David Bowie doc - Five Years

Thanks for the tip. It seems this is a serious documentary, not a cheap job like so many "independent" ones that are released on DVD. I'll look for it on the Internet

 

thanks for the heads up..I watched this yesterday and very much enjoyed it. Could use an hour to document each of those years themselves.
I must admit that as much as I enjoy and am familiar with David's work, I don't own any of it on cd or vinyl. Not sure why that is. Maybe if I find some used at a good price
I'll pick up a few titles.

 

So, is the Showtime version only about 60 minutes? Is that what people are watching. I have seen this, and the version I watched was about 90 minutes. I really liked it and it was a very interesting watch. Seek out the 90 minute version if you can.

 

Interesting, I was wondering as my program guide listed it at 90 min, but it only had a 60 min block. I enjoyed it, but I wanted more Hunky Dory and Ziggy, some of those live cuts were outstanding.. I have to find this 90 min version.

 

As has been pointed out, this originally aired on BBC 2 right around the time Trevor Bolder passed away. The 90 minute original version as it aired in the UK should be pretty easy to find online I would think. Unfortunately it's not on YouTube. I guess the BBC keep a tight grip on their content online.

 

Is that 90 minutes with commercials on the BBC? Don't know why Showtime would edit it down.

 

I saw a 90 minute version with the ads removed

 

It's been shown about 5 times in Australia. They always put the running time at 90 minutes but show the hour version.

 

No mention of iggy pop at all in this.

 

No commercials on the Beeb. The list of top-notch music docs we get here on BBC Four is quite staggering. I always watch them whoever is the subject matter; always learn something and it's always time well spent.

 

The BBC gave Ziggy its own new documentary not long before the one this thread is about, it was hosted by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp. Part of the reason the 90 minute Five Years doc was so good IMO was because it didn't focus much on Ziggy, which has been documented, written about & discussed to death in the British media. Bowie himself expressed (good-natured) annoyance about focus on Ziggy, in a 1997 UK show, saying how fed up he was with people asking questions about it, and does an amusing impersonation of someone hassling him about "Why did you kill Ziggy?!"

 

uh huh...

Just saw the Bowie exhibition that's travelling around from the V&A in Berlin and there is plenty about Iggy in that.......B&W pics in Berlin together - even a painting from the expressionist movement that gave rise to Iggy's pose on the idiot LP cover.

 

i enjoyed it for the interviews w collaborators, DB sound bytes, and various rare clips and tracks. that said, it did make me hungry for a true anthology-style doc that could go deeper into each era and cover all of the albums.

 

Agree, glossed over too quickly.

 

This is correct. The 90 minute version does not have any ads, just the documentary itself running at just about 90 minutes. I haven't seen the 60 minute version so I have no idea what was cut from it. At a loss of 30 minutes, it would be pretty extensive material.

 

I was able to find the 90 minute version quite easily. It's readily out there. There is a version of it on Youtube, but there is NO picture with it, so beware, it's just a smeary mess.

 

I think Halloween Jack is a far more interesting character.

 

I want to watch this at some point but I'll be damned if I'm going to watch a version of this with a third of the content excised from it. It's the ninety minute version for me or nothing at all.

 

It's a bit weird that it's been butchered for overseas viewers. I'm a big Bowie fan, but after 30 years reading & watching him, I got burned out with stuff about him a few years back; I only tuned into this thing because the 90 min no ads running time suggested to me it'd be something special, which as people have said, it was !

So I think you're wise & right.

 

It doesn't make sense to me that Showtime would cut 30 minutes from this. I've never known them to do that. Wasn't The Eagles doc something like 4 hours? Strange.

 

I'm sure the Blu-Ray will be out in full shortly...

 

If you haven't seen this, you must



Soundadvice, Bowie voiced a character on Spongebob Squarepants within the last few years (he played Lord Royal Highness in Atlantis Squarepantis). He was really good, his acting chops are still there--I thought I recognized the voice when I heard it but I was surprised to find it was David Bowie.

 

That's hilarious, thanks for posting that. My wife if a fan of the British TV show "The Goode Life" so that opening title parody was "extra" funny.

 

Thanks for the heads up - didn't know about this until reading this thread. Just watched it and I liked it very much.

But they totally skipped over Lodger!!! Went straight from Heroes to Scary Monsters.

Maybe that was in the half hour that got edited out for us "yanks".....

 

it's called Five Years, so they skipped plenty besides Lodger. '71, '75, '77, '80 and '83.