JOHNNY FLYNN
The folk singer/actor reflects on playing Bowie in Stardust: includes teeth, the “jukebox musical”, and meeting Bob Dylan.
How do you go about portraying Bowie on screen? Fresh from 1971 US tour film Stardust, the former Sussex Wit talks contact lenses and contact highs.
“To be offended by this film is pointless.” JOHNNY FLYNN
“WHAT FOLLOWS is (mostly) fiction.” So runs the disclaimer that opens Stardust, a new film that follows a 1971 road-trip David Bowie took across America, when his career was at a low ebb but his creative antennae were hyperactive – to culminate, soon, in the creation of Ziggy Stardust. Some liberties are taken here for dramatic purposes, and the Bowie estate refused to license any use of his music. But the actor/musician Johnny Flynn brings a quiet emotional power to his starring role. At 37, Flynn’ s real-life career is thriving on stage and screen. For the best introduction to his music, try the pastoral English score he provided for that beguiling TV comedy series Detectorists. Until then, though, Bowie…
What surprised you about Bowie in researching the role?
In this period his confidence was paper-thin. He seemed resigned to bad luck. He turns up in America and everything is against him. The album he made, The Man Who Sold The World, is dark and heavy but the US paperwork means he can’t even play it. To my understanding he was running away from those songs, he wouldn’t talk about the themes of madness, his brother Terry [committed to a mental hospital] and the fear of his own mind collapsing. He was looking for ways to run away from himself. And in a moment of metamorphosis, he realises it’s OK to wear this absolute mask and create a character.
What feels like the key scene to you?
Obviously it’s imagined, moment by moment, but we know about this guy Ron Oberman, the PR at Mercury. There’s a scene where Ron gets angry and you see David opening up. This odd couple are bound by love and respect for outsiders: David learns about The Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Iggy Pop. It really happened. He had this banal suburban childhood and to become this ultimate rock star was his way out of mediocrity. And when David meets who he thought was the real Lou Reed, it turns out to be Doug Yule. In the scene after that he says, “What’s the difference between a rock star and somebody impersonating a rock star?” Ron is saying, basically, you can fake it. That’s the revelation, that David has some kind of impostor syndrome, until he realises that everybody’s faking it.
I’m not sure all this stuff would be in the big studio jukebox musical version of this story, it would probably be two minutes of screen time. It doesn’t negate the right of that other sort of film to exist, but to be offended by this film is pointless.
Did the estate’s refusal force you to work harder with what you did have?
Yeah. I’m not into those jukebox musicals, I’d rather listen to the records… I didn’t want to do that with David Bowie, he’s important enough to me to not want to fuck with it.
To play him, what did you have to do on the physical level?
Well, I’m wearing one contact lens. And those teeth… They’re by the same guy who made Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury teeth [for the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody] which I’ve still got in my Halloween drawer to scare the kids with. Most people have very different bone structure to David Bowie’s, he was unique. I wasn’t going for an out-andout impersonation because, weirdly, the harder you try to do that the more people can pick holes in it. But I lost a lot of weight, about two stone. My own clothes were falling off me.
Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before.
I was doing a play called Jerusalem with Mark Rylance and we bonded over our love of Bob Dylan. In the 1980s Mark had a terrible time making a film with Dylan called Hearts Of Fire, and his wife Claire said, “Don’t worry, you will meet again.” Jerusalem became this huge hit and one night we’d have Paul McCartney in, the next night Mick Jagger. We got a bit vainglorious and wrote to Bob Dylan: sure enough, he was doing shows in London and had a night off. He just wanted a private box. I met him, he thanked me for the tickets, we waved him off and Mark turns and says, “We’ve fulfilled the prophecy!”
Stardust is in UK cinemas and available on digital platforms on January 15, 2021.