About the film
- Released
- August 28, 1998
- US theatrical
- November 6, 1998
- Certification
- R
- Country
- United Kingdom, United States of America
- Starring
- Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Toni Collette, Christian Bale, Suzy Eddie Izzard
More credits
- Language
- English
- Origin
- US, GB
- Studios
- Zenith Entertainment, Killer Films, Single Cell Pictures, Newmarket Capital Group, Goldwyn Films, Film4 Productions
- Written by
- James Lyons, Todd Haynes
- Produced by
- Christine Vachon, Michael Stipe, Harvey Weinstein, Scott Meek, Sandy Stern, Bob Weinstein
- Cinematography
- Maryse Alberti
- Music
- Carter Burwell, Craig Wedren
- Also starring
- Emily Woof, Michael Feast, Janet McTeer, Mairead McKinley, Luke Morgan Oliver
- Budget
- $9,000,000
- Box office
- $4,300,000
David Bowie refused to let his song catalogue anywhere near the production, so the film invents its own glam star and borrows the outline of Bowie's career without the rights to sing a note of it.
VELVET GOLDMINE (1998), directed by Todd Haynes, follows journalist Arthur Stuart, played by Christian Bale, assigned a decade later to find out what happened to Brian Slade, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a bisexual rock star who staged his own assassination onstage and then disappeared. Arthur, who worshipped Slade as a teenager, interviews the people left behind, including Slade's ex-wife Mandy, played by Toni Collette, and Curt Wild, played by Ewan McGregor, a feral American rocker modeled partly on Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
Haynes structures the film like Citizen Kane turned glitter and amphetamine, chasing a vanished icon through fragments of testimony that never quite agree. Maryse Alberti's cinematography moves between the British glam excess of the early seventies and the world Arthur inhabits a decade later.
Produced by Christine Vachon with Michael Stipe among the backers, the film lost the audience Haynes expected on release but found one later, among viewers who recognized glam rock as a costume for identities that had nowhere else to go.
Sources
- Collections Search | BFI collections-search.bfi.org.uk
- VELVET GOLDMINE - Festival de Cannes www.festival-cannes.com
- Various - Velvet Goldmine - Music From The Original Motion Picture - Tracklist www.discogs.com
- Velvet Goldmine (1998) - Trivia - IMDb s.media-imdb.com
- “Velvet Goldmine” – Reflecting on the 25th Anniversary of Todd Haynes’ Glam Rock Classic www.undertheradarmag.com
- Velvet Goldmine: Music From the Original Motion Picture listen.plex.tv
Where to see
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France
Also available internationally
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Films scored for your taste
Great soundtrack, despite the lack of Bowie. ❤️
Probably the best film I’ve ever seen using the music culture of a particular era as a focus.
love & totally agree with the Citizen Kane analogy… loved this movie, took me by surprise when i saw it eons ago – was aware of the glam rock scene but didn’t fully understand it as it was happening, although we ended up with our own watered-down version over here in the USA… thank you for this retrospective reminder – great cast, costumes and music!
I love this movie.
As flawed as this movie is, it is one of my absolute favorites.
Andrew Kaiser also saaame
Andrew Kaiser it’s not flawed. It’s perfect
Jonathan Rhys Meyers at the point in his career when everybody thought he was going to be a top star…
Other memories, an ex and their flatmate were extras in the club/concert scene. I still haven’t spotted them, and I’ve seen the film several times.
Love that movie!
A great film. Saw it the day it was released.
Good movie, but I kind of hate how it declares Ziggy to be the only Bowie that ever mattered.
Eric Wales more an indictment of the 80s/decade that followed.
Carolyn Kotlarski the movie calls out the 80s as a “bad” Bowie era, but also has Slade be “dead” and in hiding for the latter 70s…. essentially saying that Young Americans, Station to Station, and Berlin trilogy were not even worth noticing.
Perfect movie
The soundtrack album is excellent.
Not having the rights to Bowie songs was the best thing that could have happen to this production! Thanks to it I discovered Roxy Music, Eno, T-Rex and also that Thom York could actually sing! 😉
Ewan McGregor was incredible 💜
David Bishop
Jobriath?
Symon, my first thought as well, rather than Bowie. Though I’d love a movie about Jobriath, as well as one for Klaus Nomi and a third for Patrick Cowley.
It’s named after a song about sex/a euphemism for vagina 😂
Cameron Dziv it’s a Bowie song
Anni Paisley yes. He’s the one who used it as a euphemism. Read the lyrics.
Cameron Dziv oh titter, titter, titter…🤭
I really like it. Very beautiful pictures and of cause great music!
Great, Great Soundtrack
Brilliant movie.
Such a great flick! 👩🏽🎤
I don’t like this movie.
Beautiful movie, one of my favorites <3 essential viewing for any Placebo fan. The soundtrack is one of the best soundtracks as well.
It’s a great movie!
So a 70s glam rock version of Eddie and the Cruiser’s?
Jaethelle Green no.
I love this film so much. Ewan McGregor as Iggy Pop/Kurt Cobain, its flaws are what make it magic.
The Wylde Ratttz songs were super cool, Ron Asheton did some great stuff on that soundtrack!
I frist watched this movie when I was 14.
It helped give an outsider a sense of identity.
One of my all time favorite 💜
Bowie expressed regret for not participating. He didn’t know who Haynes was when he was asked.
שיין גרין I was wondering if he might have regretted that seeing how good the film was
Johnny Chunders Yup. Especially since a number of his friends and colleagues were closely involved in the music. Bob Dylan didn’t make the same mistake.
I really liked Eddie and the cruisers when it was about Rock n’ Roll.
