The Art of the Musician Biopic

March 19, 2021

I’m always on the lookout for new ideas for my blog, usually in the movie or music space, and I like my ideas to connect to something relevant, like a new release or an anniversary of a movie that I really like.  So, when I heard about The United States vs. Billie Holiday, an awards contender released a few weeks ago, I thought it would be a perfect idea to write about my favorite musician biopics.  Then I read some of the initial reviews, which were all along the lines of “great lead performance, pretty average movie.”  As I started thinking about some ideas for a top five list, I realized that over the last thirty years, the films about musicians haven’t exactly been stellar and I wondered why that is the case.  So, instead of just doing a normal top five list this week, instead I’m going to write about why some of these movies work better than others.  And before I dig in, I did end up watching The United States vs. Billie Holiday and generally agree with the sentiment of the reviews that are out there from critics.  Andra Day delivers a very impressive performance as Holliday, but the film itself is kind of all over the place and pretty average.  It reminded me a lot of 2019’s Judy, the movie about Judy Garland starring Renee Zellweger.  Great leading performance (she won the Oscar), but the film was just ok.  Speaking of which, look for Day to be a favorite for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars, after winning the Golden Globe.

Why Is This So Hard?

In looking at the musician biopic, I wonder if our expectations for this kind of movie have changed over the years.  In 1978, The Buddy Holly Story was a big hit with both audiences and critics, leading to an Oscar nomination for Gary Busey.  No, that was not a typo – Gary Busey was nominated for an Oscar.  Two years later, Sissy Spacek would win an Oscar for her wonderful portrayal of Loretta Lynn in The Coal Miner’s Daughter.  A few years later, a different kind of musician biopic would win eight Oscars, but we’ll get to that one a little later.  Since then, the range of quality for musician biopics has been pretty wide, with a few excellent ones, but some that really didn’t work for me.

I imagine when a filmmaker sets out to tell the story of a musician, there are probably some key decisions and debates.  First and foremost, has the story been told before and if so, how do you make it different?  Is the subject compelling enough for the audience (and a studio) to care about?  What if the subject is not a good person?  Will people still want to watch a movie about him / her?  And then, the big decision – documentary or narrative film?  If you are going the documentary route, you have to ensure that you are getting great footage, and that you can present it in such a way that makes it a compelling story that doesn’t just feel like a concert movie.  If you decide on a narrative film, you need the right cast, script and approach to the music (original recordings, re-recordings, or some combination of the two).  I guess when you add all of that up, doing a quality biopic about a musician has to have a lot of things go really well to make it work. 

One Way To Do It – The Focused Story

If you decide to make a narrative film about musicians (or anyone really), the next decision is an important one.  Do you want to make this the full life (cradle to grave) story?  Or do you want to pick a time in the person’s life and depict important events that demonstrate who they were at that time, and how those events were influenced by their childhood and / or how they shaped their later life?  Or, you can pick multiple events and tell a few small stories, like the excellent 2015 Steve Jobs biopic, written by Aaron Sorkin.  There are two examples of musician biopics that I think effectively took this approach of the focused story, instead of trying to do a cradle to grave storyline.

In 2013, Steven Soderbergh directed Behind the Candelabra, the biopic about Liberace, focusing on the last ten years of his life, and his relationship with his assistant and companion, Scott Thorson.  The film was based on Thorson’s book, so the content was naturally confined to a specific time period, but Soderbergh did a smart thing by focusing on only this time in Liberace’s life, and not trying to cram his whole life into two hours.  By including scenes with Liberace’s mother and conversations with Thorson about his childhood, we could understand relevant details about Liberace’s upbringing without wasting time showing it on screen.  It helped that the film included knockout performances by Michael Douglas as Liberace, and Matt Damon as Thorson.  These were extreme departures in character performances for both actors and in the wrong director’s hands, Behind the Candelabra could have come across as a caricature movie, but Soderbergh steered this very well, leading to a strong film that was critically acclaimed, winning eleven Emmys, including one for Douglas for his performance.

