‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ Comes to Artesia
The British Are Coming!
In the early summer of 1975 a small convoy of rental trucks snakes its way down State Route 285, winding through the route of the Pecos River Valley, hemmed in by the Mescalero Escarpment to the east and the Sacramento Mountains to the west.
In the distance rising above the desolate plain is an aged five-story structure which beckons to them like some giant monolith. But instead of being filled with portent, this crumbling edifice is to be their lodging for the coming week.
The stately Hotel Artesia was once the domain of cattle barons and railroad magnates, but now the sadly dilapidated building is only the haunt of a small group of constant and loyal patrons — ones who spend their days and evenings at the ground level bar from early in the morning until late at night.
It is probably only a matter of months before the grand old lady is torn down, but to Production Designer Brian Eatwell, the hotel’s eminent demise makes it all the more ideal for his purposes.
The traditional practice in motion pictures is to shoot all interiors on a studio set, where there is full control over lighting and sound and sets usually feature what are known as “fly away walls” — walls on casters which provide ample room to move the sometimes bulky 35mm film camera.
But this was no studio picture, at least not in the traditional sense. As the Hotel Artesia was scheduled for demolition at summer’s end, the film’s construction crew is given carte blanche to knock out non-structural walls to their heart’s content — all with the goal of making the set they are creating a little more “shoot-friendly.”
The production schedule itself is a bit of a moviemaking first, with the crew (and most of the cast) of the film having been flown in from England in early June, flying on a chartered Air Lingus plane with their gear being squeezed into every leftover bit of space.
The company is much like a family, with each being very comfortable with the others from having worked together on director Nicolas Roeg’s two previous pictures, Don’t Look Now (1973) and Walkabout (1971). The latter required a nine-month sojourn in the Great Western Desert of Australia — quite the bonding experience for any group of creatives.
The Man Who Fell to Earth has initially been budgeted at a mere $1.5 million, in an era when the average feature’s production budget started at five. To make the most of the meager funds meant utilizing that ever-popular practice of the late sixties — shooting on practical locations. (In the case of The Man Who Fell to Earth, only one actual “studio” — a rented warehouse, was even used.) This also meant inserting the very places of the cast & crew’s lodging into the film’s visual narrative.
On one particular day of shooting early in the schedule, the required action is fairly clear-cut: Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) arrives in New Mexico under the vestibule and bright blue and yellow sign of the Hotel Artesia. He arrives in the back seat of his black limousine. As another budgetary consideration, the car in question is his real one, driven by his real-life driver and bodyguard, Tony Mascia.
It seems Mr. Newton is searching for a location at which to build his future spaceport, and the deserts of New Mexico, so similar to those of his dying home planet, seem ironically ideal.
As Newton leaves his car to check in at the front desk, a state trooper and the local sheriff, snickering at the curious appearance of their visitor (not to mention Newton’s flaming red hair), decide to run a check on the limo’s New York license plate.
As they do so, John Phillips’ soundtrack composition “Boys from the South” bubbles along in the background, creating an ironic subtext on the onscreen action.
On the Criterion commentary track to the film, David Bowie related an anecdote similar in tone which occurred at the time of the film’s lensing. Naively expecting the watering holes which the crew stopped in to be inhabited by the romantic cowboy image with which Bowie had become accustomed as a child, he instead encountered:
“. . . skinheads who danced with their spurs on.” — David Bowie
One night after the shoot, as the crew drank at a local bar, one of the aforementioned locals leaned in and inquired of a rather fey member of the crew:
“How long ya’ll in town?”
(Cowering behind Bowie): “Just the week . . .”
As Newton signs in with a gentleman at the front desk, a chambermaid named Mary Lou (played by Candy Clark) grabs his briefcase and leads him to the elevator. Due to Earth’s increased gravity from his home planet, Newton soon becomes ill from the added inertia of going up so quickly.
He collapses to the floor, blood running from his nose.
