The Man Who Fell to Earth

**The Man Who Fell to Earth** is a 1976 British science fantasy drama film directed by Nicolas Roeg and adapted by Paul Mayersberg. Based on Walter Tevis's 1963 novel of the same name, the film follows an extraterrestrial (Thomas Jerome Newton) who crash lands on Earth seeking a way to ship water to his planet, which is suffering from a severe drought, but finds himself at the mercy of human vices and corruption. The film stars David Bowie, Candy Clark, Buck Henry, and Rip Torn.

## Cast

* David Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton, a humanoid alien.
* Rip Torn as Dr. Nathan Bryce, a former college professor.
* Candy Clark as Mary-Lou, Thomas's former love interest.
* Buck henry as Oliver V. Farnsworth, a patent attorney.

Additional cast
* Bernie Casey as Mr. Peters.
* Jackson D. Kane as Professor Canutti
* Rick Riccardo as Trevor
* Tony Mascia as Arthur
* Adrienne La Russa as Helen
* Albert Nelson as Waiter
* Claudia Jennings as Mr. Peters' wife (uncredited)
* Jim Lovell as himself

## Plot

Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water to save his home planet. Aided by lawyer Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry), Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create profitable inventions. While developing a method to transport water, Thomas meets Mary-Lou (Candy Clark), a quiet hotel clerk, and begins to fall in love with her. Just as he is ready to leave Earth, Thomas is intercepted by the U.S. government, and his entire plan is threatened.

## Synopsis

Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who travels to Earth from a distant planet. Landing in New Mexico, he appears as an Englishman. Newton has arrived on Earth on a mission to take water back to his home planet, which is experiencing a catastrophic drought. Newton swiftly uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth. He acquires tremendous wealth as the head of an Arizona technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver Farnsworth. This wealth is needed to construct a space vehicle with the intention of shipping water back to his home planet.

While revisiting New Mexico, Newton meets Mary-Lou, a lonely young woman from Oklahoma who works an array of part-time jobs in a small town hotel to support herself. Mary-Lou introduces Newton to many customs of Earth, including churchgoing, alcohol, and sex. She and Newton move into a house together which he has built close to where he first landed in New Mexico.

Dr. Nathan Bryce, a former college professor who slept with his students, has landed a job as a fuel technician with World Enterprises and slowly becomes Newton's confidant. Bryce senses Newton's alienness and arranges a meeting with Newton at his home where he has hidden a special X-ray camera. When he takes a picture of Newton with the camera, it reveals Newton's alien physiology. Newton's appetite for alcohol and television (he is capable of watching multiple televisions at once) becomes crippling, and he and Mary-Lou fight. Realizing that Bryce has learnt his secret, Newton reveals his alien form to Mary-Lou. She struggles to accept his true form. She flees in panic and horror.

Newton completes the spaceship and attempts to take it on its maiden voyage amid intense press exposure. However, just before his scheduled take-off, he is seized and detained, apparently by the government and a rival company. His business partner Farnsworth is murdered. The government, which had been monitoring Newton via his driver, holds Newton captive in a locked luxury apartment, constructed deep within a hotel. During his captivity, they keep him sedated with alcohol (to which he has become addicted) and continuously subject him to rigorous medical tests, cutting into his human disguise. One examination, involving X-rays, causes the contact lenses he wears as part of his human disguise to permanently affix themselves to his eyes.

Toward the end of Newton's years of captivity, he is visited again by Mary-Lou. She is much older, and her appearance has been ravaged by alcohol and time. They have mock-violent, playful sex that involves firing a gun with blanks, and afterwards occupy their time drinking and playing table tennis. Mary-Lou declares that she no longer loves him, and he replies that he does not love her either. Eventually Newton discovers that his "prison", now derelict, is unlocked, and he leaves.