Everyone who has ever listened to the Beatles is probably familiar with their story after they gained fame and notoriety in the early 1960s in England.  But, most people don’t know a lot about their early days in Hamburg, Germany while they were cutting their teeth as musicians.  It was also a time when the band included guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe, the best friend of John Lennon from their days in art school together.  This time in the Beatles’ lives was depicted in the 1994 film, Backbeat, which showcased not just the music performances in the basements of German bars, but also the relationships among the band members.  During their time in Germany, they met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, who took early iconic photos of the band, and eventually became engaged to Sutcliffe.  He would end up leaving the band after he lost interest in music, dying of a brain hemorrhage in 1962.  The film is pretty good, depicting a snapshot in time of artists trying to figure out what they wanted to do, and how good they could be.  The filmmakers also got creative for the music, using old cover songs that the Beatles played in Germany, rather than any of their original compositions.  A group of musicians from popular bands at the time (including Soul Asylum, R.E.M. and Nirvana) was assembled to record the songs, and it’s quite effective.

While I liked the creativity in Backbeat, sometimes a filmmaker can outdo themselves in thinking outside the box and it backfires.  I’ll start out by saying that I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of Bob Dylan.  I don’t own any of his music and just never got into him.  That being said, I decided to check out I’m Not There, a 2007 film directed by Todd Haynes, whose other movies I have generally liked.  Now, to be fair, this movie was never described as a biopic of Dylan – instead, it is a series of vignettes about six different characters (none of them named Bob Dylan), who are modeled after different personas that Dylan inhabited during his lifetime.  The movie states at the beginning that it is inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan, and it’s definitely…..a choice.  Now, if I knew a lot about Dylan’s life and was a fanatic, I might have loved I’m Not There and felt bored by a conventional biopic.  Had a similar picture been made about Bruce Springsteen, it might have worked for me.  I just found this one a little too weird for my taste.  One highlight – Cate Blanchett was outstanding in her performance playing the “folk singer turned electric rocker” phase of Dylan’s career.  I’m not giving up on Dylan though – my friend Bill just recommended the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, so we’ll see if that one works for me.    

Don’t…..Just…..Don’t – The Over-The-Top Impression

I have to imagine casting the lead in a musician biopic has to be very stressful.  Get it right (like a few films coming up later), and you’re hailed as a genius and you are rewarded handsomely.  Get it wrong and well….

One of my biggest disappointments from 2019 (and one of the first movies I wrote about in this blog) was Rocketman, the corny film about Elton John.  Similarly, I was confused by the love for Bohemian Rhapsody, the 2018 biopic about the band Queen.  The latter film won the Golden Globe for Best Musical / Comedy and would land star Rami Malek the Oscar for Best Actor.  I found both of these films pretty bland, following the typical narrative you would expect in any episode of VH1’s Behind the Music.  Maybe it’s unfair to both actors, who were playing over the top people in real-life, but I found their performances too cartoonish to be taken seriously.  It’s one thing to get someone who can be believable as the musician, but I really wish the directors had them dial it down a little bit.  While we’re on bad ideas, I read a story this week that Nick Jonas said he would jump at the chance to play Bruce Springsteen in a biographical movie.  I don’t know anything about Jonas other than that he’s a musician.  I couldn’t tell you a song he sings if my life depended on it.  Here’s all I have to say about this prospect – NO.

One last note on Bohemian Rhapsody – it was just announced that the producer of that movie is working on a biopic about the Bee Gees, with Kenneth Brannagh directing.  Deep breath.  Now, after witnessing what Brannagh did to disparage my favorite Agatha Christie film with his terrible remake, and seeing the same producer behind Bohemian Rhapsody involved, I have a strong feeling this will be a disaster.  If you like the Bee Gees, don’t wait for this one – instead, watch the excellent documentary that came out last year, The Bee Gees: How Do You Mend A Broken Heart.

