When David Bowie starred in a western with Leonardo Pieraccioni

And Ziggy Stardust landed on the set of an Italian western with Leonardo Pieraccioni. All true. In the 1998 the Tuscan director Giovanni Veronesi he gets it into his head to do something totally crazy: a western movies with Leonardo Pieraccioni as the main protagonist e Harvey Keitel And David Bowie in those of the secondary protagonists. Yes, that’s them: the Charlie Cappa from “Mean Streets: Sunday in Church, Monday in Hell” and the White Duke in the flesh. The film is titled “My West”is filmed in Garfagnana, in Campocatino, in the Apuan Alps.

The plot: the arrival in a small village in the Far West where one lives farmer doctor (Pieraccioni) together with redskin wife (Sandrine Holt) et al half-breed son Jeremiah (Yudii Mercredi) by the old gunslinger father of the first (Keitel) breaks thefamily harmony. Then comes the bounty hunter Jack Sikora (Bowie) and everything degenerates into a spaghetti-western style duel who meets theaesthetics of 80s video clips.

The movie, freely based on the novel “Jodo Cartamigli” by Vincenzo Pardiniis turned in English. But how does Bowie end up in the cast? The White Dukewhich before “My West” has under his belt twelve films as an actorfrom “The Man Who Fell to Earth” Of Nicolas Roeg (1976) to “Basquiat” by Julian Schnabel (in which two years earlier he starred as Andy Warhol), he is convinced by Veronesi to star in the film through a fax: «I was a Bowie fan since I was 14 and for “My West”, I thought there wouldn’t be no badder villain than him. So I tried, like men do with beautiful unattainable women and then maybe instead, by daring, you are surprised. I courted him and he answered me in 48 hourstelling me who I was very crazy to offer him that film, but that he was much crazier than me because he accepted», the director would have said in 2016after the death of the rock star.

To make him say it “Yes”incredible, Veronesi will reveal, was the fact that «his character died». Bowie, explains the director, he was obsessed with deaththe he exorcised by talking about it ofteneven during lunch during filming breaks, and living it pretend in music videos and films. «In fact, most of the characters he played died». But what was it like sharing the set with one of the biggest rock stars? “THE’only special request what Bowie did was to stay in one house with no barking dogs within a two-mile radius. In the Tuscan countryside it’s hard, so we made one kind of raid And some of those dogs have remained with me in my life», Veronesi recalled.

Between Bowie and the other actors – he was also in the cast Alessia Marcuzzi – “The relationship wasn’t very easy”: Bowie he only wanted to talk to me. With Keitel they seemed like friends«but in my opinion they were pretending», and with Pieraccioni he exchanged loving glancesbut they didn’t speak to each other. Following him everywhere was his secretarysort of Mary Poppins agedwith one huge bagwhich «in my opinion he also knew how to flutter a little». Al Daily FactVeronesi will reveal another anecdote: «He had given me the absolute ban on having him sign vinyl records. I managed to convince him to sign it a couple, Verdone has one. Then there are some around another hundred. But I signed them. If anyone thinks they have the signature of a Bowie of the timeit just has a Veronesi. I denounce myself».

Despite the ambitious projectthewelcome it wasn’t what was hoped for. Released on December 18, 1998 in Italy and with a gross of over 17 billion lirethe film arrived in United States only in 2005directly into home videoswithout conquering the general public. Pieraccioni, remembering those days in a2021 interviewspoke of a difficult moment in his career: «A difficult moment in my career was perhaps when it came out “My West”That did not give the desired result at the box officeafter i 78 billion of “The Cyclone” hey 75 of “Fireworks”. We filmed “My West” with Harvey Keitel and David Bowie, all in English because we thought we could take not the Oscar, but perhaps even the Nobel Peace Prize – said the Tuscan comedian to The Republic – I still hear a whistle in bed in the silence: was a raspberry what they did to us at the time because we wanted to make it big».