jarring and arch. Scenes hang around for a long time, the director Dick Shepherd unable to remember the word you have to say to stop filming and too shy to ask. It has a Hal Hartley vibe: the stilted dialogue, the non-actors in acting roles, the stroppy protagonist. It also reminds you of Desperately Seeking Susan, another would-be wacky Rosaanna Arquette in a funny-costume-with-a-pop-star-role, though no one drys their armpits in a hand-dryer here. It reminds me in no particular order of the comics of Enki Bilal, W.R. Mysteries of the organism and the films of Jean Rollin.
Its also hysterically funny. Not as a whole but taken as individual scenes this film is a laugh riot. And most of that is down to Dave Bowie. He gives this film his everything: he's never not doing something, tiny bits of business. He doesn't care: he'll do funny walks, he'll GO BIG on a scream, he'll deliver the line "Why don't you set light to my balls with a match!" with brio. I haven't laughed so much at a film in years. All of this weird nonsense stacked high with nuance and meaning and out and out ridiculousness. It was a gift. For me.
Thanks Dave. It was worth the wait.
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