{"id":121,"date":"2016-12-20T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T19:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/12\/20\/one-of-david-bowies-first-films-is-a-fascinating-mess\/"},"modified":"2016-12-20T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T19:01:00","slug":"one-of-david-bowies-first-films-is-a-fascinating-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/12\/20\/one-of-david-bowies-first-films-is-a-fascinating-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"One of David Bowie&#8217;s first films is a fascinating mess"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we prepare to close up shop for winter break, we have a very strange new acquisition highlight.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve mentioned before that <a href=\"http:\/\/aulibmedia.blogspot.com\/2016\/01\/remembering-bowie-on-film.html\">David Bowie had a surprisingly robust acting career<\/a>, starting with the titular role in the classic <i>The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/i>. Two years later, he returned to film in <i>Just a Gigolo<\/i>, where he plays a Prussian soldier forced into prostitution in post-World War I Germany. Notably, Marlene Dietrich briefly appears in her last credited role.<\/p>\n<p>Reception for <i>Just a Gigolo<\/i> was all over the place. Reviews at the time were scathing, and Bowie considered it an embarrassment. &#8220;Listen,&#8221; he told one film critic, &#8220;you were disappointed, and you weren\u2019t even in it. Imagine how we felt.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/dangerousminds.net\/comments\/beautiful_images_from_david_bowies_least_favorite_film_role_1978s_just_a_gi\">An author over at <i>Dangerous Minds<\/i> found it &#8220;actually pretty wild to watch&#8221;<\/a> and visually enticing.<\/p>\n<p>This film hasn&#8217;t been available in America in basically any format for decades. We recently acquired a VHS, and as part of our long-term archiving project, we&#8217;ve digitized it and created an archival DVD copy. You can watch the strange mess of <i>Just a Gigolo<\/i> yourself in the AU Library.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we prepare to close up shop for winter break, we have a very strange new acquisition highlight. We&#8217;ve mentioned before that David Bowie had a surprisingly robust acting career, starting with the titular role in the classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. Two years later, he returned to film in Just a Gigolo, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[331],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-acquisitions","tag-strange-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}