Panicked at what has happened to her charge, Mary Lou, not waiting for outside assistance, bends to pick Newton up and carry him.
We then see her struggle with Newton’s body, Pietà-like, as she shuffles down the hall while other lodgers, totally oblivious to Newton’s sad condition, chatter away in their rooms. Meanwhile, the happier sounds of composer John Phillips’ interpretation of Hank Snow’s “Rhumba Boogie” drift down the hallway.
However, when it came to actually shooting this particular scene, it quickly became evident that actress Candy Clark couldn’t easily carry David Bowie, even at the mere 98 pounds he weighed at the time. (This was during Bowie’s notorious cocaine period, from which he agreed to winkingly abstain for the duration of the film.)
In a strange coincidence of art and reality, Mary Lou comments on his startling gaunt appearance, saying:
“You know, mister, I don’t think you get enough to eat, if you don’t mind me saying so.” — Mary Lou
Luckily, an eager grip by the name of Tommy Raeburn (technically the property master) came to Candy Clark’s rescue. Raeburn attached a bicycle seat to the top of a waist-height vertical pole, which was in turn mounted to a skateboard. Thus, Newton was given the additional “lift” Candy needed, and in a quickly MacGyvered piece of Hollywood contrivance just out of frame.
Once reaching Room #505, Newton is delivered to the sound of a Santa Fe diesel freight passing just outside his window. The little train station briefly glanced from Newton’s hotel room is now used as the Artesia Visitors Bureau and Chamber of Commerce.
With their universal association with distant travel and nostalgia, trains are an appropriate running motif for the film. Within the context of the picture, they hearken back to Newton’s memories of an orange monorail which delivers him to the spaceport on his home planet of Anthea. Early on, we see Newton bidding farewell to his alien family from a futuristic train, and thus, for the remainder of the film, trains will forever be imbued with a sense of melancholy.
The origins of the motif in the story itself was the trip from San Francisco to Louisville* of author Walter Tevis, on whose book the film is based, as he traversed the United States to be reunited with his family in Kentucky.
At a very young age Tevis was confined to a bed at the Stanford Children’s Hospital for over a year due to a rheumatic heart condition. After his family moved to Kentucky to take over an inherited family estate, Tevis was forced to travel the nearly 2000 mile breadth of the United States by rail alone.
*(Louisville, not New Mexico, is the original setting in the book on which the film is based.)
Mary Lou begins visiting Newton in his room after work, initially to just check on his condition, but soon the good ol’ Florence Nightingale effect kicks in and a blossoming romance ensues. In their series of informal rendezvous in Newton’s room, Mary Lou introduces her date to gin, similar in color, but a much more potent substitute for his traditional tipple, a simple glass of water.
For Mary Lou, Newton’s intrinsic appeal is in the discovery of who he really is. He is the Mary Lou’s vicarious connection to a much wider world, one which she is not sure she will ever get to see as a small-town girl working in a dead-end job.
Nonetheless, putting her destiny in the hands of a greater power, she suggests that Newton accompany her the next day to church.
And at the above scene’s coda, she gazes out at the night sky, saying wistfully:
“I mean when you look up at the sky at night, don’t you feel somewhere up there, there’s got to be a God? There’s got to be.” — Mary Lou
The next day comprises what is for many viewers one of the most moving scenes in the film. At the First Presbyterian Church in Artesia, Newton is given an impromptu surprise by Mary Lou, when the congregation suddenly launches into “Jerusalem,” the English suffragette hymn based on the poem by William Blake (and a favorite author of director Nicolas Roeg, not coincidentally.) Bowie’s only “singing” performance in the film, he stays in character as Newton warbles through the hymn, Mary Lou beaming approvingly.
As the camera pans across the congregation, the choral piece flawlessly segues to the bittersweet melody of The Kingston Trio’s “Try to Remember” as the two lovebirds ride across the New Mexico countryside. It is a touching moment, one made all the more poignant as the wheels of fate inevitably begin to turn . . .