Unable to return home, a despondent and alcoholic Newton creates a recording with alien messages, which he hopes will be broadcast via radio to his home planet. Bryce, who has since married Mary-Lou, buys a copy of the album and meets Newton at a restaurant. Newton is still rich and young-looking despite the passage of many years. However, he has also fallen into depression and continues to suffer from alcoholism. Seated on the restaurant's outdoor patio, Newton inquires about Mary-Lou, before collapsing in a drunken stupor on the chair.

## Production

Filming began on 6th July 1975. The film was mainly shot in New Mexico, with other shooting locations including Albuquerque, White Sands, Artesia and Fenton Lake. During the scheduled eleven weeks of filming, the film crew ran into various obstacles: Bowie was sidelined for a few days after drinking bad milk; film cameras jammed up; and for one scene shot in the desert, the movie crew had to contend with a group of Hells Angels who were camping nearby.

As the main character in Walter Tevis’s book The Man Who Fell To Earth, Thomas Jerome Newton, was unusually tall, Nicolas Roeg’s first casting choice was the six-foot-nine inch-tall writer Michael Crichton, despite the fact he had no acting experience. He was unavailable so Roeg and executive producer Si Litvinoff turned to CMA casting agent Maggie Abbott.

She suggested CMA artist Mick Jagger, whom Roeg had directed in Performance.

She had seen Cracked Actor and, after their meeting, obtained a copy to show to Litvinoff and Roeg. They immediately recognised that, like Newton, Bowie was a ‘foreign body’, uncomfortable in a new climate.

Roeg and Litvinoff were convinced – now they had to convince Bowie. Maggie Abbott took Paul Mayersberg’s script round to him and was shocked at his ‘ghastly’ appearance. Bowie’s initial response to the script was cautious but he agreed to meet them at his house on West 20th Street. Bowie would be in a recording studio till 10pm so Roeg arrived at 9.30, followed later by Litvinoff. Litvinoff had produced Kubrick’s film and so took this as a good omen. As Roeg chatted to the “strangers coming and going” they waited. And waited.

This character, Thomas Jerome Newton, possessed many of the qualities Bowie was displaying in Cracked Actor — cerebral, edgy, enigmatic — a fragile alien uncomfortable in a new climate. Uncomfortable in his own skin.
At the time Bowie was taking the gargantuan Diamond Dogs 'Theatour' across America, which for him, "had always been a mythland."

"Since you’ve been in America,” Yentob asks him, “you seem to have picked up a lot of the idioms and themes of American music, American culture. How’s that happened?”
By way of explanation, Bowie looks in his milk carton and observes, "There's a fly floating around in my milk. It is a foreign body and it's getting a lot of milk! That's kind of how I felt — a foreign body and I couldn't help but soak it up."

The analogy was obvious for Roeg: Both Bowie and Newton arrive in a foreign world, each with a particular mission. Newton wants to transport water back to his desert planet Anthea. Bowie wants to continue writing and performing, as he explains to Eyewitness News presenter Wayne Satz, "to keep me interested, to keep the people who come to see me or buy my records interested and excited as well."

## Soundtrack

Originally, Bowie had been approached to provide music for the film, but due to contractual wrangles during production he withdrew from this aspect of the project. Nonetheless Bowie would go on to use stills from the film for the covers of two of his albums, Station to Station and Low. The music used in the film was coordinated by John Phillips, former leader of the pop group The Mamas & the Papas, with personal contributions from Phillips and Japanese percussionist-composer Stomu Yamash'ta as well as some stock music. Phillips called in former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor to assist with developing ideas for the soundtrack. The music was recorded at CTS Lansdowne Recording Studios in London, England.

Due to a creative and contractual dispute between Roeg and the studio, no official soundtrack was released for the film, even though the 1976 Pan Books paperback edition of the novel (released to tie in with the film) states on the back cover that the soundtrack is available on RCA Records. The soundtrack, derived from recently rediscovered masters, was eventually released on CD and LP in 2016 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the film's premiere.