There is something that constantly happens in the documentary Moonage Daydream (2022) in which we follow David Bowie walking from his dressing room, through the labyrinth of corridors, and ending up on the stage where thousands of the rock icon’s fans are gathered to revel in his music and vision of art and life itself.

It’s the feeling of being in the kaleidoscopic mind of Bowie. All of that is courtesy of director Brett Morgen who had unprecedented access to the films, photographs, paintings, journals, and recordings of the artist who is considered by many to be an emblem of the 20th century and who died on January 10, 2016.

During the last 25 years of his life, Bowie (born in London, in 1947) spent his days compiling his own work.

Moonage Daydream taps previously unseen footage and performances of Bowie who began his career in 1962. At the age of 15, with guitar in hand, he began to play at social events. Two years later, he released his first single, “Liza Jane,” as part of the band King Bees, which he soon left because he was not satisfied.

The idea for a film like Moonage Daydream came to Morgen when he was amid the South by Southwest festival premiere of his documentary, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015), in Austin, Texas. After hearing from a Rolling Stone reporter that his film made the viewer feel like being with the Nirvana founder, Morgen conceived the idea of ​​​​making a documentary that was told outside the usual chronological and linear narrative.

Morgen, 53, told journalist Steve Weintraub in a Q and A session organized by the Landmark Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles: “The first thing I thought at the South by Southwest festival in Austin was that I love listening to music inside a movie theater.

“So, the next film I was going to make about an iconic figure would have to be, instead of just being a kind of chronological Wikipedia of the important events of his life, something that made us feel like being that artist. I called this the IMAX Music Experience because it certainly should have the biggest screen with the most spectacular sound.”

Bowie’s death at the age of 69, a victim of liver cancer, reminded Morgen to bring his concept of putting the spectator into the head of an artist, especially when the team of the British singer-composer, led by Tony Visconti who accompanied Bowie as his producer for many years, opened the vault of his works on music and canvas, memoirs and hundreds of hours of interviews on behalf of the artist’s family.

Moonage Daydream, which is the first film to have the official blessing of the Bowie estate, took seven years to make. The first few months were spent by Morgen cataloging Bowie’s interviews, footage from his concerts, as well as scenes from films like his iconic The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Just a Gigolo (1978), The Hunger (1983), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) and Labyrinth (1986). Morgen also cataloged Bowie’s video clips, including the Pepsi music commercial he did with Tina Tuner with the song “Creation.”

The director explained at the documentary’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last May: “I was focused first on the material that was in the film formats in 35 and 16 mm. But little by little, I incorporated videotapes from the 70s and 80s, as well as digital from recent years. All of that had to be converted to be projected in IMAX.

“I made a first short chronology of everything so that I could understand for myself how Bowie’s story progresses. Then the real work began, having to interpret how Bowie wanted to tell his story, starting from the fact that he did not want it to be chronological.”

Morgen wanted the images to call out to one another, regardless of the years or places they were made. The filmmaker also made a subdivision in which he could find Bowie’s themes as an artist, his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego, as well as his understanding of the music legend’s sexuality. Still, the script sketch that Brett thought would take a week stretched to nearly eight months, with thousands of hours to edit and a commitment to the “Modern Love” composer’s family who had given him his full trust.

The stress took its toll on Morgen who had a heart attack, leaving him in a coma for a week. Upon awakening, Morgen clung like a swimmer to the fin of a dolphin named Bowie, swimming not only on the surface of the musician who became a symbol of the alternative and experimental in music for several decades. But exploring the true depth of the man put on creative challenges.

Morgen commented on how to decipher the musician who was nominated for a Golden Globe for the theme song of the film Cat People, “I realized that in my house, I was very comfortable and that this environment did not stir anything in me. I got on a train from Los Angeles to Albuquerque – oddly enough where The Man Who Fell to Earth was filmed – and I spent the time walking from one side of the train to the other.

“What I did was pure Bowie 101, as he was a globetrotter and liked to always be on the move to create. So, the narrative that inspired all of this helped create the feeling that David himself was forging the narrative of his life, coming and going and sharing his teachings with us in the present tense.”

In Moonage Daydream, you can hear 45 of the songs that Bowie produced and were part of his 100 million albums sold around the globe. A world that after witnessing – and living – Morgen’s film, became clear that it changed when someone born as David Robert Jones arrived with his immense talents and put its inhabitants to spin forever in another orbit.

Translated by Mario Amaya