Enough with the Music Biopics!
Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 7:00PM 
What has BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY wrought?!
Over the past five years and across nearly a thousand write-ups for The Film Experiences, you might have denoted my slight distaste for biopics. To be fair, "slight" might be an understatement. I bring this up to admit my bias against these projects, often conventional to a fault and dripping with mercenary intent. But even if you're a fan of them, you must admit there's been a disproportionate influx of these productions in the past few years, especially in the context of dramas about musicians. It's likely a consequence of Bohemian Rhapsody's immense success at the box office and with awards groups, generating a thousand copycats that may not reach the depths of its ignobility but still plateau at a level of miserable mediocrity.
As Timothée Chalamet is hounded by paparazzi on the set of his Bob Dylan biopic, the Bohemian Rhapsody editor announces his directorial debut, and Back to Black spits on the memory of Amy Winehouse in theaters, let's discuss…
One of the most obnoxious aspects of the current biopic craze is the sense of redundancy. So many of them take cues from age-old conventions that the result arrives with a sheen of anonymity. It needn't be so, and a few filmmakers have shown that the biopic model can be a place worthy of artistic exploration, perhaps experimentation. Two names come to mind. There's Pablo Larraín, whose portraits of historical women have broken themselves in paroxysms of performance. In Jackie, he touched on constructing historical records and mythmaking as an actor's job in the public theater of politics. At the same time, formal ingenuity pulled the tone into something close to horror. Similarly, Spencer was a ghost story more than a Princess Diana puff piece.
I can only imagine his upcoming Maria Callas biopic will follow in its antecessors' footsteps. Todd Haynes has also explored the plasticity of biopics, going so far as to question the form's own legitimacy in exercises like Superstar, Velvet Goldmine, and May December. Not to mention that he's also given us a Bob Dylan movie of sorts with I'm Not There. Though flirting with too many juxtapositions and divagations, the mosaic has so much to say about the figure of Dylan in culture that it's hard to imagine a more conventional piece serving as anything more than an easy cash-in and awards push for its boy wonder star. Then again, surprises can happen, and it's good to keep an open mind.
Apologies for sounding like such a grump on this matter. After all, why let bad cinema take place in one's mind when there's so much good stuff worth celebrating out there? Yes, even biopics. Even musician's biopics released in the past few years. Elvis and Priscilla make for a fascinating diptych of diametrically opposed intentions, though they both circle many of the same figures. The latter even cracked my 2023 top ten. Serebrennikov's Leto was plenty inventive, and Rocketman was quite fun. Lords of Chaos played well as a tragedy, and Aline was a riotous affair. And despite my numerous misigivings, at least Maestro was bursting with ambition at the level of form and extravagant performance.
Better remember those than I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Respect, Stardust, the aforementioned Bohemian Rhapsody and Back to Black. At some point, every film has the potential to be good, expectations be damned.
What about you, dear reader? Are you also tired of music biopics, or can't you get enough of them?
Reader Comments (16)
Agree, but just chiming in here to make sure that, in the context of this article, my personal current frontrunner for Worst Movie Of 2024 is mentioned - BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE. Talk about absolutely misunderstanding the legacy of the great man, bit lso a terrible adherent to musician biopic cliche to boot.
What we need right now is a sequel to WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY.
I think that the music (and to some degree sports) biopics just underline what is 'wrong' with biopics in the first place: When you have someone famed for something, that something (which is drawing the viewers in) has to be displayed somehow. This somehow then takes for granted that the most interesting thing about that person's life and character was the thing that they were famous for, and it might not always be that. And then it becomes grating, as with the new Winehouse pic; they clearly find her a fascinating character, but they have to blend in the music because this is the legitimacy of the film existing in the first place.
So we're often left with boring films that pretend they are interested in interrogating a character while they so easily become elevated lipsync/karaoke pieces. This is why Larrain's and Haynes' pics are so different; they aren't made to satisfy a nosy viewers gossipy approach to the person in question, but more tuned in to said person's character and inner life.
I dislike biopics, the best ones are the ones that do not pretend to give a full account of said artist's complete life and ouevre, but just give us a glimpse, perhaps limited to a certain short period, like "Capote". And I (mostly) enjoy those that take inspiration from a famous person and then just run wild with it, like "Aline" which was unhinged and hilarious and sad.
As long as they get butts the movie theaters, I don’t have a big issue with the biopics. Some I actually wish they would make - thought a Love, Janis movie about Janis Joplin was in the works? Considering their brief dominance on the music charts, a ‘behind the scenes rise and fall’ of Culture Club would be interesting. I wish the Scorsese biopic of Frank Sinatra would materialize, but it better not be 4 hours. Wasn’t there a Michelle Williams/Peggy Lee film in development? I currently not believing Selena Gomez as Linda Ronstadt or have any interest in the upcoming Michael Jackson story. Would prefer a Donna Summers movie or Badfinger.
In general a good biopic for me happens when it isn't a biopic as Spencer or I'm not there mentioned above. Or the ones of the great Derek Jarman.
I don't think thay musical biopics in particular should take a pause. They're job for a lot of people. There's an audience who love them and I can pacifically decide to don't watch them.
I agree that music biopics are often terrible and totally overdone.
However, every other year you have a Rocketman or an Elvis that makes some people say “WOW REVELATORY, SOOOO DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE OTHERS. THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT.”
When really we’re talking about Bohemian Rhapsody but with extended dream sequences and more camera tricks. Let’s make the storytelling less literal and no one will notice it’s the same crap concept! Personally don’t like any of them.
Just announced by Variety:
Ageless Auteurs: Scorsese Eyes Frank Sinatra Biopic With Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.
