David Bowie can’t juggle.. and no, it’s not because he’s dead. He never could.
While filming Labyrinth (still the only movie to feature a urinating Muppet) the script called for David Bowie to do some contact juggling. If you never tried it, contact juggling is hard… very hard. These days it would be no problem, they would give Mr. Bowie a CGI arm and let horribly fake looking computer graphics do their work, although I’m sure George Lucas is wishing he could make a special edition so he could add one… and remove Jennifer Connelly’s eyebrows.
The solution they came up with was much more practical. They hired a professional juggler to hide in Mr. Bowie’s armpit. Michael Moschen had to do take after take crouched in an awkward position to make it look like Mr. Bowie was the one doing the juggling. It was a closeness to Mr. Bowie that only Mick Jagger had ever experienced.
Despite being in an awkward position, not being able to see what he was doing, and having to smell Mr. Bowie’s B.O. the entire time, Mr. Moschen pulled off the effect.
