Space Invader: Me Against the Music Biopic
"A Complete Unknown" may be a little too known.
The Tip Sheet has spun off. Introducing Space Invaders, a newsletter about movies and pop culture that invades this space on Saturday. Arrives irregularly during this pilot phase.
The last month of the year is usually typified by two kinds of movies: The ones trying to pack people into theatres for a little family holiday viewing, and the final entries into the annual Oscar race. Sometimes, a movie can do both of those things at once, but as people have been packing themselves in for Moana 2 and Wicked this last week, I wonder who will eagerly be lining up for Bob Dylan.
A Complete Unknown opens on Christmas Day and it will feature Timothée Chalamet as Dylan in the early 1960s when he first made his way to New York from Minnesota and taking the first steps on a seven-decade musical journey. What’s interesting is not that there’s a biographical film about Bob Dylan (in fact we got one of those already almost 20 years ago), and it’s not that it features an acting challenge for young Chalamet, iconic in his own way by 21st century standards, playing the iconic Dylan. No, the interesting thing is that Unknown is the beginning of a new wave of biopics about the biggest names in modern popular music.
To wit, next year we will get The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me from Nowhere, Jaafar Jackson will play his famous uncle in Michael, Selena Gomez has been tagged to be Linda Ronstadt in an as-yet-untitled biopic, and Sam Mendes is working on a quartet of Rashomon-like films about each of the four Beatles. Carole King, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, the Bee Gees, KISS, and the Grateful Dead are also possible true-life stories coming soon to a theatre near you.
So what’s at stake with all this filmmaking about famous musicians? Well there are a couple of things going on…
First, money. Bohemian Rhapsody was the sixth most successful film of 2018 and the only one in the top 10 that year that wasn’t a sequel or a superhero movie. Similarly, Elvis enjoyed box office success, not anywhere close to Bohemian Rhapsody money but it came out pretty good in post-pandemic terms, plus it doubled as an exciting announcement for the arrival of the talent known as Austin Butler, who rode a wave of passion and support to an Oscar nomination playing the King of Rock and Roll.
Second, this might be the last gasp of “Boomer Exceptionalism”. As the Baby Boom generation is getting older and shuffling off this mortal coil we’re getting this celebration of their greatest societal contribution, which is, in this case, the music. It’s a way of saying “When we’re gone, this is what we’ll be remembered for, and we did alright, didn’t we?” It’s like when all those World War II movies started coming out in tribute to the Greatest Generation in the late 90s.
And finally, it’s I.P. baby! In a world where nothing gets made unless it ties back to a famous book, TV show, video game, comic book or previous movie series with at least three parts, a musician’s life story gives the casual moviegoer something to hang their hat on. And like those other franchises, these movies have built-in fanbases, while also appealing to the ones who might only be familiar the music. You may not know the names of the other three guys in Queen, but you definitely know “We Will Rock You!”
So what’s wrong with the empty glamour of celebrity worship? Well, nothing really, but with all these projects we’ve got to ask, is this art?
To revisit Bohemian Rhapsody for a moment, it’s worth noting that Brian May and Roger Taylor were consultants on that project, so it always felt like the rough edges of the Queen story were sanded off because access to the thing that makes Queen Queen, which is the music, was probably predicated on the film’s producers keeping the right’s holders happy, who are, of course, the members of Queen and the estate of Freddie Mercury. Consider Elvis again, because Baz Luhrmann had the run of Presley’s catalogue while Sophia Coppola had none, likely because she was telling Elvis’ story from his ex-wife’s point of view in Priscilla.
Even more problematic than some of the stuff in the life story of Elvis Presley though is the life story of Michael Jackson, which you will see portrayed in next year’s Michael. Even though Antoine Fuqua is an accomplished director able to tackle complex material, it seems unlikely that the participation of the family, including the direct involvement of his lead actor, will let him stray into unconformable areas that threaten the Jackson legacy. A Madonna biopic has yet to materialize, but a script called Blonde Ambition about the artist’s first album made the top of the Blacklist of unproduced screenplays in 2018, but the Queen of Pop called it "all lies" and has been plotting her own Madonna-approved biopic ever since.
And yet all this jockeying is an effort to put the best face on a stalled form of storytelling, one that’s already been undermined in the eyes of discerning film fans.
This also tracks back to A Complete Unknown in a roundabout way because that film was directed by James Mangold, who 20 years ago made another biopic called Walk the Line about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. That movie was the primary source of inspiration for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which is the true-life story of a country singer that never existed. In fact, Walk Hard opens with Tim Meadows telling a roadie that “Dewey Cox has to think about his whole life before he plays.” This was a direct jab at how Line opens at Cash’s 1968 Folsom Prison show before going back his childhood where the story really begins.
“Yes, nearly 20 years after Walk Hard’s release, the blueprint pioneered by Cox endures, shrink-wrapping iconic artists into a formulaic series of origins, traumas, and resolutions, underscored by carefully curated selections from their song catalog and fronted by a performance pitched almost solely for Academy recognition,” Kyle Wilson wrote in The Ringer earlier this year.
Perhaps in an era where we’re seeking comfort in the familiar, especially in the ideal past provided through nostalgia, the Cox formula is all you need in order to have a good time at the movies. Walking into a biopic about a famous musician, you know that everything will work out in the end in its own way as the legend unfolds in front of you. The whole point of building a legend is turn one life into something that stands the test of time, it’s a way of achieving immortality and isn’t that the hope for all art once it’s put out into the world. Nothing lasts forever, but the myth behind the music might.
A Complete Unknown will be in theatres everywhere on December 25. You can rent Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story on any VOD platform including Apple, Amazon and the Cineplex Store.
The Bookshelf:
Anora (Thurs)
Conclave (Sat-Sun)
The Polar Express (Sun)
The Return
Galaxy Cinemas – Woodlawn:
Babymetal Legend-43 The Movie (Wed)
Elf (Sat)
Get Away (Starting Sun)
Gladiator II
Moana 2
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Pushpa 2: The Rule
Red One
RM: Right People, Wrong Place (Sat)
Trailer Park Boys Presents: Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties
Wicked
The Wild Robot (Sat-Sun, Tues-Wed)
Starting Thursday: Kraven The Hunter, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Galaxy Cinemas – Clair:
*Temporarily closed due to flood damage.
Mustang Drive-In:
*Closed for the season.
Princess Cinemas – Twin:
Anora (Sat, Mon-Thurs)
Flow
Maria
A Real Pain (Sat, Mon)
The Return (Sun)
Small Things Like These (Sat, Tues, Thurs)
Warren Miller’s 75 (Sat)
Y2K
Starting Friday: Queer
Princess Cinemas – Original:
Daft Punk & Lenji Matsumoto: Interstella 5555 (Thurs)
The Fall – 4K Restoration (Wed)
Hundreds of Beavers: A Northwoods Christmas (Sat)
The Polar Express (Sat)
The Return (Sat, Mon, Wed)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – 4K Restoration (Friday)
The Wages of Fear (Sat-Sun, Tues)
Apollo Cinema:
A Christmas Story (Sat)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Take Manhattan (Fri)
Heretic (Sat, Mon-Wed)
The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause (Sun)
Pushpa 2: The Rule (Sat, Mon-Thurs)
A Room With a View (Sun)
This week on End Credits, Tim Phillips co-hosts as take a look at the glamour and body horror of taking an experimental drug to create a younger version of yourself to live the life you want to lead in Coralie Fargeat’s gruesome and fascinating new film, The Substance. We will also talk about some of the movie trends and film news stories that have helped us make sense of this weird, unusual year of cinema.
And finally, feel free to reach out to me by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!