Many fathers are eager to hand the family business down to their sons and Duncan Jones's dad was no exception. He wanted his son to become a rock star, or a musician of some description, but instead Jones has grown up to be a film director and his highly accomplished - and perfectly timed - debut feature, Moon, went on general release on Friday.
David Bowie, for he is the father, can blame his son's career choice on his own love affair with cinema. The glam rock star made his first major appearance as an actor in Nic Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976, when Duncan was five. At home in Kent, where Jones spent his early years, father and son would play around with cameras and make stop-motion animations using Star Wars figurines. Later, Jones witnessed the real thing, hanging out with his father on the sets of films such as Labyrinth and getting a sneak preview of his future profession.
Once you've clocked that his father once sang about Martian spiders and floating around space in tin cans, you can understand a little better why Jones, who is 38, has a deep-rooted passion for science fiction. Moon, based on an original story by Jones, is the result of many hours spent reading the mind-bending works of Philip K Dick and watching contemplative extraterrestrial classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Outland
The film is set in a not-so-distant future - the moon can be manned on a permanent basis and Sam Bell is the caretaker of a lonely mining station on its dark side. As his three-year shift draws to an end and he prepares to return to his young family on Earth, Bell begins to have disturbing visions that send his understanding of his job and, ultimately, his own identity into metaphysical meltdown. Bell is played by the excellent Sam Rockwell. His companion, the talking computer system Gerty, a close relative of Hal from 2001, is voiced by Kevin Spacey.
To a genre in thrall to relentless action and thunderous explosions, Jones reintroduces a welcome sense of quiet, or disquiet, and a plot that prompts audiences to think rather than merely to react. The action in Moon is largely psychological, but that's not to say that the film doesn't deliver the visual goods. Considering Jones and his team were working with £2.6m, a minuscule budget for a sci-fi movie, and using old-fashioned models manipulated by catgut instead of expensive, computer-generated effects, their finished product looks startlingly good.
It's a smart bit of scheduling that the film has come out on the very weekend of the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landings, but Moon is also topical in other ways. An updated version of such classic ecological sci-fi pictures as Silent Running, it addresses the need for clean fuel sources at a time when dirty energy is a burning issue. The American corporation that Bell works for is mining Helium-3, a source of clean energy that really does exist on the moon and which Jones believes is "the only financially viable reason to go" there. (That the corporation turns out to be exploitative only makes the film more relevant.)
Trudie Styler, whose production company, Xingu Films, helped raise extra money for Moon, hopes that the film will appeal to people who'd usually give sci-fi a wide berth. And she has nothing but good things to say about its director, whom she has known for seven years. "If I were a betting person, I'd bet heavily that he's going to go all the way to the top," she told the Observer
Jones's future didn't always look so bankable. Money, connections and media attention can be a gift for a young scion seeking to outshine his or her famous parent, but they can also be a curse and some, like Jones, go to great lengths to avoid them.
"I saw the drawbacks of fame as a kid," he has said. "I think if you're young and you're being compared with a successful family member, it's really hard to maintain any sense of self-worth and credibility." His path to Moon, which he made without any financial support from his father, was anything but straightforward.
Jones was born in 1971 and, until now, he has perhaps been best known for his middle name which, notoriously, rendered him Zowie Bowie, a feast for any playground predator. Wisely, he adapted it to Joey and at 19 he reverted to the more robust name on his passport, which has helped him conceal his celebrity ties for most of his adult life.
David Bowie's fame was in the ascendant in 1971 but his marriage to Duncan's mother, Angie, was falling apart and a divorce was officially granted when Jones was nine. He hasn't seen his mother since he was 13. His childhood was spent with his father, which meant living all over the world, and frequently joining his father on tour.
At 13, he went to Gordonstoun, the Scottish boarding school, a miserable experience for this shy, bookish young man who now cheerfully refers to himself as a "geek". He was expelled for sleeping through his A-levels - he says he was too stressed to cope with them - and without qualifications he went to London, where he worked for six months at Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
After a stint counselling children with learning difficulties in Switzerland, he moved to the US and returned to academia. He won a scholarship to read philosophy at a college in rural Ohio. An ill-fated romance drew him to Vanderbilt University, where he began a PhD, but he quit after breaking up with his girlfriend. (Romantic complications also permeated the Moon shoot, during which he was trying, like his lead character, to sustain a difficult long-term relationship. "Girls seem to get me in trouble a lot of times," he says.)
