Labyrinth Pin-up # 1 FRAMED David Bowie Jareth the Goblin King

Description

Labyrinth is a 1986 British-American musical adventure fantasy film directed by Jim Henson, executive produced by George Lucas and based upon conceptual designs by Brian Froud. The film stars David Bowie as Jareth and Jennifer Connelly as Sarah. The plot revolves around 15 year old Sarah’s quest to reach the center of an enormous otherworldly maze to rescue her infant brother Toby, who has been kidnapped by Jareth, the Goblin King. With the exception of Bowie and Connelly, most of the significant characters in the film are played by puppets produced by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

Labyrinth started as a collaboration between Jim Henson and Brian Froud, with ideas for the film first being discussed between them following a screening of their previous collaboration, The Dark Crystal. Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote the first draft of the film’s script early in 1984, drawing on Brian Froud’s sketches for inspiration. Various other script-writers, including Laura Phillips (who had previously written several episodes of Fraggle Rock), George Lucas, Dennis Lee, and Elaine May, subsequently re-wrote and made additions to the screenplay, although Jones received the film’s sole screen-writing credit. Labyrinth was shot on location in Upper Nyack, Piermont and Haverstraw in New York, and at Elstree Studios and West Wycombe Park in the United Kingdom.

The New York Times reported that Labyrinth had a budget of $25 million. Labyrinth was a box office disappointment and only grossed $12,729,917 during its U.S theatrical run. The commercial failure of the film demoralized Henson to the extent that his son Brian remembered the time of the film’s release as one of the most difficult periods of his father’s career. It would be the last feature film directed by Henson before his death in 1990.

Although it was met with a mixed critical response upon its original release in mid-1986, Labyrinth has since gained a strong cult following and tributes to it have been featured in magazines such as Empire and Total Film. A four-volume manga sequel to the film, Return to Labyrinth, was published by Tokyopop between 2006-10. In 2012, Archaia Studios Press announced they were developing a graphic novel prequel to the film.

David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King. He brings Toby to his Labyrinth on Sarah’s wish and falls in love with her.

Jareth, the Goblin King is a character and the main antagonist of the 1986 fantasy movie Labyrinth. Jareth (David Bowie) is a powerful, mysterious creature who has an antagonistic yet strangely flirtatious relationship with Sarah (Jennifer Connelly), the film’s protagonist. He also appears in the film’s adaptations, including the Marvel comic books, story book, graphic novel, novelization, coloring books, and photo album.

Jareth is the Goblin King of The Labyrinth, a vast kingdom within another realm. Though the monarch of the goblins, Jareth actually is not a goblin himself, and he appears human, and quite handsome by most human standards, though he could also be a fey. In the first draft of the script, however, he turned into a goblin when Sarah rejected him, thus suggesting that he was a goblin to begin with. His powers include the ability to form crystal orbs in his hands, which can create illusions of all types or to view things from a distance. Jareth uses his magical crystals to show dreams and offers the crystals to Sarah as a symbol of dreams. Another inspiration for the idea of Jareth’s magical crystals is Hand with Reflecting Sphere by M.C. Escher, i.e. the inspiration for the mirror properties of the crystals and their power to show reflections of dreams.

Jareth is also a master of disguise. He can transform into a barn owl. In the movie he disguised himself as a blind beggar.

Jareth resents his position as Goblin King and yearns for a different life, probably somewhere down in Soho according to rock legend David Bowie,citation needed who first portrayed Jareth in 1986. He has a great deal of angst that only grows when he falls in love with Labyrinth protagonist, Sarah, as revealed through David Bowie’s songs from the film and the Return to Labyrinth manga.

According to the music video for Underground and Return to Labyrinth and hinted at in the Labyrinth novelization, Jareth has a human alter ego (in Return to Labyrinth he uses the alias Jareth Quinn). In the novelization of Labyrinth Jeremy (who resembles Jareth) is an actor with whom Sarah’s biological mother, an actress, had run off years earlier, after they had starred in a show together. Jeremy is also the man who gave Sarah her music box, which in the book plays “Greensleeves”, and in the movie plays “As the World Falls Down”, the same song that Jareth uses to show his affection for Sarah while within his Labyrinth.

In the novelization and according to the song “Within You” part of what Jareth wants from Sarah is for her to believe in him. Though Sarah renounces the power Jareth holds over her it does appear she actually gives him what he wants. The line “I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave,” embodies what Jareth feels for young Sarah Williams.

The film’s concept designer Brian Froud has stated that the character of Jareth was influenced by a diverse range of literary sources. In his afterword to The Goblins of Labyrinth, Froud wrote that Jareth references “the romantic figures of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and a brooding Rochester from Jane Eyre” and the Scarlet Pimpernel. Bowie’s costumes were intentionally eclectic, drawing on the image of Marlon Brando’s leather jacket from The Wild One as well as that of a knight “with the worms of death eating through his armour” from the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.

The dialogue starting with “you remind me of the babe” that occurs between Jareth and the goblins in the Magic Dance sequence in the film is a direct reference to an exchange between Cary Grant and Shirley Temple in the 1947 film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

The character of Jareth also underwent some significant developments during the early stages of pre-production. According to Henson he was originally meant to be another puppet creature in the same vein as his goblin subjects. Henson eventually decided he wanted a big, charismatic star to the play the Goblin King, and decided to pursue a musician for the role. Sting, Prince, Mick Jagger, and Michael Jackson were considered for the part, however it was ultimately decided that David Bowie would be the most suitable choice.

“I wanted to put two characters of flesh and bone in the middle of all these artificial creatures,” Henson explained, “and David Bowie embodies a certain maturity, with his sexuality, his disturbing aspect, all sorts of things that characterize the adult world.” Henson met David Bowie in the summer of 1983 to seek his involvement, as Bowie was in the U.S for his Serious Moonlight Tour at the time. Henson continued to pursue Bowie for the role of Jareth, and sent him each revised draft of the film’s script for his comments. During a meeting that took place on June 18, 1984, Henson showed Bowie The Dark Crystal and a selection of Brian Froud’s concept drawings to pique his interest in the project. Bowie formally agreed to take part on February 15, 1985, several months before filming began. Discussing why he chose to be involved in the film, Bowie explained that “I’d always wanted to be involved in the music-writing aspect of a movie that would appeal to children of all ages, as well as everyone else, and I must say that Jim gave me a completely free hand with it. The script itself was terribly amusing without being vicious or spiteful or bloody, and it had a lot more heart in it than many other special effects movies. So I was pretty hooked from the beginning.”

David Robert Jones (born 8 January 1947), known professionally by his stage name David Bowie, is an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor, and arranger. He is also a painter and collector of fine art. Bowie has been a major figure in the world of popular music for over four decades, and is renowned as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice as well as the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work. Aside from his musical abilities, he is recognised for his androgynous beauty, which was an iconic element to his image, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.

The strong DVD sales of Labyrinth prompted rights-holders the Jim Henson Company and Sony Pictures to look into making a sequel, and Curse of the Goblin King was briefly used as a place-holder title. The decision was ultimately taken to avoid making a direct sequel, and instead produce a fantasy film with a similar atmosphere. Fantasy author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean were called in to write and direct a film similar in spirit to Labyrinth, and MirrorMask was ultimately released in selected theaters in 2005 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

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