Music biopics: why are they so bad and hated?

Just to spin off the discussion from the Michael Jackson thread, there have been a lot of these recently, mostly terrible. Why are so many of them so bad and why do the few good ones work?

Bohemian Rhapsody: Homophobic plot, directed by a sex offender, worst editing ever, bad.
Elvis: Haven't seen this but some friends say it's good because it goes for extravagant magic realism instead of trying to play it straight
Rocketman: Saw a lot of this on TV, seemed like a very average TV movie kind of thing.
Stardust: Also haven't seen this, the Bowie estate apparently has a blanket ban on biopics and stopped them using his music, very wise.

Here are a load of other recent ones I haven't seen:

A Complete Unknown
Back to Black
Better Man
Bob Marley: One Love
Respect
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

Weird is a parody fyi (expanding on a fake trailer made for Funny Or Die sixteen years ago)

It’s not bad and I didn’t hate it

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

An outlier, because this is not a real biopic and is very funny (on purpose). But I'd argue most are bad and hated because they are just reenactments of well-documented events, minus historical accuracy and plus maudlin sentimentality and other distracting boilerplate bullshit. Which is to say, boring and pointless. Though the Robbie Williams one does replace him with a CGI ape-man, I suppose that is something different. To what end, I'll never know.

the United States vs. Billie Holiday is egregiously historically inaccurate, so, par for the course

How many people saw Better Man thinking it was the Eddie Vedder story?

Answer: No one saw Better Man

anyway, the real answer is: existing IP, nostalgia, the concurrent popularity of jukebox musicals on Broadway and the West End

Another question could be what separates the good biopics from the bad. "Amadeus" benefits from no one knowing what Mozart himself looked or sounded like, etc., but there are other ones that have been good. "Coal Miner's Daughter," "8 Mile" kind of figures it out in a meta sort of way, "La Bamba" is solid, "Control" (or "24 Hour Party People"), "Sid and Nancy" ... these all have qualities beyond merely recreating the recording session for the act's biggest pop hit or some famous concert appearance or whatever.

The four Beatles biopics are coming out next year I think. I will inevitably watch them, but no great expectations there.

Anyone making a music biopic shoild ve forced to watch Walk Hard at least three times

I've heard Better Man isn't bad, but I'm not going to subject myself to the music of Robbie Williams.

I'm Not There and The Hours and Times are great films, and neither was conceived as promotional pieces, which is why most (if not all) of the above was done. The former was a personal project conceived by Todd Haynes - he had to gain Dylan's approval to use his work, but that's the only say Dylan's camp really had on the film. Meanwhile The Hours and Times was a scrappy indie film that had to be done without authorization.

They're not quite great films, but I also enjoy Sid and Nancy and Bird a lot despite their flaws. Round Midnight with Dexter Gordon is sometimes referred to as a biographical film, which fudges the definition of the term. Francis Paudras's memoir is the starting point and makes up much of the framework, but Dexter Gordon's character (essentially the lead character whereas Paudra is a supporting one) is complete fiction, with details drawn from Lester Young and Bud Powell but not in a way that should be mistaken for a biographical depiction. It's an excellent film regardless.

Ray and Cash are both decent iirc

Yeah, the Cash biopic is awesome and is a great example of why Bohemian Rhapsody and A Complete Unknown sucked to me. Walk the Line wasn't really about Johnny Cash, it was about his relationship with June Carter Cash in the shadow of all these things that happen in his career. It's a love story that takes place in a historic timeline based on actual events.

There's a lot of stories that could be told with Michael and it doesn't look they went with any of them

This is predictably terrible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_Is_Mine

I don't remember much about Ray at this late date but I love the scene where an audience member gets super pissed off at him for "stealing gospel music"

I think A Complete Unknown is great, Coal Miner's Daughter and Sweet Dreams really good, and a few others okay--Brian Wilson, NWA, Johnny Cash, etc. If the Alan Freed film American Hot Wax counts, that's also great, and if Grace of My Heart counts for Carole King, also really good. I avoid most of them, and would almost always rather see a documentary, although many of those lapse into the generic. Would love to see a good Cass Elliot biopic.

