{"id":17643,"date":"2016-01-16T01:03:09","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T01:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=17643"},"modified":"2016-01-16T01:05:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T01:05:26","slug":"the-image-a-film-by-michael-armstrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2016\/01\/16\/the-image-a-film-by-michael-armstrong\/","title":{"rendered":"The Image, a film by Michael Armstrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vk.com\/video144006_145917989\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"image.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/image.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The image in question is a certain David Bowie making his first (non-speaking) film appearance as &#8220;The Boy&#8221;, a figure from a painting come to life. The only other character is an artist played by a young Michael Byrne, later a familiar face in many British film and TV productions. Bowie was 20 at the time, and Michael Armstrong&#8217;s short was made in 1967, the same year that David Bowie&#8217;s debut album was released to little acclaim. The film may be a little rough\u2014it was obviously made with sound added later\u2014but hindsight lends it multiple resonances: Bowie as an artwork come to life, the art theme in general (many of the paintings Bowie made public were self-portraits), a slight homoerotic subtext, and so on. There&#8217;s also a moment at the beginning where Bowie presses his face to the window, and his flattened nose looks the way it does on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.discogs.com\/viewimages?release=216167\" target=\"_blank\">the cover of <em>Lodger<\/em><\/a>. A mere 12 years separates that album and this small film with a mountain range of tumultuous creativity in between. Watch <em>The Image<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/vk.com\/video144006_145917989\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2016\/01\/13\/cracked-actor\/\">Cracked Actor<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2016\/01\/12\/strange-fascination\/\">Strange fascination<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The image in question is a certain David Bowie making his first (non-speaking) film appearance as &#8220;The Boy&#8221;, a figure from a painting come to life. The only other character is an artist played by a young Michael Byrne, later a familiar face in many British film and TV productions. Bowie was 20 at the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2016\/01\/16\/the-image-a-film-by-michael-armstrong\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Image, a film by Michael Armstrong&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[1301,7935,7934],"class_list":["post-17643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-music","tag-david-bowie","tag-michael-armstrong","tag-michael-byrne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4Az","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}