Good Movies, But Hard to Recommend – The Tough Watch

In making a film about a famous musician, inevitably you are going to have the portion of the story arc where the main character faces incredible challenges in his / her life.  Part of the drama and inspiration from a compelling story is seeing someone overcome life’s obstacles and triumph in the face of adversity.  In 1993, Angela Bassett gave an Oscar-nominated incredible performance as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It? The film highlights not only Turner’s rise to fame and success as a singer, but her volatile marriage to Ike Turner, who helped launch her career.  Ike was the worst scum of the Earth, frequently physically and mentally abusing Tina, leading to many years of trauma before she left him behind in both her marriage and career.  While the ending does provide the inspiration of Turner triumphing over adversity, it’s very hard to watch the scenes where she is abused by Ike, played by Laurence Fishburne in an excellent Oscar-nominated performance.  Sometimes a film can be good,  but still tough to watch.

I’m decidedly not in the target demo for our next film, Straight Outta Compton, the 2015 story about the Los Angeles rap group NWA.  That being said, in the interest of expanding my horizons and getting outside my comfort zone, I decided to watch it in advance of this blog post.  It received strong critical reviews, especially for the job by director F. Gary Gray in bringing this story to light, and the lead performances by O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (playing his father, Ice Cube), Corey Hawkins (as Dr. Dre), and Jason Mitchell (as Eazy-E), who played the leaders of the group.  Now, if you were to ask someone knowledgeable about the world of rap and hip-hop, these three artists are considered legends who paved the way for the future of the industry.  I thought the film was very good and the performances were very strong, but this one is a tough watch for two reasons – the language is absolutely brutal, and the way these characters treated the women in their lives was abhorrent.  If you are comfortable in the world of hip-hop and are a frequent listener of this genre, it might not impact your viewing of the movie, but I found it distracting at times.  Hard to recommend this one to the average viewer.

Lacking A Streamlined Story – Great Performances in Average Films

In 1991, I was in college and a fan of the band The Doors, having gotten into them in high school and even read the excellent Jim Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive.  Yes,  Morrison was an acquired taste, and a bit of an asshole, but I liked the music.  Naturally, I was excited to see The Doors, the definitive movie about the band, especially since it was directed by Oliver Stone, one of the great movie directors at the time.  I remember seeing it in the theater and liking it a lot, primarily because of the amazing performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison.  Stone chose to use Kilmer’s singing in the film, and it is downright eerie how much he transformed into Morrison, especially during the musical performances.  Having revisited The Doors recently, I found that it didn’t hold up as well as I remembered.  Kilmer still crushed it, but the movie is kind of bloated.  The story goes all over the place at certain times, reflecting Stone’s desire to imprint a radical style into his films, which we would see later that year with JFK (a movie I still love – I vividly remember being blown away by that movie in the theater with my friend Mike and ready to immediately watch it again).  The Doors is yet another “ok movie with a great performance”, a phenomenon I was reminded of recently when I watched our next musician biopic.

No one is going to deny the brilliant acting ability of the late Chadwick Boseman.  Next month, he will likely win a posthumous Oscar for his role in last year’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.  In 2014, he took on the role of the “hardest working man in show business,” James Brown, in the film Get on Up.  Boseman delivers a very strong performance in this movie, embodying everything about Brown – his mannerisms, his dancing moves, his stage presence and his unfortunate authoritative treatment of the people in his life, especially his band members.  But Get On Up is a mess structurally.  I don’t know why, but the filmmakers chose to jump all over the place in the timeline of Brown’s life, which made it disorienting to the viewer.  If you have to constantly ask yourself “Where are we?” while watching a movie, I think that’s a failing grade for the director.  Once again, a great performance, but not a good film.

Don’t Overthink It – Walk the Line

Now we’re talking.  At the beginning of this post, I asked why it’s so hard to create a great musician biopic.  All you need is a compelling subject, a clear narrative storyline, a director with a vision to bring the musician’s story to life, a perfect script, a killer soundtrack, and the best of the best actors at the top of their game in the lead roles.  Whew, that’s it?  OK, maybe that’s why it’s so hard.  But I’ll tell you what, Walk the Line, the 2005story of Johnny Cash’s rise to fame, his troubled first marriage, his struggle with addiction, and most importantly, his relationship with June Carter Cash, is as good as you’re going to get. 