What is it about the film that makes audiences return to it time and again?
The narrative to The Man Who Fell to Earth is fairly simple — a “marooned spaceman” narrative. It is the fleeting images that truly linger.
One haunting scene early in the film shows Mary Lou, seemingly blown by fate from one destiny to the next, walking drunkenly home across the railroad tracks in the early morning light, the sunrise silhouetted by the rising towers of the Navajo Oil Refinery.
We return to the film for the fannish details, the bits of dialogue that are seemingly as much about the film’s titular star as they are about Newton.
As Bowie was later to admit, the film required virtually no acting whatsoever. And in that regard, it serves as a form of pseudo-documentary as well as a form of video shrine for the lately departed rock icon.
And what of the Hotel Artesia? Well, having fulfilled her last duty, she humbly kept her date with the wrecking ball . . .
The Man Who Fell to Earth for Beginners: A Brief Introduction to David Bowie’s Feature Film Debut
The movie The Man Who Fell to Earth was released in the United States in May of 1976 to moderate acclaim. The film tells the story of an alien, Thomas Jerome Newton, who comes to Earth in order to find water for his drought-stricken planet.
Once settled in among the people of Earth, Newton sets out to build a spaceship to ferry his people to Earth and hopefully save his race in the process.
To finance this enormous venture, he takes on the guise of an Englishman and begins selling consumer devices based on his slightly advanced technology. Items such as self-developing film, music albums contained on small silver spheres, and television screens which roll into a tube are just a few of the many audio/visual technologies he patents.
The motion picture served as the feature-length acting debut of musician David Bowie and, in the role of Thomas Jerome Newton, also forever cemented Bowie’s image as the alien outsider — perhaps even more so than that of his earlier and better-known incarnation, that of Ziggy Stardust.
The film itself is noted for an advanced shooting/editing style, with overlapping montages, flashbacks, and sound & music cues sometimes being used to convey not only the narrative of the film, but also the emotional state of the characters, as well.
Unfortunately, the film’s most unusual approach gave traditional studio distributors cold feet. In an eleventh-hour search for a domestic distributor, the producers happened upon Cinema 5, an arthouse and foreign fare distributor with theater outlets in most major American cities.
However, the version American audiences would initially come to know would be cut by some 20 minutes — the better to fit in an extra screening as well as remove elements which early preview audiences found objectionable and confusing.
Unfortunately, some of that very same material also served to explain the film’s somewhat convoluted narrative.
Thankfully, the film is today heralded as not only David Bowie’s defining onscreen performance, but also as a prescient landmark film, whose criticisms of consumer culture, media overload, and increasing corporate-government entanglement are as relevant today as ever.
The film now enjoys a large cult following after being rediscovered and restored in the early 1990s, much due to the persistent efforts of costar Candy Clark.
The film has since been reissued on video in its original length as a “restored Director’s Cut” on several labels and formats (both DVD & Blu-ray) and the version issued by the Voyager Company as part of their Criterion Collection served as one of the prime sources for this article.
This article was originally published in slightly different form in Focus On Artesia Magazine (https://www.focusnm.com) on August 26, 2016.
About the Author:
I’m a freelance writer & film historian who works with the Chattanooga Southeast Tennessee Film Commission as a production liaison and film series curator. I also occasionally freelance in the art department on feature films and commercials as a set dresser and standby painter.
The Man Who Fell to Earth and all of its attendant ephemera has been an obsession of mine since first seeing it as a 16mm print on the college revival circuit in the late 1970s.
This essay is part of a chapter to Brittle Atlas — a forthcoming book on David Bowie’s most tumultuous, yet most productive period.
- If you were involved in the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth in some way as either cast, crew or talent, I would be most interested in speaking with you.
- Please contact me via my Medium homepage at: https://medium.com/@misterkris/
