BEAMING DAVID BOWIE

Chapter One - A New Game in Town

I was upstairs in the easyInternetCafé on Tottenham Court Road in London about to take a conference call with two of David Bowie’s managers, one of whom was in New York and the other who was probably just around the corner. This management company, The Outside Organisation, were apparently very big players in the music industry and if they got behind something the chances were it would happen. I had a big idea for them to consider on behalf of their legendary star and my pitch had to be perfect because these were not the type of men you wanted to fail to impress.

Also on the line from New York was Julie Borchard, the Senior Vice President for International Marketing at Sony Music Entertainment, Bowie’s record label. Julie was already sold on the big idea and had been an invaluable and powerful ally in taking it as far as it had come. It was June of 2003 and if all went according to plan it was going to be a Kodak year, one for the career album. It was still a young career, maturing like a flower in need of the sunshine that stars like David Bowie can bestow upon it. I had become Head of Digital Cinema for Odeon, the UK’s largest cinema chain, by the age of thirty in January of 2002 and had taken my place in the blur of business types racing around the capital, eager to stand out when it really mattered. Now was such a time.

As we waited for Bowie guardians David Whitehead in New York and Julian Stockton in London to join us on the call I tried to keep my deep breathing quiet. I was nervous and this was my relaxation technique, handed down by past masters of simplicity in whom I had seen it work. I didn’t usually get nervous. I thought nobody could make me nervous anymore and I was even silently embarrassed. I wondered what was wrong with me, was I going weak and losing whatever edge had got me there in the first place? I couldn’t tell if Julie was nervous, if she was taking deep breaths too she was keeping them quieter than mine!

Julian Stockton came on the line first and had a friendly chirp to his voice which put me at ease somewhat. All Julian knew so far from Julie was that I was some gung ho “new media” type from Odeon who had an interesting remit to develop new business by programming live events on cinema screens using satellite equipment and digital projectors. I felt excruciatingly baited to launch into my pitch right away because, being all coiled up with nerves, I just wanted to get it over with. But we had to wait for David Whitehead in New York to join us and while the seconds ticked by like hours I was forced to ply the art of small talk instead.

Fortunately Julie filled in a lot, having all sorts of things to tell Julian in general about the forthcoming marketing campaign for David Bowie’s then new album, titled “Reality”, which was due out September 2003. With my mobile phone pressed hard against my ear to block out the chatter in the background I knew the one thing I didn’t want to tell anyone was that we were actually running out of time to make a grand, history making David Bowie cinema gig happen. This conference call was vital, like a final audition where the role had to be nailed. The chit chat rolled annoyingly on. Where was David Whitehead? I could barely stand it anymore!

“Why don’t you go ahead and start, Marc” Julian finally said.

I think I winced. If there was one thing that didn’t agree with me it was hitting the verbal gas pedal to go roaring off down the track only to have to hit the brakes and back up to collect a late arriving passenger. But the moment had come to speak up, to take command of the call and do justice to the fact that I was on the telephone with these people in the first place. I drew my last deep breath and silently reminded myself that I had pitched this idea almost a hundred times before so all I needed to do was relax and do it again …

1

Seven months earlier I had been knocking on the doors of every major record label in London trying to get my pitch through the door. Outside Sony Music’s UK office along Great Marlborough Street in London I found myself hastily wrestling off my Italian pure silk tie and unfastening the top two buttons of my crisply pressed Burberry shirt; it had been obvious judging from the bustling foot traffic of music types going in and out of the building that they didn’t do suits and ties much in the record industry, I had seen better dressed painter and decorators! Suddenly I felt pretentious and stuffy. I ruffled up my neatly combed, side-parted hair and checked myself in the reflection of the glass wall. I still looked too serious and tried cocking a nice, laid back smile, then whistled some catchy pop tune that was in the charts to get me even more into the right spirit. Only then did I feel fit to enter.

I was there to tell their marketing managers about something called “digital cinema” and how it was creating new opportunities for the music industry that had never existed before. The pitch was simple. For over 100 years cinemas worldwide had relied on mechanical film reel projectors to show movies produced on film negative. These movies arrived at the cinemas in big, circular canisters, were fed through film projectors and then shipped back to the film companies after their run had finished.

But the digital age had started to change all that. At the turn of the 21st century cinemas had begun to experiment with digital projectors to show movies and other media stored on powerful computer hard drives or broadcast live by either satellite or fibre cable. This had the potential to radically transform the nature of programming available to movie audiences and blew the doors wide open for new concepts such as music, sport, video games and all manner of live events to reach the cinema screen. Hollywood may have owned the silver screen throughout the 20th century by virtue of dominating the production supply chain and distribution channels for feature films but the age of digital cinema was ripe for pioneers and new visions.

That’s where I came in. I had made digital cinema my specialty and, especially, the programming of “alternative content” such as that described. I wanted to build a New Hollywood the same way the phenomena of the Internet had built a New Economy and my Odeon brief had given me exactly that opportunity! The key to all this, of course, was explaining the concept of digital cinema to companies who lacked any understanding whatsoever about either the cinema business or digital technology - and then convincing them of its potential to generate new revenues and benefit them in ways they never might have considered before. It was Sony Music’s turn that day to listen to a digital evangelist preaching the merits of conversion!

The music industry had already come face to face with digital by then, having been severely walloped by illegal music downloading on the Internet. Facing millions of dollars of lost revenues and a gleefully indifferent fan base only too happy to download songs for free and swap files, the music industry was suffering a worldwide crisis. At the outset of this contagious epidemic of societal misbehaviour record industry chiefs were slow to make fire with the digital sticks and instead wanted them tossed into a river to float irretrievably away. But, eventually, the once clever people in the music business got clever again. They had started listening to people with something to say about digital and I came along just at the right time. A year earlier and they might have seen me just to facilitate my assassination. A year later and somebody else would have been filling my shoes already. Timing is everything. So there I was, still looking far too slick but nevertheless psyched up and ready, to tell the music mafia there was a new game in town.

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