Tag: biopics

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Biopics and Other Lies

Why You Should Never Trust a Hollywood Biopic

Most movie biographies– almost all of them, nowadays, in fact– are the result of incestuous relationships between the guardians and owners of copyrighted material and the film-makers. The guardians want a fawning tribute to their deceased or not so deceased beloved. The film-maker wants a hit movie. If it’s about Ray Charles, it’s got to have his music in it. Well, who controls the rights to that music? Right– Ray Charles’ family and heirs.

I am not talking about minor changes in order to fit the biographical narrative into a digestible 90 minute experience.  I accept time compression and combinations of different characters.  It’s the vanity stuff I object to, and the sliming of people in order to create a villain where none existed, to provide dramatic tension.

And I’m not talking about movies that were never intended to be biographical, “Amadeus”.  “Amadeus” is not about Mozart’s life; it is about the random kindnesses and cruelties of fate that awards talents to the unworthy and worthy without justice.

And I forgot the third leg of this unholy tripod: the audiences, which are more than happy to be deceived about their heroes.  Johnny Cash did drugs because of a childhood trauma.  David Helfgott was a great pianist.  John Nash’s wife stuck with him through thick and thin.  Oskar Schindler lifted a steam locomotive.  Elton John’s father abandoned him and never supported his musical career.  A record producer rejected Freddie Mercury’s (awful) “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

The Hollywood argument that you have to fictionalize because, well, you just have to, is utter bullshit, and there are a handful of Hollywood biopics that prove the point, including “I, Tonya” and “The Pianist”.

All parties to the charade make all the correct noises about “authenticity” and “warts and all” without the slightest intention of letting anyone else decide which warts deserve exposure and which might better be left in the dark. The audience, indulged in with a few carefully chosen scenes of debauchery or alcohol abuse, are convinced that the movie is telling it all. The actor hopes to get a chance, like Reese Witherspoon, to realize their life-long dream of becoming a country music singer!

Bring it on, Reese! I just hope that Dolly Parton, sitting in the audience, didn’t feel that her career achievements were in any way diminished by the fact that Reese Witherspoon only required a few months to render a creditable counterfeit.

Biopics

I Walk the Line
(2005, d. James Mangold, Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon) More honest than most, but formulaic as hell.   Carefully calibrated so that you don’t judge Cash too harshly for his drug use.  And I really do hope that people don’t get the impression that this is what Johnny Cash and June Carter really sound like.

Coal Miner’s Daughter
(1980, D. Michael Apted, Sissy Spacek) Loretta Lynn has consistently claimed she was married at 13. In fact, county records show she was fifteen when she married Dolittle Flynn.

Buddy Holly Story
(1978, D. Steve Rash, Gary Busey) Cheese please: This film shows Holly writing a score in the studio– Holly could neither write nor read music. And where did the fourth Cricket go?

Ray
(2004, D. Taylor Hackford, Jaime Foxx) The state of Georgia never banned Ray Charles.

Backbeat
(1994, D. Iain Softley, Stephen Dorff, Ian Hart, Gary Bakewell, Chris O’Neill, Scot Williams) No Lennon-McCartney originals were used, or harmed, in the making of this otherwise intriguing production. One of the better biopics of this bunch.

Pollock
(2000, D. Ed Harris, Ed Harris) Ed Harris, Ed Harris, Ed Harris, Ed Harris….

Beautiful Mind
(2001, D. Ron Howard, Russell Crowe.) Omits any mention of his subversive period, his alleged homosexuality. And Nash didn’t see things– he heard voices. And his wife did leave him.

Great Balls of Fire
(1985, D. Jim McBride, Dennis Quaid) Conveniently ended in 1959, before the suspicious deaths of two of Lewis’ wives.

