Don't give up the day job.
Posted by marmiteboy on 20 June 2008 - 6:58pm.
My attendance at a Yellow Magic Orchestra gig last weekend reminded me (as I was in the presence of Sakamoto San) of the film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. Now this film is memorable not only for the great music but because David Bowie isn't very good in it. Why do musicians insist on acting when for the most part they aren't very good? I mean Elvis was dreadful in just about everything, Sting has put in some shockers and it's best that we forget about Prince entirely. For the most part it's just a vanity project or a misguided attempt by film producers to boost bums on seats at some dreadful film or other.
But are there actually any decent performances out there?
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Sinatra
Pushing it a bit, but Sinatra wasn't bad in a few things. Bowie is a kite mark for a dreadful film it's true. It's years since I've seen it but Bob Geldof wasn't bad in "The Wall"? Actually I recently bought it on DVD so maybe I ought to watch it.
Bjork
I firmly believe that the Icelandic pixie's performance in Dancer In The Dark is the greatest bit of acting ever.
I also firmly believe that I'm probably alone in thinking this.
No you're not
It's an astonishing piece of work. Bjork is amazing.
Oh so not true
....you are not alone! I was emotionally exhausted by her tremendous performance in that film. Shame it affected her so much she has indicated she will never act again....
and the nominations are
Cliff in Double Decker Pecker Checker
In "Summer Holiday", his own magical mystery tour. I love the bit where Hank got chucked off the bus by the inspector for not having a bus ticket and then Cliff threw up on Bruce Welch's shoes. Laugh??? I almost crapped myself. Bloody great stuff!!
Good
How about Adam Faith and David Essex in "Stardust"
Good and bad
Micky Jagger in "Performance" good:in "Ned Kelly" laughable.
Very bad
Keef crap in Pirates.
Consistantly bad
Elvis crap in every crap Elvis film.
Short but sweet self portrait
Mark E Smith in 24 Hour Party People!!!
and the winner is
Best actor goes to:
Loudon Wainwright in Big Fish
Loudon...
...was even better in Elizabethtown. A role he was surely born to play, he lectures his son on raising his grandson, insisting "fathers and sons can't be best friends." Perfect casting.
Bob Geldof...
...was OK in The Wall, but he generally just scowled a lot- I don't even remember much in the way of dialogue in that film.
Elvis was OK in 'King Creole' and the Western 'Flaming Star'.
Anyone remember Bob Dylan's rather odd turn (let's be kind and say it was enigmatic!) as Alias in 'Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid'?
There were a few turns in that overblown film version of 'Tommy' which are worthy of mention- I remember Arthur Brown, Tina Turner and Keith Moon hamming it right up and Eric Clapton looking rather uncomfortable whilst Jack Nicholson and Oliver Reed show that if singers can't generally act, most actors can't sing either!
What about John Lennon in 'How I Won The War' or Paul McCartney's much derided 'Give My Regards To Broad Street' (have to say I've not seen it). Ringo turned up in a few films as well, including 'That'll Be The Day'.
I quite like Bowie in "Merry
I quite like Bowie in "Merry Christmas" and even Sakamoto isn't too bad (if you can ignore the blusher)! Takeshi Kitano is amazing (even though he was, at the time, a comedian) and the end always chokes me up. I would argue Bowie's worst performance was his cameo as a drunken mockney hillbilly agent in "Twin Peaks, Fire walk with me". He's not bad in "Last Temptation" as Pilate.
Anyone remember Costello in "ScullY" on C4 in the early eighties? I also remember him being quite good in "No Surrender" -perhaps it was just Bleasdale.
Absolute beginnners
He is eyeball piercingly terrible in Ab Begs - that performance made me hate the film, DB himself and all my Bowie albums which I had previously liked a lot. Dreadful.
I too share fondness...
...for Bowie in Merry Christmas...I liked Tom Conti even more but I hardly see him in stuff these days....
Spitting Image's take on that
I only saw MCML once, and also found it quite compelling with an emotional ending (and Tom Conti was, as ever, just about the best thing in it).
Having said that, I always smirk when I think of the Spitting Image sketch with Bowie & Sting discussing their respective acting careers. Bowie says that the MCML director congratultaed him on his mastery of the particular form of acting called "clap". He adds that the director told him that "I was the most incredible clap actor he'd ever seen" ...
Costello in Scully
He played Scully's disabled brother and didn't make a bad fist of it, as I recall. He did the theme tune too. Mind you, I saw him in an episode of Frasier the other night and his comedic skills were notable by their absence.
Beauty and the beasts..
Madonna films - howlers all.
Johnny Rotten lived up to his name in 'Order of Death'
(waddya mean you've never heard of it?) - but is great as the presenter of Mega Bugs - like a punk Steve Irwin
Gene Simmons was quite good in 'Runaway'
(waddya mean you've never heard of this either?)
I haven't seen Diana Ross in anything - but she's meant to be OK.
Yeah...
... she was pretty good in Lady Sings The Blues.
Steve Earle in The Wire
There. That's that out of the way.
A different take on Bowie ...