Finally, he put his love of cinema into practice and enrolled at the London International Film School, but there was still some way to go before this self-confessed "eternal student" took on a major project of his own. He served his apprenticeship under Tony Scott on a TV version of The Hunger and applied what he'd learnt to a short film called Whistle in 2002. At Scott's advice, he went into advertising and worked on commercials for McCain oven chips and Heinz ketchup. A commercial he directed for French Connection was dubbed the "kung-fu lesbian advert".
At last he was ready to take the leap and direct a feature. "I'm glad I've waited until now, to be honest," says Jones. "I was a bit of a delicate flower growing up and I think it could have damaged me if I tried to do it any younger." He devised the story for Moon with Sam Rockwell in mind and Nathan Parker, son of film director Alan, wrote the screenplay. It was shot at Shepperton Studios in just 33 days.
When Moon had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, David Bowie flew in unannounced to see the fruit of his son's labours. "It was quite emotional for both of us," Jones said afterwards, "because he's been waiting for me to get off my arse and do what it is that I'm going to do with my life. At the Q&A afterwards, I thanked him and said that I really appreciated that he gave me the time to work out what I wanted to do, because it's taken me a while."
Moon was warmly received at Sundance, hailed as "one of the most original sci-fi films in years". At the Edinburgh International Film Festival last month, it won the Michael Powell award for best British debut. "I'm real proud of it," Sam Rockwell told the Observer recently, adding: "I just think Duncan was born to do this. I'd really like to work with him again."
He describes Jones as "affable, a little shy, and kind of childlike, but really sharp. There are a lot of assholes in this business so it's nice to meet somebody who is courteous and thoughtful and sensitive. You don't get that a lot."
Jones sometimes gives the impression that he profoundly regrets having to relinquish his hard-won anonymity, but Styler insists he can be quite an extrovert. "I actually think that he's really blossoming and taking the stage himself now. In a way, it's been wonderful for him."
"He's having some fun," Rockwell agrees. "I think it's good for him because I don't think he has been comfortable in the limelight, probably because of his father. Now it's about him. The success of this film has nothing to do with his dad. It's all him. It's his baby."
"I hope, by the second or the third film, who my father is won't be a story anyone's interested in," Jones has said. He won't have to wait long to find out. Another sci-fi film, Mute, which he describes as "my love letter to Blade Runner", is already in development and will be filmed in Berlin. His third film is expected to be Escape From the Deep, a Second World War submarine thriller based on a true story.
"Eventually I'm going to be judged purely on my own merits," Jones says. If the impact he has already made with his debut feature is anything to go by, it looks as though Duncan Jones can stop worrying about his father's legacy right now.
The Jones lowdown
Born: Beckenham, Kent, on 30 May 1971 to David Bowie and his first wife, Angie, who Bowie divorced in 1980. He attended Gordonstoun and university in the US and graduated from the London International Film School in 2001.
Best of times: Right now: his directorial debut, Moon, has won many plaudits, and the Michael Powell award for the best new British feature at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last month.
Worst of times: Getting kicked out of Gordonstoun without A-levels and drifting aimlessly through his twenties, strained by the pressure to emulate his father's success: "I was angry and frustrated when I was younger and didn't know my place in the world."
What he says: "I was massively geeky. I was never the kid who would have been invited to that [celebrity] stuff - I was painfully shy and not comfortable around that crowd. You would never have seen me on any party scene, which is probably what made me able to disappear, in a way, because the tabloids had nothing to follow. I didn't do anything."
What they say: "It's nice to work with directors who have a good bedside manner. I think he was born to do this. I think he's really got a future. And he's smart. He took an interest in what I was interested in. For a young director, he has a great curiosity and that's key if you're a beginner." Actor Sam Rockwell.
