Hundreds of the late artist’s tunes, lyrics, and melodies have impacted the big screen. Here are some of the most memorable.
Reuters
David Bowie is credited in more than a hundred films, most notably as a performer and composer (and, cosmically, as poet and warrior). He was a movie star in his own right, too, and not just for Man Who Fell to Earth, Labyrinth, or Basquiat, but also in his short films and music videos like "Jazzin' for Blue Jean," "The Next Day," "Ashes to Ashes," "I'm Afraid of Americans," and, his parting gift, "Lazarus."
Recent sci-fi and adventure movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Martian used Bowie's songs like "Moonage Daydream" and "Starman" as a outer space and nostalgia shorthand, while American Psycho and Memento both used "Something in the Air" to heightened emotional effect.
Beloved by a number of high-profile directors, Bowie's songs have been honored and reworked completely in films like Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. His musical imprint has been left on scenes of drug trippin', teen angst, coming out, dressing drag, sass, irony, camp, and pure jest (see: Zoolander, "Let's Dance").
The more poignant of these musical movie moments marry Bowie's lyrical, melodic, and artistic intentions to scenes of similar determination, allowing the film and the performer himself to live longer, if not forever. Here are some of the best examples.
"Cat People," Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Just as the song's lyric "putting out fire with gasoline" is inflammatory, Inglourious Basterds's Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) prepares to set fire to a cinema with a pile of old film in order to kill Nazi leaders in the theater.
It's an allegory for an allegory, folks, let it ride. Quentin Tarantino did. "I've always loved that song and I was always disappointed at how [director] Paul Schrader used it in 'Cat People,' because he didn't use it — he just threw it in the closing credits," the Inglourious director told Billboard in 2009 of the song, aka "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)." "And I remember back then, when 'Cat People' came out, going, 'Man, if I had that song, I'd build a 20-minute scene around it. I wouldn't throw it away in the closing credits.' So I did."
The Weinstein Company
"Heroes," The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
The running joke between Emma Watson and Ezra Miller's characters in The Perks of Being a Wallflower is that Charlie (Logan Lerman) is clueless as to the author of the soundtrack of their lives.
By the early '90s, "Heroes" could have been also the soundtrack to a lot of teens' lives. Co-written by Bowie and Brian Eno, the cheeky anthem wasn't a big hit when it first dropped in 1977 (it has only ever peaked at No. 24 on the U.K. chart, for example), but the song "grew up" in the 1980s, with a bigger windfall of appreciation especially after the singer performed it at Live Aid in 1985. It had its own trajectory of growth, just like Charlie.
Summit Entertainment
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