I. Love. This. Movie!
Because of db denying his catalog I had major hopes for his autobiography 😔
Sandy Powell the costume designer, came to our tiny factory on the Mile End Road in East London and commissioned my late husband Real Terry De Havilland to make a whole bunch of footwear for this. She gave us full rein. Possibly one of the best projects we ever worked on. Love this movie!
Liz de Havilland loved your shop kings road – I bought a bought a pair of thigh length stiletto boots in the sale £15 I was @17 – very siouxsie sioux! unfortunately they were brown that’s why they were £15 lolz so I tried to turn the black using black boot polish… needless to say wherever I went I left a trail of black polish in my wake!
Michelle Brigandage Love that story!
Early 76 I used to stare through the TdH window at a magical shoe world – so Biba so Roxy Music… heaven! I was 16 so not much cash.
Michelle Brigandage Same here! It was such a magical shop. I didn’t meet Terry until 1990. It was love at first sight for us both. I had close on 30 happy years with him, living and working together 24/7. Miss him hugely. Oh and btw, don’t believe the BS that surrounds the current TdH brand. Thereby hangs a tale…
I looooove this film and its accompanying soundtrack.
Natalie Sylvie : Me Too ! ! !
As stylish as it is, I find the storytelling to be rather muddled and confused. I’ve been a bigger fan of some of Haynes’s later films.
I loved it in the cinema and it was the first DVD I ever bought. I enjoyed the Citizen Kane framework and it was so obviously about Bowie, but the movie also introduced me to some amazing music from the era that I had missed and the unfamiliarity of which conveyed the shock and wonder of encountering genius for the first time. Sometimes the constraints that threaten to ruin a project end up steering it into a greatness it might never have otherwise reached.
I might have another look at it this week.
And I’m STILL waiting for the entirety of this absolutely banger soundtrack to hit Spotify…
🙄
The soundtrack makes the movie even better
This is one of my favorite movies! Ewan McGregor doing Iggy Pop alone makes it worth watching.
I’m confused about why an AI commercial on tv has been able to license and play his version of “Five Years”, since he refused to release any of his music for at least two biopics about him.
Luxe Caitlin estates often behave differently than the living artist did, generally the focus is 100% squeezing as much dough as possible out of their catalog, art and integrity be damned
I had this DVD, a tshirt, the screenplay book, and finally got the vinyl re-release. I could probably upgrade to bluray at this point.
Absolutely love this movie, and the soundtrack is 🔥
I loved this movie!
Fantastic movie – one of my favorites
Really liked it. Time for a re-watch!!
Unwatchable.
Brian Eno didn’t mind.
Love it 🙏❤️🥊 and it did find it’s TRUE audience – there’s a book of diaries on the making – that I so wish I now owned – it’s a MIRACLE it was ever finished & came out at all !
Disimulado tributo a D.Bowie en vida (1998).
Titulo de un track del cantante
(Bowie no le dio, importancia al film)
I love this film. Was lucky enough that Haynes came to my university to do a screening and a q&a.
Great film!
Sofi Chan Dls !!!
One of my all time favorite movies. Stunning film in every aspect.
I wish a deluxe reissue of the soundtrack would happen. Lots of songs missing on the original release.
I’m so glad I got to see this one on the big screen…. Loved every second
This movie was my life online for literal decades. Gorgeous gorgeous film . I fell hard for Jack Fairy.Hes so magical
An incredible film and Bowie was a total ego maniac bore for not getting involved.
Do NOT short change the musical driving force that made it possible:
SHUDDER TO THINK is the only act that was going to be able to LAND a very believable musical “voice” that matches the era seamlessly
Absolutely love this Movie!
This movie could have been great, and there are certainly good things about it, but a lot of what’s wrong with it makes sense once you learn that they lost a third or more of the budget RIGHT before filming was to begin. (That’s detailed in a book the producer Christine Vachon wrote.) As a result they had to drastically trim back the scale and alter the structure of the film at the last minute, the only other option being to cancel the entire production. So it was a movie made with a lot of forced compromises, under a lot of unanticipated stress.
crap movie imo, heard it was supposed to be loosely based on the bowie/iggy partnership from the berlin era but I couldn’t glean any of that from it. someone ought to do a proper film dramatizing their LA to europe adventures- oh and then do a proper 60s-period version of basketball diaries because that decaprio flick was a pile of 💩
It was a very cute film but I strongly disagree with one of the films central theses which was that the Ziggy Stardust Era was the high water mark in Bowie’s career. The Tommy Stone Character (Bowie’s Berlin Years with Eno and Co.) was a hack and a sellout. Bowie’s peak was his work that followed the Ziggy Stardust persona. His best work is on Station to Station, Low, Lodger and Heroes.
It was not a very good movie, depsite a stellar director and soundtrack.
Brent Ericson you have no taste 😂
Antony Langdon I remember being excited that you were in this film! 💚
Great version of 20th Century Boy
That film blew my mind… The world that predated and influence punk was amazing…
The album and costumes are everything… Placebo cameos
This was such a love letter to the icons of that era. Loved the movie and the soundtrack is fire!
Killer soundtrack.
A friend showed me this movie the first time I saw it, I’ve loved it ever since 😍
Was lucky to play an extra in 3 scenes, one the opening scene where a line of glam rock kids queue for a gig . I’m the bored with attitude looking one lol
Also had Michael Stipe tell me he liked my bag ( a futuristic latex spiky backpack) and that he had a skirt just like it ! as he walked past me on set one day.
In another festival scene we were directed to hang out and about like we were at Woodstock kinda thing – we ran with it aided by our own psychedelic party supplies. Turned into a long day and night lol
I got the video copy but it wasn’t the kind film I could show me mum lol
David in velvet goldmine lady stardust