David Bowie in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH This Weekend at Webster University

“Well I’m not a scientist. But I know all things begin and end in eternity!”

 THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH  screens at Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood Ave., St. Louis, MO 63119) Friday through Sunday (February 19-21). Showtime is 7:30pm.

When THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH was set to be released theatrically in the United States in 1976, studio execs were puzzled by the daring film and director Nicholas Roeg’s curious storytelling style. Twenty minutes of the film’s more unconventional scenes were excised, making an already challenging film even more so. Ambitious, imaginative, pretentious, and baffling in equal measure THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH has had a huge cult following ever since its initial release. It left a strong emotional impact on me as a teen even as I puzzled over its odd narrative. It originally received mixed reviews and confused plenty of audience members and critics but over the years, it’s cult has ascended and now is an excellent time for the film to be rediscovered on the big screen

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH was director Nicolas Roeg’s take on the science-fiction novel of the same name by author Walter Tevis, (who also authored The Hustler, the basis of the 1960 Paul Newman classic). David Bowie (his acting debut) plays Thomas Jerome Newton, who arrives in New Mexico from his unnamed planet which has been depleted of life-sustaining resources. With a comb of bright orange hair and an insatiable thirst for water, Newton travels to the big city, where he teams up with lawyer Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry) and ambitious college professor Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn) to secure patents on a series inventions that quickly make him a multimillionaire. Soon Newton is head of the mammoth World Enterprises, an international electronics conglomerate. His original plan is to use the money to transport water back to his dying planet, but, after pairing up with his needy maid (Candy Clark), he becomes complacent and corrupted by the capitalist system. He spends his days shut in and glued to the multiple television sets which he can watch at once. Eventually, the government gets involved, threatening Newton and his company through a “fixer” who discovers he’s from another planet, and things go terribly wrong.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH makes some heavy-handed points about the ruthlessness of corporate greed, how humans manage to corrupt anything we get our hands on, and how our vision, no matter how urgent, is constantly undermined by the excesses around us, The movie is both beautiful and disturbing in the way it looks and in what it’s trying to say. When compared to sci-fi films that came before it it seems to be very progressive. Yet in hindsight it is very much a product of the 70’s. It just oozes with the hipness and irreverence of that period. It’s main purpose seems to be making fun of all those movies of the past, showing how we should really be more scared of ourselves than an invasion from another planet, especially when it’s the alien who is the most gentle person in the picture. Roeg considered Mick Jagger and Peter O’Toole for the part of Newton, but Bowie was an inspired and perfect choice. Unlike most rock singers, his first foray into acting came off solid and natural. Candy Clark is also outstanding. The only member of the AMERICAN GRAFFITI cast to get an Oscar nom, Clark’s career really seemed to crash and burn after this. THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is a timeless film, one of the great thought-provoking science-fiction movies of the ’70s (and there were a lot) and I strongly urge everyone to take advantage of this opportunity to see it again (or for the first time) on the big screen.

A facebook invite for the event can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/172903969747225/