Schindler’s List
(1993, d. Steven Spielberg, Liam Neeson) That ridiculous last scene— Schindler weeping and wailing that he could have saved more if he had only sold his rings– never happened, and insults his memory. Spielberg just couldn’t help himself– just in case you didn’t get it, he has to clobber you over the head with just how slobbering beautiful Schindler’s actions seem to day. They were beautiful– but shameless ham-fisted scenes like this only raise doubts about the integrity of the rest of the movie. Schindler’s wife, shown fondly appreciating him in the film, actually left him. The book, incidentally, was originally marketed as fiction– the author took some true events and “fictionalized” them for whatever reason (possibly because he was unable to verify his information to acceptable journalistic standards). It was only when Spielberg decided to make a movie that it was rebranded as “non-fiction”. What changed? Spielberg’s desire to give the movie more gravitas.

Finding Neverland
(2004, D. Marc Foster, Johnny Depp) This one might take the cake– J. M. Barrie’s relationship to the Llewelyn children was problematic– all of them, later in life, had very ambivalent feelings about Barrie– to say the least. The boy for which Peter is named threw himself under a train at the age of 65, detesting his association with the play. Two of the other children died under suspicious circumstances (possible suicides). But this version makes him look like a lovable saint. Who owns the rights to “Peter Pan”? The Great Ormond Street Hospital. Would they like you to think ill of their cash cow? Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, incidentally, was not a widow when J. M. Barrie began visiting and monopolizing her children. Barrie himself was married earlier but never consummated the marriage.

Capote
(2005) Since Capote is long dead and he didn’t sing, more honest than most.

The Rose
( 1979) Disguised biography of Janis Joplin. It is an utterly depressing world we live in if it is to be believed that Bette Midler can supply anything remotely resembling even a facsimile of Janis Joplin’s singing performances. You owe it to yourself, if you have to seen this movie, to purge your soul with a viewing of an honest-to-god performance by the real Janis Joplin.

The Doors
( 1991) Oliver Stone’s bizarre and often tiresome portrait of Jimmy Morrison has at least one virtue: it isn’t unduly flattering. And it has a relatively impressive performance by a very committed Val Kilmer. There is a moment: the live performance of “Light my Fire” at least gives you something so lacking in most of these biopics– a moment in which you might actually apprehend what it was that made the artist great in the first place.

Shine ()
Where do I begin?

Marie Antoinette
My goodness– and we all thought the Queen was plotting, right up to the end, to bring in Austrian armies to put down the revolution!  Well, she was.

Farewell My Queen
The exception: an exquisite antidote, though slow-moving, paean to the roles of Antoinette’s servants and sycophants in the last days of the Louis XVI regime.

42 (Forty-two)

The myth is this:  the Brooklyn Dodgers with the rookie, Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball, were playing in Cincinnati on May 13,  1947, one of the most southern cities in the league.   Robinson was being subjected to horrible, incessant abuse, name calling, death threats, mockery, when another Brooklyn player, an esteemed local named Pee-Wee Reese, walked up to him and put his arm around him to send a message to the fans: we are brothers.  Don’t abuse my friend.  There is even a bronze statue memorializing the event in New York at the Brooklyn Cyclones home field.

It didn’t happen.  It was first reported by a pitcher who said he saw it while he was warming up in the bullpen to pitch in the first inning.  The records show that someone else was pitching the first inning.  No newspaper of the time reported the incident.  Pee-Wee Reese was a lifelong friend of Robinson’s and certainly behaved honorably towards him but Eddie Stanky is the one who threatened to fight Philadelphia players who were harassing Robinson.

An incident like it may have happened in 1948, in Boston.  Maybe.  But if it did, it wasn’t reported until 1952, well after the “experiment” (breaking the color barrier) had been widely regarded as a success.

 

Diversions
Jesus Biopic:

When Hollywood made King of Kings in 1960, it decided it couldn’t be too careful with the first talking film about the Son of God. Test screenings were held for carefully selected representative preview audiences to garner their reactions to the film. Would audiences find the idea of a celluloid Christ shocking? Would they be offended at the idea of Hollywood packaging and glamorizing the story of salvation? Would they be appalled at the vivid scenes of Christ on the cross, one of the most sacred images of the Christian religion?

Friday, January 24, 2020

 

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Flight 93: The Movie

Am I supposed to feel good about the fact that the makers of the upcoming film, “Flight 93”, have received “cooperation” from all of the families of the passengers?

