Velvet Goldmine (UK/USA: Todd Haynes, 1998)

The birth of Oscar Wilde; the staged death of a flamboyant rock star modeled closely after David Bowie; the delirious inebriation of London at the height of the glam era: Haynes’s discourse on celebrity culture is as sprawling and multi-tracked as his previous film, Safe, had been clinically restrained. Much of Velvet Goldmine, the story of a journalist who tries to reconstruct the sordid life story of the failed glam rock star he’d idolized as a young man, was shot in London, and the move gave Haynes a chance to abandon the cloister-like suburbs of his earlier films for a much more colorful, Dionysian milieu. Haynes and Alberti crafted one of the most visually thrilling music movies of the 1990s. - "The Female Gaze." (2018)

Velvet Goldmine (UK/USA: Todd Haynes, 1998: 124 mins)

Asher-Perrin, Emily. "Loving — Then Hating — the Alien: Velvet Goldmine." Tor (January 10, 2012)

Bolin, Garrett. "Queer Becomings: A Visual Essay on Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine." (Posted on Vimeo: 2015)

Dhand, Neil. "Velvet Goldmine – A mishmash of Citizen Kane, Ziggy Stardust, Oscar Wilde and The Wall." PopOptiq (April 13, 2011)

Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Print the Legend, Part 1 - Velvet Goldmine." The Next Picture Show #184 (July 9, 2019) ["Martin Scorsese’s new ROLLING THUNDER REVUE takes a documentary-esque approach to Bob Dylan’s titular 1970s tour-slash-roadshow, blending fact and fiction in a manner reminiscent of Todd Haynes’ 1998 cult favorite VELVET GOLDMINE, which creates a similar sort of parallel fiction around an extraordinary moment in music history. In this half of our pairing looking at “print the legend” musical histories, we focus on VELVET GOLDMINE and its dense, post-modern approach to crafting an ersatz Bowie biopic, debating the advantages and disadvantage of doing a fictionalized history of a real movement, and whether it matters that Bowie himself did not approve."]

---. "Print the Legend, Part 2 - Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story." The Next Picture Show #185 (July 16, 2019) ["Our look at musical films that willfully straddle the line between fact and fiction brings in Martin Scorsese’s newest effort for Netflix, ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY, to see how it applies that MO to a documentary format, where Todd Haynes’ VELVET GOLDMINE applied it to a narrative one. After debating to what extent ROLLING THUNDER REVUE tells us anything about its slippery subject, we bring these two films together to see how they each play with ideas about alter-egos and disposable identities, what they have to say about art and commerce, and how each reflect their 1970s setting."]

Leyda, Julia. ""Something That Is Dangerous and Arousing and Transgressive": An Interview with Todd Haynes." Bright Lights Film Journal #78 (November 2012)

Lusty-Cavallari, Saro. "You Have to See… Velvet Goldmine (dir. Todd Haynes, 1998)." 4:3 (January 15, 2015)

Rosebrugh, Gregory. "On Reading Velvet Goldmine as a Reaction To AIDS Activism Burnout -- And How Todd Haynes Himself Doesn't Quite Agree." IndieWire (January 31, 2014)

Siede, Caroline. "Velvet Goldmine captures the spirit, if not the biography, of David Bowie." A.V. Club (January 18, 2016)

Swinney, Jacob T. "12 Essential Women Cinematographers." Filmmaker (August 10, 2016)

Uhlich, Keith. "Great Directors: Todd Haynes." Senses of Cinema (July 2002)

West, K. "Velvet Goldmine: The Movie." The Ziggy Stardust Companion (October 13, 2002)














Press Play VIDEO ESSAY: Isolated Female Figures: The Films of Todd Haynes from Nelson Carvajal on Vimeo.