Hacker Cinema
The Nomi Song
2004 · Film · documentary · 98 min
Directed by Andrew Horn
Looks like an alien, sings like a diva - Klaus Nomi was one of the 1980s' most profoundly bizarre characters to emerge through rock music: a counter tenor who sang pop music like opera and brought opera to club audiences and made them like it. The Nomi Song is a film about fame, death, friendship, betrayal, opera, and the greatest New Wave rock star that never was!
1 positivefrom 1 commenter
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
Videos commenters linked
From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
1 comment on Hacker News
I've got that card in my wallet too, alongside my Leigh Bowery Fan Club Card and Nina Hagen Fan Club Card!
Let's hope lightning strikes again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJdljxrvPqo
Here's "The Nomi Song" documentary of his amazing and tragically short life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0PszBID3Lk
It covers the story behind his epic SNL performance with Joey Arias and David Bowie:
https://youtu.be/W0PszBID3Lk?t=2038
"So, to get ready for Saturday Night Live, he said to Bowie, 'Well so what are you doing, what's going to happen? Are you doing a staging, or are you doing costumes? What are you doing?'"
"And he said, 'Yeah, and they're making me this copy of a Tristan Tzara design from some performance art thing from the 30's.' So we look at this thing, and it's, it's beautiful."
https://lemodalogue.com/2017/07/31/histoire-dun-costume-dada/
Page Wood, Nomi's Art Director:
"I remember Pat Gibbons, who was Bowie's manager at the time. He comes up and he goes, 'Well you're going to have to have something. You're going to have some costumes.'"
"And he whips out a big wad of cash, and he goes, 'How much do you need?', and he starts peeling off bills. And Joey and Klaus look at him, and their eyes widen, and they look at each other, and they go, 'We're going to need shoes, too.'"
One of my favorite performances of all time, The Man Who Sold The World lyric "We must have died alone, a long long time ago." was especially poignant given Nomi's sad fate.
At 1:42 in this video, just after that tragic lyric, Blondie's keyboardist Jimmy Destri stares gothically up into the camera.
https://donhopkins.com/home/nomi/DavidBowieAndKlausNomi-TheManWhoSoldTheWorld-on-79-SNL.mp4
Then they did "TVC15":
https://www.davidbowieworld.nl/david-bowie-tvc-15/
>[TVC15] was inspired by an episode in which Iggy Pop, during a drug-fueled period at Bowie’s LA home, hallucinated and believed the television set was swallowing his girlfriend. Bowie developed a story of a holographic television, TVC 15. In the song, the narrator’s girlfriend crawls into the television and afterwards, the narrator desires to crawl in himself to find her.
https://donhopkins.com/home/nomi/DavidBowieAndKlausNomi-TVC15-on-79-SNL.mp4
Finally right the end of the live performance of "Boys Keep Swinging", Bowie pulled one over on the censors by whipping out his puppet penis on live TV, and then grinning impishly!
https://donhopkins.com/home/nomi/DavidBowieAndKlausNomi-BoysKeepSwinging-on-79-SNL.mp4
The night David Bowie brought a nude puppet to SNL:
https://www.avclub.com/read-this-the-night-david-bowie-brought-a-nude-puppet-1798275299