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In Minute 83 of The Whole Shebang, Jenny and Mike look at what we’ve lost in terms of emotional revelation in movies and in real life now that there are no phone receivers to hang up or slam down anymore, Curt’s retreat to Berlin and how it’s a reference to Bowie’s Berlin period and trilogy and to other German retreats like the Beatles in Hamburg, the differences between Brian Slade and David Bowie, especially in how each of them were treated by their managers, the cultural history of the doner kebab in Germany, Britain, and the U.S., Jenny’s inability to tell European countries apart, Brian’s Berlin doppelgänger, and then back to Bowie and his paranoia and how he escaped his cocaine period in Berlin, how Bowie used the Berlin trilogy to recap his career up to this point, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Jenny’s disappointment with Neil Patrick Harris’s performance of Hedwig, a short detour in “straightwashing” queer classics like Rocky Horror, and then back to London where Arthur’s having his own montage, Brian seeing the Flaming Creatures (played by Placebo) for the first time, Placebo’s own history, their flouting of the Velvet Goldmine curse, and Jenny’s anger that they are considered a one-hit wonder in the States, Placebo’s connection to Bowie, Brian Malko’s acting experience and how actors and non-actors in music movies provide some new and weird energy, and the goofy look on Arthur’s face as he finds his people in London.
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