An auteur makes few com­pro­mis­es in bring­ing his dis­tinc­tive visions to the screen, but he also makes no bones about bor­row­ing from the auteurs who came before. This is espe­cial­ly true in the case of an auteur named Quentin Taran­ti­no, who for near­ly thir­ty years has repeat­ed­ly pulled off the neat trick of direct­ing large-scale, high­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic movies that also draw deeply from the well of exist­ing cin­e­ma — deeply enough to pull up both the grind-house “low” and art-house “high.” Taran­ti­no’s first big impact on the zeit­geist came in the form of 1994’s Pulp Fic­tion, which put the kind of com­mon, sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic mate­r­i­al sug­gest­ed by its title into cin­e­mat­ic forms picked up from the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Fed­eri­co Felli­ni.

Few clips of Taran­ti­no’s work could dis­till this inspi­ra­tional polar­i­ty as well as Pulp Fic­tion’s twist con­test at Jack Rab­bit Slim’s. In a film almost whol­ly com­posed of mem­o­rable scenes, as I wrote when last we fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture, this one is quite pos­si­bly the most mem­o­rable.

Taran­ti­no has explained his intent to pay trib­ute to danc­ing as it occurs in films like Godard­’s Bande à part, the name­sake of Taran­ti­no’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny. “My favorite musi­cal sequences have always been in Godard because they just come out of nowhere,” he once said. “It’s so infec­tious, so friend­ly. And the fact that it’s not a musi­cal but he’s stop­ping the movie to have a musi­cal sequence makes it all the more sweet.”

But as these com­par­i­son videos reveal, Godard isn’t the only mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean auteur to whom Pulp Fic­tion’s dance scene owes its effec­tive­ness. “This scene is a direct steal from Fellini’s 8½ and there’s no real effort to hide it,” writes No Film School’s Jason Heller­man. “Aside from the loca­tion change, the moves and cam­era angles are almost the same.” In 8½ the dancers are Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni’s besieged film­mak­er Gui­do and his estranged wife Luisa, played by Anouk Aimée. This occurs in anoth­er of the pre­cious few pic­tures in cin­e­ma his­to­ry com­pris­ing mem­o­rable scenes and mem­o­rable scenes only; the oth­ers include vivid spec­ta­cles out­lin­ing the mid­dle-aged Guido’s artis­tic strug­gle and voy­ages of mem­o­ry back into his prelap­sar­i­an child­hood.

Child­hood, writes poet James Fen­ton, was “a time of pure inven­tive­ness” when “every­thing we did was hailed as superb.” (In this sense, a young film­mak­er who makes his first Hol­ly­wood hit enjoys a sec­ond child­hood, albeit usu­al­ly a brief one.) In Fen­ton’s words, Wash­ing­ton Post art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee finds a key to the elab­o­rate and enrap­tur­ing but at times bewil­der­ing 8½. With growth, alas, comes “the pri­mal era­sure, when we for­get all those ear­ly expe­ri­ences, and it is rather as if there is some mer­cy in this, since if we could remem­ber the inten­si­ty of such plea­sure it might spoil us for any­thing else. We for­get what hap­pened exact­ly, but we know that there was some­thing, some­thing to do with music and praise and every­one talk­ing, some­thing to do with fly­ing through the air, some­thing to do with dance.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pulp Fic­tion’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

Fed­eri­co Felli­ni Intro­duces Him­self to Amer­i­ca in Exper­i­men­tal 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Felli­ni + Abrams = Super 8½

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Many actors have played Andy Warhol over the years, but not as many as you might think. Crispin Glover played him in The Doors, Jared Har­ris played him in I Shot Andy Warhol, Guy Pearce played him in Fac­to­ry Girl, and Bill Had­er played him in Men in Black III, but with a twist: he is actu­al­ly an agent who is so bad as his cov­er role as an artist, he’s “paint­ing soup cans and bananas, for Christ sakes!” On tele­vi­sion John Cameron Mitchell has act­ed the Warhol role in Vinyl, and Evan Peters briefly por­trayed him in Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry: Cult.

But you might sus­pect our favorite Warhol would be the one act­ed by David Bowie in Julian Schnabel’s 1996 Basquiat, the biopic of the Black street artist who was tak­en into the art world fold by Warhol, and wound up col­lab­o­rat­ing with him in last works by both artists. Jef­frey Wright plays Basquiat in one of his ear­li­est roles.

Now, you might watch this scene from Basquiat above (and anoth­er below) and say, well, that’s just most­ly Bowie. But I would say, yes, that’s kind of the point. Andy Warhol is an enig­mat­ic fig­ure, a leg­end to many, a man who hid behind a con­struct­ed per­sona; David Bowie is too. When one plays the oth­er, a weird sort of mag­ic hap­pens. Fame leaks into fame. Many actors might do bet­ter with the man­ner­isms or the voice, but the charisma…that is all Bowie. After singing about the painter back in 1972, Bowie final­ly col­lapsed their visions togeth­er in the art of film, where real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy meet and meld.

Around this time in the mid 1990s, Bowie was very much a part of the New York/London art scene. He was on the edi­to­r­i­al board of Mod­ern Painters mag­a­zine and inter­viewed Basquiat direc­tor (and artist) Julian Schn­abel, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Balthus. A con­cep­tu­al artist-slash-ser­i­al killer became one of the main char­ac­ters of his over­looked 1995 Eno col­lab­o­ra­tion Out­side. He was both a col­lec­tor and an artist, which we’ve focused on before. And he was think­ing about the new world open­ing up because of the inter­net. Bowie’s artist brain saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties and the dan­gers, and also the raw cap­i­tal­ist poten­tial. He offered shares in him­self as an IPO in 1997 and released a sin­gle as Tao Jones Index, three puns in one. Bowie nev­er pre­dict­ed the idio­cy of the NFT, but he cer­tain­ly would have laughed wry­ly at it.

In this Char­lie Rose inter­view to pro­mote Basquiat, Bowie and Schn­abel dis­cuss the role of Warhol, the role of art, and the real­i­ty of the art world.

“It was more of an imper­son­ation, real­ly,” says Bowie about his Warhol. “That’s how I approach any­thing.” Of note, how­ev­er, is how quick­ly Bowie moves away from dis­cussing him­self or the film to talk about larg­er issues of art and com­merce. Bowie does admit that he and Schn­abel dis­agree on a lot of things, and you can see it in their body lan­guage. But there’s also a huge respect. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view, go watch the whole thing.

Bonus: Below watch Bowie meet­ing Warhol back dur­ing the day…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by Taschen

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.