Many of FQR’s celebrated Mavericks have it. But how do they get it? Nic Roeg investigates the achievement of legendary status

“A legend in his own lifetime.” David Bowie is the only person I have heard about, known or worked with who would qualify for that seeming compliment. I say “seeming” compliment because it has been used in many ways, from innocent praise to supercilious arrogant disdain. Personally, in David’s case, I hope it sticks in the form of the first description. But it is a very vulnerable state and can only really be guaranteed the quality of awesome and eternal unique admiration (whatever that is) when you are no longer here to feel happy or sad about positive or negative opinion.

The fact is that legends are made up by the living and have a wonderful mythic state both of fact and fiction – good and evil, religious and otherworldly. I heard the other day that Bernard Shaw said he would trade every portrait and painting of religious Christian events and saints by every great artistic master for one photograph of Jesus.

I think it is going to be more and more difficult to become a legend as we now know it because of the overwhelming ability to communicate, as well as store facts about everyone’s private life – not only our movements, but even our secret thoughts. Any form of conversation that has a sense of creative originality is almost immediately passed on in some blog form or another and before you know it, in days, even hours, you are hearing what you thought was a private and original observation coming back to you over the internet in practically the same literal form.

At the turn of the last century there was a very famous French actress called Sarah Bernhardt, who lived from 1844 to 1923. A crucial time, as it turned out, for the arts. And, as it happens, it was also a critical time for the idea of a life taking on legendary status.

Sarah’s life and work had been the centre of a depth of adulation hardly ever given to an actor; she had come to epitomise the age. Her affairs and love life came to be enjoyed and celebrated publicly. She was known, or thought to be, to be the mistress of many of the leading aristocrats of the time, as well as the King of Poland. She had been challenged to a duel, or maybe it was she who had made the challenge. I know there is some truth in this because I knew her grandson and he showed me her personal duelling pistols.

All this, her historic and cultural importance, was founded on her mesmeric performances as an actress, the like of which had never been seen and will probably never be seen again. She had had such adulation and praise that she came to believe in the truth of every compliment paid her, probably not completely out of vanity, but more from the constancy of old friends. Ah, sadly, then came the trap of time in fickle flattery… For the joy and awe of future generations she was encouraged to make a silent film of one of her great triumphs, L’Aiglon, a play about the teenage son of Bonaparte in which she played the doomed young boy. At the time she was close to 60 and had also lost one leg. Well, it is wonderful to watch now as a historic document of the performing arts; it puts reality into context. It is also a rather cautionary film for those who believe there is an embedded right and wrong way of doing things, rather than a right way and another way of doing everything. Sarah was a “legend in her own lifetime” but, apart from being an interesting and popular figure, can never hold the mythic status of a legend. That one short silent film locked her in her own time, taking away her mystery for the future.

Legends either come to glory after death or, if they are on the brink of becoming legendary before they die, they must die in the aura of unexplained bafflement and wonder on the part of their contemporaries.

Biographical movies about legendary characters are really quite difficult to make or write, except in the broadest terms, generally with the details of incidental or intimate moments of their lives either left out, exaggerated or fictionalised.

I remember when I was working on Lawrence of Arabia, I was shooting the second unit in Morocco and I thought I’d swat up on Lawrence’s life to see if there was anything in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom or any other accounts of the battles or raids in Arabia that might inspire a shot or two. And then I came upon Richard Aldington’s book Lawrence of Arabia, which is subtitled A Biographical Enquiry. It virtually exploded the image of the man we were shooting a movie about. In the forward to the book Aldington says it is primarily an analysis of the career of Lawrence “The Man of Action” and the establishment and growth of the Lawrence legend. He goes on to say that as he came to research it, he found that The Man of Action was not as significant as is generally supposed and the legendary stories were largely Lawrence’s own inventions.

When I mentioned this to David Lean one day, he said, “Oh well, Nic, we’re not making a film about that book’s Lawrence and no one else will, either. ‘Our’ Lawrence is what he has become.” He was absolutely right, of course. After someone has been reborn as a legend, that legendary status will stick and no matter how much research and proof is found to refute it, nothing will change. In fact, all that proof will only sound like sour grapes.

Unfortunately, because of our “information society”, the actions, lifestyle and behaviour of anyone whom we believe will become a legend in the future is being recorded and it is very difficult to keep our secret life a secret. However, legends will still form around some individuals and, if I were to predict the unpredictable, I would say Bowie is on the right road and heading in the right direction.

- Nicolas Roeg is an English director and cinematographer who directed classics including Walkabout, Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

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