Brett Morgen Savors Sound & Vision Of David Bowie In ‘Moonage Daydream’ As He Closes Out Music Doc Career

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Moonage Daydream, a film about David Bowie, opens with “Hallo Spaceboy,” a deep cut from his 1995 album Outside. It’s clear from the use of this song that Brett Morgen isn’t making a traditional documentary about the Thin White Duke.“I was completely trolling,” admits Morgen.But the use of a relatively obscure industrial track from later in Bowie’s career illustrates what the director is trying to achieve.

He’s looking to tell the story of Bowie’s work as an experience or a feeling, full of “chaos” and “fragmentation,” rather than a chronological, visual biography.

This is something that many music documentaries don’t attempt.Morgen says there are plenty of books and other documentaries about David Bowie that tell this version of the story.“What can I offer that you can’t get in Wikipedia?

It’s an experience. It’s something intangible. What’s great about Bowie is the mystery and the enigma,” he adds.Morgen, who is the first filmmaker to have access to the entire Bowie archive, mixes this personal footage with unseen performances, Bowie’s own words and music, collected over 50 years, and clips from Clockwork Orange, The Wizard of Oz and Blade Runner.He admits that his worst fear was facing a devoted fanbase that was expecting a biography full of interviews with the likes of Iggy Pop, who collaborated (and got clean) with Bowie in Berlin in the ’70s. “But if you already know that, why would you want me to put that in the film?