... was from Joe Queenan (film critic among other things), in his very funny "If You're Talking To Me Your Career Must Be In Trouble". His view was that, whilst indeed most rock stars in films are terrible, Bowie was an exception because he managed to bring a certain strangeness to films which other actors hadn't.
He was thinking of "The Man Who Fell To Earth", which is that rare beast: a very dodgy film saved by the performance of its rock star lead.
Starman
He wasn't too bad in that actually. I think his strange woodeness actually was right for the part.
Tom Waits..
has appeared in about two dozen films and never disgraced himself, perhaps because most roles fit comfortably with the persona he projects as a performer. That's perhaps why Jagger was more than acceptable in Performance and not much else until The Man From Elysian Fields, a little gem from 2001 in which he plays Luther, the proprietor of a male escort service.
My favourite Tom Waits moments are....
(a) Paradise Alley, although a brief appeareance it introduced me to the mans music
(b) Down by the Law which was great all round
(c) Coffee and Cigarettes with Iggy Pop which is almost Reality TV
Or the bit
.....he had in Francis Ford Coppola´s Dracula was superb
or the bit....
with Lily Tomlin in Robert Altman's excellent "Short Cuts" , (also superb).
HARRY DEAN STANTON
An Actor who sings or a Singer who acts ?
Runaway with Gene Simmons is a film with TomSelleck about Bullets that go round corners,It's not bad in an Eighties kind of way.
How about Jim Dale in the Carry On Films ?
Tommy Steele ? Joe Brown "Three hats for Lisa "? Billy Fury "I've gotta Horse" Helen Shapiro "It's Trad Dad " and of course many many more.
My Favourite is Kris Kristofferson,brilliant in Lone Star and i also like him in Heaven's Gate.
The Worst is David Essex in Silver Dream Racer.
Adam Faith in Budgie
Perfectly acceptable.
vastly better...
than his singing !
There may be a Golden Rule here
The more charismatic the pop star, the less talented the actor, and vice versa. That would explain why the likes of Bowie and Jagger have been crap actors while the likes of the Kemps and Adam Faith have turned in some creditable performances.
Does this mean that we can expect to see Alvin Stardust's King Lear at Stratford any day now?
I've said this before but I'll say it again
The secret of film acting is to be yourself. Most rock stars who in go for film acting do it to prove what a versatile artist they are and therefore they think their job is to *act*. That's why Bowie is such a diaster as an actor. It exposes his really pretentious side. Same with Sting and Mick Jagger.
The best pop stars turned screen stars were people who could stand in front of cameras and be themselves in an un-self conscious manner. It's all about how you light a cigarette or open a car door, not about how you mine your psyche for shreds of pain.
I give you Frank Sinatra in Meet Danny Wilson and Elvis Presley in King Creole.
Good call...
...glad to see someone who agrees with me on 'King Creole'. I think that one stands up very well as a film in its own right, and Walter Matthau is fantastic as the sleazy villain.
I can't remember ever seeing any of Bowie's films.
As for Adam Faith, I did see a film of his from the 60s called 'Mix Me A Person' where he was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit- wasn't bad and Faith was quite good in it. He was similarly good as the dodgy manager in 'Stardust'.
How could we miss
The School Pin-up from the girls upper 6th
I'm off to do some horizontal dancing
Indeed
...Ms Grogan was the cause of many a teenage fantasy for me and my mates. She was in Taggart once an' all.
Eastenders
She was like a shaft of golden light in the otherwise dark and continuing misery when she appeared on that!!!
Wasn't Jagger in
that sci-fi film Freejack? My god, that was shite.
Bowie was quite good in Into The Night where he played a not particularly good hitman and Luke (or was it Matt) Goss was okay in Blade II
Frank Zappa was good in the Monkees film Head though he was only in it for about ten seconds. I'd skip 200 Motels, though, even though Ringo Star and Keith Moon are in it.
Dwight Yoakam
was exceptional in Sling Blade you wouldn't guess he wasn't a professional actor.
I'm strecthing now but I also remember Henry Rollins was very effective as an evil henchman in something otherwise completely forgettable. Of course all he has to do is cross the room and you think "He's crazy."
If you want to see a truly horrendous performance by a rock singer watch Nick Cave in "Ghosts of the Civil Dead". From memory he spent the entire film laying on the floor of a prison cell yelling obscenity-laced gibberish. They said at the time he "improvised" his dialogue. I bet he did! It's utter rubbish.
Roger Daltrey was
rather good in "McVicar".
Also the brothers Kemp put in acceptable performances in "The Krays" I thought.
Wasn't Lemmy in a film?
Something British and post-apocalyptic? I think he played a taxi driver but that could be my memory playing tricks.
Hardware
Based on a story that appeared in (or to be more correct nicked from and then successfully sued by) 2000 AD. Carl McCoy from the Nephilim was also in that.
Lemmy was also in Eat The Rich.
Dylan is hilariously bad as Jack Fate (!) in
Masked and Anonymous - the whole cast look like they can't believe how bad the script is. Very enjoyable in a perverse way.
As is Renaldo and Clara - another mad mad mad film, but well worth getting a bootleg of if you're a dylanfan with a like-minded obsessive. Booze is imperative to sit through it.