When documentary filmmaker Brett Morgen hit his eighth month of writer’s block on an epic project about David Bowie, he decided it was time to hit the road. With just a few hours’ notice, he left his home in Los Angeles one morning and grabbed the first flight to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Bowie had filmed "The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976). When Morgen arrived, he took a cab to the train station and hopped aboard an Amtrak, heading west.
"Being in transit was an important theme in David’s life,” he says. "He talked a lot about riding the rails through the West. And a lot of songs that he wrote happened during some of his trips across America.”
Morgen pulled out his notes; his phone, packed with all the albums; and his copy of "The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. "I was thinking about ‘The Iliad,’” he says, "and I started to see David’s journey. Not all that dissimilar — but he was creating the storms for himself.” Suddenly, the script for his film, already three years in the making, began flowing.