Jazzin' for Blue Jean

Jazzin’ for Blue Jean Jazzin’ for Blue Jean (1984) A 20-minute short film for David Bowie’s song <Blue Jean> by Cast Julien Temple and David Bowie. Director ; Julien Temple Writing Credit ; David Bowie, Terry Johnson, Julien Temple Summary The adventures of Vic who falls for Dream girl. He lies to her and David Bowie ; Screamin’ Lord Byron / Vic says that he knows her favorite rock star, Screamin’ Lord Byron. Louise Scott ; Dream Vic promises her to get a ticket for Screamin’ Lord Byron show and Chris Sullivan ; Boyfriend introduce her to him. Vic attains only one ticket, gives it to her and Graham Rogers ; Flatmate tries to find another way in and he attempts to sneak backstage to Richard Fairbass ; Bass convince Screamin’ to come say ‘hello’ to him and the girl after the Paul Ridgeley ; Drums show. Daryl Humphries ; Guitar Screamin’ does come to Vic’s table after the show and says hello to him and the girl, but the girl and Screaming Lord Byron have Producer ; Paul Spencer already met, and she leaves with the rock star instead of Vic. Cinematographer ; Oliver Stapleton Film Editor ; Richard Bedford Production Desingner ; John Beard Art Director ; John Ebden Costume Designer ; Roger Burton, Polly Claden Makeup Department ; Phyliss Cohen - makeup artist ; Screamin’ Lord Byron Peter Frampton - makeuo artist / prosthetic makeup artist Keith Smile - hair stylist Bowie takes the opportunity at several points in this film to poke fun at himself and his career. “Young conniving, randy, bogus-Oriental old queen! Your record sleeves are better than your songs!” Also kind of Bowie’s self-references are present, such as the song <Warszawa> being played while Screamnin’ Lord Byron is applying his makeup. Costume Vic Wearing a powder-blue suit and a blood-stained piece of Elastoplast on his nose, he pushes his way through the extras towards the stage, where an assistant director is wearing the Screamin’ pants and boots. Sitting on the edge of the catwalk, he treats the performer to just what everyone needs to hear when they’re working. “We’re at a table in the corner!” he shouts. “I think you’re doing really great - they really like ya!” Suddenly Screamin’s boot comes down hard on his hand, and he retreats towards the table mournfully clutching the injured appendage. Screamin’ Lord Byron Bowie has always had an uncanny ability to enter rooms so unobtrusively that he often seems to have just materialised by the time that you get around to spotting him, and so he appears genie-like near the stage in a real Aladdin suit: black pants, silver-grey tunic and a riot of scarves. The first section of the performance to be filmed is a tricky little set-piece wherein Bowie starts out holding one end of a long ribbon, the other end of which is tagged to the head of Richard’s bass. The move that Bowie and Toguri have concocted requires Bowie to snatch the ribbon loose, run two steps forward and fling said ribbon to the back of the stage, but it takes a few goes to get it right. One take collapses when the ribbon refuses to detach itself from the bass in time, another when it doesn’t reach the back of the stage, and a third when one of the scarves in Bowie’s costume ends up over his face. Makeup Screamin’ lord byron’s makeup looks like a painting. The heavy shadow beneath the eyes, blended out from corner is making him more dramatic. In addition, with the gold colour on the lids and lips, it creates a dynamic, dark look. According to the makeup artist of Screamin’ Lord Byron, Phyllis Cohen, her reference isa garish handbill depicting Bowie, face frozen to its utmost haughtiness and streaked with the black-and-white deathmask which she has just re-created on the living countenance. Comment about <Jazzin’ for Blue Jean> Julien Temple: Director “When I met him I was expecting the <Man who Fell to Earth> but what I got instead was more like the insecure guy next door. Initially socked by that, I soon realised he was very aware of this strange tension between the weird and the normal within himself. He knew it was refracted somehow through his brother(Bowie’s half brother, Terry Burns, who suffered with schizophrenia and kill himself 1985) and recognised it as the wellspring of his creativity. The Blue Jean film we made together was based upon it.” “It examined that split which exists in him,” Temple says. “There’s ‘normal David’ and ‘incandescent David’. He wasn’t like those per- formers who exhibit a star-like aura wherever they go. We went to the Notting Hill carnival together, and people wanted to touch him, which was odd because he was this very normal south London guy. It was when he performed that a transformation occurred.” Graham Williamson: Filmmaker and writher based on Middlesbrough “The film would be utterly negligible without these signposts to what kind of artist Bowie considered himself at the time. Given that ‘Blue Jean’s parent album Tonight was perhaps the least ambitious of Bowie’s whole career, it’s easy to say he’s scorning the pretensions of Byron in favour of the genial ordinary-blokishness of Vic. But it is Byron, not Vic, who gets to sing ‘Blue Jean’, which is a well-above-av- erage slice of pop-era Bowie. Even as he tries to market himself to a mainstream audience who had previously been nervous around his grand SF concepts and ambiguous sexuality, he knows that it’s the Byrons of the world who make pop music vital, and the Vics are just the audience. It’s probably just a goof that neither Bowie nor Temple intended as a statement. But it’s enjoyable, has some career resonance, and Vic’s final line to Byron is hilarious.”.

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