Nomi, we hardly knew ye

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Any fan of post-punk weirdness from the late-’70s New York scene should be kissing babies over the Montreal screening of the 2004 Klaus Nomi documentary, The Nomi Song, directed by Andrew Horn. Profiling this enigmatic performer must have been a Herculean task, to say the least. After Nomi’s death in 1983, there was very little interview footage left, as he intentionally kept the press at bay so as to not separate the man from his on-stage persona. Horn expertly fleshes out “the man from outer space” with interviews with confidants, friends, family and musical collaborators, exploring the artist as well as the seldom seen man behind the kabuki make-up.

Klaus Nomi was a singer engulfed in New York’s exploding East Village art and fashion scene of the late ’70s, and was considered a lynchpin of post-Warhol Manhattan with his merging of operatic arias, performance art and leftfield pop set to disco beats. Nomi was so invested in his perfectly groomed image, that of an offbeat extraterrestrial, that little is known of him beyond that persona. Thankfully, Horn has unearthed rough Super 8 footage, home movies, a cable TV cooking show in which he demonstrates his pastry-making skills—and of course, his famous appearance with David Bowie on Saturday Night Live and his inclusion in the punk concert film Urgh; A Music War. His familiar geometric penguin suit aside, Nomi also possessed a vocal quality that could stop the world from turning, with a falsetto that could cut glass. Largely remembered as a force in New York fashion and performance art, his legacy takes a sudden new twist here as his amazing operatic vocal skills are finally exposed and celebrated throughout the film—Horn’s true triumph.

The Nomi Song manages to nimbly walk the wire between showcasing the unwavering aesthetic vision Nomi so expertly concocted, and digging deep into the mysterious elfin character that was Nomi offstage. On the periphery of the film is the East Village scene, which obviously plays a huge part in Nomi’s story. One of the big eye-opening moments is a revisiting of the pandemonium in the early ’80s created by the then-unknown AIDS virus, which would soon take Nomi’s life. Sadly, Nomi was one of the first people in the public eye to die of AIDS, and because of this, his name has become posthumously attached to the virus while his actual music has been relegated to a footnote. If anything, Horn’s film finally sets the record straight, showing the true artist that Nomi was. Not that Horn steers clear of Nomi’s final days as the Berlin transplant struggles to find true friendship within his newfound fame, falls victim to botched business dealings that would ultimately divide friendships, struggles to retain his artistic vision while battling the shortsightedness of his record company and his lonely last days.

At the beginning of the film and in the end, Nomi’s life finds a metaphor in a comet, coming down from outer space, burning brightly and gone almost as quickly as it is noticed. The Nomi Song screens as part of the Carte blanche à Marie Brassard series at Cinema Goethe (418 Sherbrooke E.) on Thursday and Friday, Jan. 23–24, at 7 p.m.

SHAMWOW…JONATHAN.CUMMINS@GMAIL.COM