https://www.facebook.com/jgunn/photo...type=1&theater
James Gunn:
" I usually find out about people dying on Twitter these days, as it's one of the first places I check on my phone when I wake up in the morning. It's only been about fifteen minutes or so since I learned of David Bowie's passing there, and I'm reeling. And horribly sad.
69 years old. Goddammit. I know we're supposed to be positive in situations like this, but that's just seems too young to me. ****ing cancer.
Just a very short while ago Kevin Feige and I were talking about a cameo role in Guardians Vol. 2, and he brought up Bowie's name. I told him nothing in the world would make me happier, but I heard from common friends he wasn't doing well. We heard back that he was okay and it could potentially happen. Who knows what that was about? But, for whatever reason, it made my Twitter revelation more of a surprise.
I just "liked" some of the photos on his Facebook fan page last night.
Bowie was an idol of mine, huge and omnipresent. Few artists in any field have had as an indelible impression upon me as he has. To my mind, Ziggy Stardust is perhaps the greatest rock and roll album of all time. We featured "Moonage Daydream" in Guardians, but I always thought the album's character was felt far beyond that, in the aesthetics, in the integral and seemingly-natural linking in popular culture of '70's rock and space opera. I've been trying to work another song from Ziggy into the sequel, which would make Bowie the only artist to have a song on both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. I thought this was fair and appropriate. Although I cut the scene it was used in from the script, we have the rights. Who knows. Maybe I can figure a way out.
It's also fair that I come clean that the use of "Life on Mars" in Breaking the Waves was one of the linchpins for me and the use of music in Guardians: much of what I did was imitating that perfect blend of oddness and familiarity, of irony and aptness.
My pop cultural connection to Bowie goes deeper as it was the music that was playing the night I hit bottom on alcohol and drugs as a very young person. I got sober that night, and those songs - "TVC15", "Star", "Suffragette City" - are now deeply embedded in my psyche. They all have a frightening, almost-religious context in my personal history. I'll have to save those stories for another time.
I wish I could be more eloquent, but I'm gutted.
Thank you, David, for all you've given to my life, my relationships, and my career. Thank you most for helping me to make it through high school. Your music let me believe there was something magic out there, I only needed to hold on a few more years to experience it. I'm glad I did.
And, especially, love to Duncan and the rest of the family. This is so difficult for all of us who loved the icon. I know it is infinitely more so for those who loved the human being. "
