Song Of The Day 2/20/2013: David Bowie - "That's Motivation"

So now that I've finished reading Stephen King's The Shining, or, The Boiler Did It, I'm now reading Colin MacInnes' City Of Spades, which was part of his "London Trilogy" about the city's ultra-transitional postwar period of the '50s. The second part of this series was called Absolute Beginners, cited by Das Wikipedia as the herald of what came to be known as "swinging London," which sounds a little like late '60s San Francisco with better tailors and worse weed. In 1986 Absolute Beginners was made into a movie musical that bombed so badly it nearly forced England back into the austerity measures MacInnes was writing against in the first place. Well, not that bad, but the studio that made it wasn't long for the isles.

David Bowie was in this movie, with a featured role as an employee in the advertising trade. I forget the context of this extended clip, since I've forgotten most of the movie as everyone else has, but it looks like his character, Vendice Partners, is trying to lure a photographer into selling out and joining the business, based on the notion that they actually sell dreams, not condos. His presentation includes oversizes business machines and scalable globes. Now that's bringin' it. Screw that UPS dude and his stupid whiteboard.

(Remember that scene in Mad Men when Harry Crane got his suit sleeve caught in the "M" key of that giant typewriter and Peter Campbell had to drunkenly seduce the spacebar to get him out? That was great TV.)