Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine is 1998 film about a British journalist who investigates the life of a 1970s rock star in order to write about it for an American newspaper.

Directed by Todd Haynes. Written by Todd Haynes and James Lyons.

Brian Slade

• I knew I should create a sensation, gasped the Rocket, and he went out. (Oscar Wilde - from the Remarkable Rocket)

Curt Wild

• Everyone’s into this scene because it’s supposedly the thing to do right now. But you just can’t fake being gay. You know, if you’re gonna claim that you’re gay you’re gonna have to make love in gay style, and most of these kids... just aren’t going to make it. That line, ‘Everybody’s bisexual’, that’s a very popular thing to say right now. Personally, I think it’s meaningless.

• He thought he fucking was Maxwell Demon in the end – you know? And Maxwell Demon...he thought he was God.

• The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history. (Oscar Wilde - from the Picture of Dorian Gray)

• See yourself on stage, inside-out. Tangled garlands in your hair. Of course, you are pleasantly surprised.

• (Said to Brian) You could be my main man.

Mandy Slade

• You all know me – subtlety’s my middle name. It’s as subtle as the piece of skin between my vagina and my anus – ooh la! la! Now what’s that called, I can never quite remember...No man’s land? Oh gosh – my guiche, dah-ling!

• It's funny how beautiful people look when they're walking out the door.

• I knew it was over. I just didn't know it was up to me to make it stop.

• Time, places, people,... they're all speeding up. So, to cope with this evolutionary paranoia, strange people are chosen who, through their art, can move progress more quickly.

Others

• Opening Text: Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should never the less be played at maximum volume.

• Oscar Wilde: I want to be a pop idol.

• Young Boy: Put out the torches. Hide the moon. Hide the stars.

• Female Narrator: For once there was an unknown land, full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream, a land where all things are perfect and poisonous.

• Female Narrator: Childhood, adults always say, is the happiest time in life. But as long as he could remember, Jack Fairy knew better.

• Child on Subway: Yesterday upon a stair, I saw a man who wasn't there, He wasn't there again today, How I wish he'd go away.

• Trevor: Rock music has always been a reaction against accepted standards. And homosexuality has been going on for centuries. At the moment having a ‘gay’ image is the ‘in’ thing, just like a few years ago it was trendy to wear a long grey coat with a Led Zeppelin record under your arm.

• Lou: I want you because you remember.

• Cecil: He was elegance, walking arm in arm with a lie.

• Cecil: Style always wins out in the end.

• Cecil [about Curt]: The doctors guaranteed the treatment would fry the fairy clean out of him. But all it did was make him bonkers everytime he heard electric guitar.

Dialogues

Curt Wild: A real artist creates beautiful things and... puts nothing of his own life into them. Okay?

Arthur Stuart: Is that what you did?

Curt Wild: No. No. We set out to change the world and ended up... just changing ourselves.

Arthur Stuart: What's wrong with that?

Curt Wild: Nothing... If you don't look at the world.