Some of these families were concerned that earlier accounts of the flight only paid attention to the “heroes”. They want to ensure that their family member gets some exposure as well. This smells of political correctness. Maybe some of the people on this plane were assholes? We’ll never know, because that is not the kind of “exposure” the families want.

I don’t hesitate to acknowledge the terrible sufferings of the families and victims of 9/11. It was a traumatic event, unprecedented in scope, certainly deserving of respectful acknowledgement and a certain degree of sensitivity from the media and film-makers.

But they are not the only ones who have died in the world in the last five years, and not the only ones who have died tragically. And I am sure the the families of all victims, whether of violence, inflicted by misguided governments or fanatic organizations, or the random violence of criminals and psychotics, or the horror of illnesses that strike without reason or logic, all feel that their sufferings are unique and unparalleled and deserving of deferential respect.

But nobody seems willing to publicly challenge the families of the 9/11 victims, whether on the issue of the preposterously excessive compensation they receive (why on earth are they and they alone entitled to millions of dollars in pay-outs when even the families of soldiers are not?) or, in this case, on how history looks at the event.

“Flight 93” is being directed by Paul Greengrass, who directed “Bloody Sunday”, about the 1972 riots in Ireland that resulted in the deaths of 13 unarmed demonstrators. He is a good director, and the film seems promising.

But, is Mr. Greengrass making a home movie? Is Mr. Greengrass making a movie that these family members will be proud to show at family gatherings in the future? Or is he making a movie that strives for accuracy and truth?

It all fits with a trend. We are now inundated with biographical films that are approved by the families or friends of the subject. Not one of these films would admit that they are dishonest in any way– the people who approve of them (and sell the rights to the stories) love to tell Oprah or David or Conan that the movie will show “warts and all”. But they usually only show the warts you don’t mind people seeing, or the warts everyone already knows about. Ray Charles didn’t mind that you knew how many women wanted to sleep with him or that he did drugs and Johnny Cash doesn’t mind if you know that he did pills and alcohol and chased June Carter. But if either of these guys, or Mohammed Ali or Patsy Cline or Buddy Holly or Loretta Lynn or even Jerry Lee Lewis did anything really reprehensible (that you don’t already know about), it aint going to come out in the film.

It is partly due to the onerous provisions of current copyright laws. It has become nearly impossible to make a biographical movie without getting permission from the various stakeholders, whether it is the copyright owners (of the music or images), or families. When the “Buddy Holly Story” was filmed, they actually had to use fictitious names for the Crickets because they had sold the rights separately from the Holly family. That is bizarre. If that is really the result of current legislation on copyright, the legislation needs to be changed. As his highness said in “Amadeus” (a movie without the problem because all of it’s principals were long deceased), “this is stupid”.

Can it be done otherwise? Check out “Backbeat” about the Beatles’ early career. It’s a great film.

On the other hand, I just realized that I hadn’t applied my own theory: who is shown most flatteringly in the movie? Without a doubt, Astrid Kirchherr, depicted as a fascinating, sophisticated, clever, sexy fan-savant.

I just checked a few web-sites. According to this one, Astrid was indeed involved in the production. How about that.

I do not look forward to the inevitable biopic of Bob Dylan, even though the story of one of the most compelling artists of our age should be an important and significant film. Bob Dylan controls the rights to his music. Nobody will be able to make a film without the music, thus, without the approval of Bob Dylan or his estate. I have no doubt that when it comes, the owners of the rights will proclaim, loudly and insistently, that the biography will be “warts and all”. And I have no doubt that it will really be a highly selective and probably distorted picture. [2008-05: I was wrong. The Dylan film, “I’m Not There”, was brilliant. Dylan, after seeing “I Walk the Line”, let it be known to director Todd Haynes that he could have all the rights he wanted and make the film he wanted because Dylan was not going to demand approval of the script or the film. He didn’t want a typical “biopic”. He wanted to leave the judgement of how the film was made to the director. Hallelujah!]

A fair question is– is that any better or worse than the type of biography we get from Albert Goldman,