^^^^Noooooooooooooo
Aretha Franklin, Selena, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Whitney Houston...
A majority of the time, these biopics get it wrong and I’ll watch a scene thinking ‘that’s not how I remember it’ or ‘the Real (fill in artist’s name) did it like this…’. Granted, since there’s no longer MTV or VH1, I’ll take whatever music-themed entertainment is offered. If she wasn’t directing it, I would’ve love to see Madonna’s project of her early days in NYC. It’s also great that four individual Beatle movies have been proposed by Sam Mendes.
Oh I don't know. Coal Miner's Daughter is a pretty straightforward biopic and yet it's one of my favorites, but then again, it's about 45 years old now.
This post needs a bit of a ranking.
Biopics I like,not the best just ones I enjoy,it's not all bad
What's Love Got To Do With It
Florence Foster Jenkins
Coal Miner's Daughter
Bird
Lady Sings The Blues
Sweet Dreams
Love and Mercy
Get On Up
Judy
Shine
Selena
United States vs Billie Holliday
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
La Vie En Rose
Ones I dislike
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Glenn Miller Story
Respect
Rocketman
Nowhere Boy
Walk The Line
In general, I'm okay with the genre. I see it in the same vein that I see a lot of other film genres (action, comic book movies): they're intended to make money at the Box Office, and instead of explosions you get musical numbers. There are limits to the genre, but some films do exceed while most flounder. They're also aimed at a more adult audience.
I also think it's such a classic genre for Hollywood - from Yankee Doddle Dandy to With A Song in My Heart to Ray, that it's always fun when directors play with the format (Aline, I'm Not There) or when they get it right (Nowhere Boy, Walk the Line).
What I bristle at is less about how many they are, but how they're almost always positioned as Oscar plays, quality be damned. And, the Academy typically goes for it. Much like period pieces tend to be treated favorably by the Academy, I think the actors branch is especially favorable to musical biopics.
The problem is also multiplied, because we have a box office devoid of non-action/comic book films, so it leaves the Academy with very little to choose from. I do wish we'd get more adult oriented films/dramas that aren't musical biopics.
While I am looking forward to Sam Mendes' projects on the Beatles told from four different perspectives in four different films. I am not looking forward to any musical bio-pics as Bohemian Rhapsody PISSED me off as a fan of Queen as it at times felt like a cover of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story which got every bio-pic cliche dead-on and then some.
I'm intrigued by the Bob Dylan film with Timothee Chalamet though it's kind of unnecessary as there's already a definitive one in I'm Not There. Love & Mercy, Nowhere Boy, John Carpenter's TV version of the Elvis Presley story, and Priscilla were unconventional but they worked in what they wanted to tell.
I have no interest in any of these other bio-pics as they tend to avoid the rough edges, play it safe, and aim for people to listen to the music on Spotify (fuck Spotify). I have no interest in the Frank Sinatra bio-pic as Scorsese needs to get away from that and he needs to do something much smaller.
I still haven't seen Stardust and hopefully never will as I really hope no one does a bio-pic on David Bowie because it would suck. It is fucking impossible to tell that story right as you need more than one actor to play Bowie. You need a bunch of them to play Bowie in the many different eras he's in.
People also send ridiculous mixed messages about whether a living figure or an estate should be involved in the production of a biopic. Especially when it comes to music. Like, “how dare they try to make a movie about XXX without permission/participation from their family!”
Yet their involvement is what turns these into vanilla hagiographies. A good music biopic should have absolutely nothing to do with the financial and reputational incentives for an artist or their estate. It’s not an interesting point-of-view.
Shifting away from music, could you imagine a Pablo Larrain biopic that got the blessing of the Kennedy or Windsor families? You'd lose everything interesting about his films. Yet when it comes to artist biopics the very online people insist on it, and act indignant when a family is unhappy with the final product.
Travis C—I have not seen that one yet, but everything I've heard about it corroborates your negative judgment. I can't say I'm eager to see it, even if I like Ben-Adir a great deal.
Thomas Frovin -- I tend to agree with your last point. Having a frame for the film rather than attempt to cover a whole life seems like the best approach.
TOM -- To be honest, The Peggy Lee film directed by Todd Haynes is the only one of these projects that excites me.
Gallavich -- Jarman's WITTGENSTEIN is indeed brilliant.
MarcosM Argentina -- As much as I adore Scorsese, this news is disheartening. Oh well, at least he has the Jesus movie first, which seems more promising.
Frank Zappa -- Ditto.
TOM -- I'm curious yet cautious about that Sam Mendes endeavor. We'll see. I wonder which man will be the subject of the first released film.
Dave in Hollywood -- Love Spacek and Jones in that one.
Mr Ripley79 -- Maybe one of these days I should do a sister post to this one, talking about the music biopics I do like. Thanks for sharing your list.
Joe G. -- You're right about these always being positioned as awards players, robbing the limelight, even before anyone has seen them.
thevoid99 -- The perfect Bowie biopic already exists, and it's called VELVET GOLDMINE. Also, don't waste your time on STARDUST.
DK -- Completely agree that the approval of estates and family members is overstated and over-emphasized. The involvement of the remaining Queen members in BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY is one of the reasons it's so bad. And many of the best works within the biopic model owe much of their greatness to a willingness to go against such approvals. It's honestly one of the reasons I love MAY DECEMBER, how it shows the act of reaching out and entangling yourself with the people you're using as dramatic material as a voracious act into itself, destructive.
Lord knows I'm not a fan of biopics, but the thing about Back to Black is: With Lesley Manville, Eddie Marsan and Jack O'Connell in key roles, how could it be totally horrible? (Yes, that is a slightly rhetorical question.)