Moonage Daydream's Brett Morgen on capturing the chaos and learning the lessons of David Bowie
AVC: When you were going through all of this footage, what was the moment when you were like, “Oh, his life is defined by this level of chaos.”From the very beginning. He talked about it from the start within the recorded interviews that I came across. It was a theme and a subject. Bowie would only really talk to the press when he was out promoting an album.
AVC: When you say you were looking to craft this experience, where did you start? What was the piece that opened up the film for you?So I had my visual thing, right, then I had to figure out how to understand Bowie. The thing with Bowie was that he was very clear about his through-line. I accepted very early on that the film needed to have a narrative. It was never going to be 40 minutes—I couldn’t contain it within 40 minutes. It needed to have a narrative, but I didn’t want it to be overt.
The key to the film was when David said, “When I was a child, I heard Fats Domino on the radio. And I didn’t understand the word he was saying. And that’s why I found it so intriguing. It was the mystery.” I wanted the film to have that sort of mystery, but I know not all audiences want to go get lost for a couple hours in the dark. This line is very deliberately placed 20 minutes into the film.
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