The Optics of Modern Music Biopics, Gah! I Blame Bohemian Rhapsody…

Monday is music (or TV). Today, a wee rant about a pet-peeve of mine. The modern music biopic....gah!

I’ve always maintained that music biopics usually get it wrong; that something is lost when you take from the page to the stage. I am here all day and every day for music biographies, I eventually read them all (well, that’s how it used to feel). And the same is true of the biopic. (And music documentaries). I’m slowing down a little these days, but I still watch them. Eventually.

And so it was with Elvis. Released last year, the immediate red flag for me was that it was directed by Baz Luhrmann. He has made one great film (Strictly Ballroom) and one interesting/acceptable film (Romeo + Juliet). From there it’s been noble failure (Moulin Rouge!) and joke (Australia) after joke (The Great Gatsby). Turning everything into a silly music video.

People asked me about Elvis. Non-stop it seemed. Was I going? Had I seen it? Did I love it?

I was really happy for anyone that raved about the movie. But I know the Elvis Presley story pretty well (I’m definitely a fan, I wonder how anyone could claim to not be a fan; I get no longer bothering to check in on the music – but not a fan? Nah…)

Tom Hanks in the trailer sure didn’t help the cause.

So I sat it out. All the while knowing that I would eventually get to it.

Austin Butler (Elvis) was amazing. One of the best to play The King on the screen. For sure. The look, the sound, the feel. And it never seemed like caricature. Which it almost always does, whenever anyone dons the jumpsuit.

But Tom Hanks made me sick. It made me realise one important thing: If Tom Hanks is doing an accent, the movie will be terrible (cf. The Ladykillers). I’ve usually left Tom Hanks alone, thinking he’s fine enough, bit of a ham, but whatever. Since seeing this film I’m thinking that maybe he’s actually always been awful. But that’s for another time…

And the much bigger issue for me, as the film wore on, was the problem with modern music biopics in a nutshell. And we can lay the blame squarely as the feet of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Ever since Anthony McCarten (screenwriter) and Bryan Singer (director) decided to prioritise their idea of a story-arc (revisionism) over the truth of actual events, we have been stuck with people thinking if they painfully recreate entire concert performances they will ratchet the drama. Bohemian Rhapsody closes out with the Queen Live Aid appearance. It’s a move nearly as pointless as Gus Van Sant’s attempt at shot-for-shot remaking Psycho. But the real psycho move here was to decide that what would really sell the vitality of the Live Aid gig was suggesting it was the performance of Freddie’s life: IE that he’d just received his HIV diagnosis. The big issue there? He found out that terrible piece of news (in real life) in 1987 – two years after playing Live Aid. He kept it secret from the band until 1989.

The overall attitude from people that watched the film was So what? Facts Schmacts. “It was still a  pretty good movie eh…”

The historical inaccuracy bugged me profoundly. Not because I’m a mouth-breathing trainspotter. Okay, okay, not JUST because I’m a mouth-breathing trainspotter. The writer and director are stealing extra tragedy, they are mining a drama that actually isn’t there, in a film that is predicated on being a telling of the truth.

But, anyway, ever since Bohemian Rhapsody, the trend has been to show off the performance aspect of the music and the musician. And what is most annoying about this is that it’s never been easier to actually see the performances. We can go to YouTube and watch the footage. In most cases, these biopics are flawlessly recreating concert footage that already exists in remastered documentary form.

Live Aid is on DVD. It is on YouTube. Maybe it’s burned into your memory – since it really was a spectacular performance by Queen (and one or two other bands. U2, similarly, had a blinder).

Elvis remade the 1968 Comeback Special which has been released on DVD multiple times. Even better, I thought, was the attention to detail in recreating the look and feel of the 1970 concert/doco film: Elvis: That’s The Way It Is. That film was released before I was born and yet I’ve seen it – in cinemas – TWICE. I’ve also owned it on DVD a couple of different times.

I mean, the real story is there. Already. Why feel the need to recreate it? I couldn’t knock the way they did it. It’s the why they did it that rankles.

The similarly dull and rather meaningless Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect, told only a tiny bit of The Queen of Soul’s story. With tedium. It worked up to the recording of the astonishing get-back-to-her-roots gospel concert album, Amazing Grace. But that footage, the whole concert basically, was released as a film finally in 2018. (Franklin didn’t want it released in her lifetime – it was the first thing to arrive after she died).

So, just watch Amazing Grace.

 We don’t need an actor telling us the pantomime version.

All of this has been on my mind, and far too much actually, as I bumbled about deciding whether to watch the Whitney Houston biopic that was released late last year. Seriously, I planned to go and see it a bunch of times.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody follows Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and Respect in reminding you about the artist by naming one of their career-defining hits in the title. This one goes all out in the prosaic stakes though eh.

I still wanted to see it. Whitney was amazing. And I recently read a very good book which does an excellent job pointing out not only that, but also addressing some of the sexism and racism and queer-baiting/bashing that plagued her career. Seems crazy to say plagued her career when she was as famous as she was. But it’s true. That unhappiness that sat centre in her life was something I thought might make an amazing film.

But the reviews tumbled in talking about the amount of musical performances. Recreations of concerts and video shoots.

Bah!

We are dumbing down documentaries.

We are saying that it’s better to tell this true story through an actor because then everything will look prettier. And we can just bask in the performance aspect. The sadness is hinted at, but the lights and sparkle will really sell the drama and make it look and sound cool too.

Documentaries = boring. Biopic = slick.

That’s the marketing. That’s the motivation. That’s the laziness of such tireless recreation. Ironic and stupefying.

So I haven’t seen Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Yet.

But we all know I’m going to sit down and see it and have a bitch about it some other time, right?

Modern biopics, gah!