What makes this film so good in my opinion is the simplicity.  When you have all of the elements in place, you don’t have to overthink it with gimmicks.  You don’t have to jump back and forth in time to manufacture conflict and drama.  You don’t have to worry about your lead actors embarrassing themselves with performances that border on caricature.  This is like coaching the 1998 Chicago Bulls.  Get the ball in Jordan’s hands and get out of the way.  That’s not to say that director James Mangold did nothing – the director is responsible for developing the vision and bringing all aspects of that vision to life on the screen and he did an amazing job. 

With Walk the Line, Mangold had Joaquin Phoenix transforming into Johnny Cash, and Reese Witherspoon portraying the firecracker June Carter Cash in roles that they were made for, performances that are so special that they feel like lightning captured in a bottle.  When they are on stage together, it doesn’t feel like you are watching actors pretending to be musicians – they ARE musicians.  Watch this scene and try to convince me that it’s not magic on the screen.  Much like we saw with Jamie Fox’s transformation into Ray Charles the previous year in Ray, this is another wonderful musician biopic that works across the board.  It feels like we had a small window in time in the early 2000s when we saw flashes of greatness in this genre.  As much as I love Walk the Line, it came in a close second to what I think is the best musician biopic, coming up next.

The Masterpiece – Amadeus

It’s become pretty clear over the years that if you’re going to have a successful movie of any kind, you need a relationship at the heart of it that helps pull the main character in one way or another.  If it’s not a married couple like we had with Walk the Line, the next best thing is two rivals.  But the relationship needs to have depth to it.  You need the tension, the conflict, the laughs, the tears, and in the case of a musician biopic, you need quality music.  How about Mozart?  That’s pretty high quality, right?

In the mid 1980s, it seemed like there was one Oscar-bait type of movie every year that swept the Academy Awards.  I’d be watching the Oscars and groan multiple times.  Really?  The Last Emperor, again?  Another one for Gandhi?  I probably had a similar reaction when Amadeus won eight Oscars in 1984, including Best Picture and Best Director for the legend, Milos Forman.  And I can’t quite remember when I first saw Amadeus, but I know that I have grown to appreciate it over the years.  I recently watched the Directors Cut in preparation for this blog post and boy does it hold up well after almost forty years.  This does not feel like a movie made in 1984.  Now, being set in the late 1700s probably helps, but everything about this film – the script, the performances, the costumes, the music (of course), and the drama – is such a masterpiece.

While you may think that a film about Mozart might be boring, the center of the story is the rivalry between Mozart and fellow composer Antonio Salieri, played by F. Murray Abraham, in a role that won him an Oscar.  Jealous at the ease in which Mozart can compose operas and symphonies, Salieri sets out to sabotage him anyway that he can.  He even becomes furious that Mozart is oblivious to what is happening to him, thinking that Salieri is a friend.  This might be a good place to pause and remind everyone who played Mozart in this film, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Actor – Tom Hulce.  That’s right – Pinto from Animal House was Mozart.  What a world. 

All kidding aside, Hulce was excellent in the movie, playing Mozart as the musical genius who tortured himself to create the perfect compositions, but balanced with the silliness of an immature prodigy boy trapped in a man’s body.  The music sequences are amazing (naturally, I highly recommend the soundtrack), and since I am fascinated with the music creation process, my favorite scene occurs near the end when Salieri helps an ailing Mozart finish a requiem mass.  Mozart is too ill to write down the notes, so he describes it to Salieri, who transcribes it for him.  Forman brings the process to life by letting us hear the individual instruments and voices as Mozart describes them.  First the singers, then the horns, then the strings.  It’s like for a moment, we get to be inside the head of a genius to hear how he thinks.  Here is a video clip if you want to see it for yourself.  That goosebumps moment is an example of what makes this movie so memorable, and why I’m still a sucker for a good musician biopic after all these years.

That’s all for this week.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this journey through a very interesting genre.  I’m taking next week off, but will be back in two weeks for something new.  If you are interested in being notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.