I liked the Runaways one too

would almost always rather see a documentary

There may be exceptions, but on first glance, I think this tends to reflect which films are actually great films. Dont Look Back and No Direction Home are great but I'm Not There isn't diminished by them, they're all great films I'd want to see again. There's no competing with seeing the Beatles as themselves (or even as fictionalized versions of themselves in A Hard Day's Night, but The Hours and Times doesn't really compete with that even if John Lennon is one of the central characters, it holds up as a great film (technically a speculative one, but in this particular case it's fine).

Beyond those two, there isn't anything else that comes to mind. Sid and Nancy feels diminished when I tune into the Sex Pistols. Only a couple of brief pieces of film exist of Charlie Parker, so it's not like there's a fully-formed image of him burned into the public conscience, but Bird still has annoying bits like the way they inflate the cymbal-tossing story (pre-saging what Whiplash does with it).

*public consciousness

Weird is very funny, much like Walk Hard it was way better than I expected it to be, but yes actual biopics that play it straight tend to suck. Elvis's was good because it was purposely insane

I just saw Saturday night the 2025 film biopic EL Sett about Egyptian singing legend Um Kulthum that was directed by an Egyptian director and is in Arabic with English subtitles. I don't know much of her history but I enjoyed this 2 hrs and 40 minutes melodramatic epic with an actress doing a great job of playing the 20th century diva star Kulthum and it seemed that most of the Filmfest DC audience (many who seemed to understand Arabic) enjoyed it by their cheers near the end and reactions throughout. I haven't googled to see if the accuracy is discussed online or what is left out. I don't even know if there is a documentary on her.

As I noted on the Um Kulthum thread - I liked a scene in the movie where Kulthum goes into a studio to record a record for the first time and her vocal is so powerful (while still tuneful) into the mic that it immediately sends the gauge on the engineer's board way into the red. The engineer asks her to step back a step, and again it goes into the red. After another step, he finally has the band move back and Kulthum move back towards the band and finally the levels stay within a proper range.

Now whether that actually ever happened, I don't know. Over the closing credits the film suddenly cut to what appeared to be actual photos of Kulthum and footage of her state funeral in Egypt that was attended by a massive crowd.

I wrote about the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie. I liked it a lot. (Sofia Coppola's Priscilla is pretty good, too, but I swear she's in some kind of contest with Paul Schrader to see which one of them can make the same movie more times.)

There's a Japanese biopic of avant-garde saxophonist Kaoru Abe in which Keiji Haino plays himself; I'd love to watch it, but I've never been able to find a subtitled version streaming anywhere.

Just remembered another bad one: The Fabulous Dorseys (1947). Tommy & Jimmy play themselves, except they are both in their 40s and not at all convincing as their younger selves, their acting is so bad that they aren't even convincing playing their own story. The small upside is that you get real concert performances from their bands, but both bands are very much on the slide by 1947, so even that's far from peak. Typical "came across it on Talking Pictures on afternoon" kind of film.

Haven't seen it but the Bobby Darin bipoic with Kevin Spacey in the lead role, despite being eight years older than Darin was when he died, didn't seem like a great idea.

I'd be surprised if a biopic managed to come anywhere close to Todd Haynes' VU documentary. I also loved the PBS Miles Davis documentary enough (not everyone did) that I don't have any desire to see the Don Cheadle film.

Jimi: All is By My Side with André 3000 wasn't great, and had some awkwardnesses, but it captured a certain melancholy that isn't the most public side of the Hendrix mythology.

I wish there was a more expansive Miles Davis documentary, but it would be hard to compete with his memoir - there's quite a bit like his unflattering depiction of Charlie Parker that would probably get watered down, especially if it was a film done for PBS.

it would be hard to compete with his memoir

tbf it's hard to compete with Szwed's bio too! what a book.

No-one's mentioned Control yet? one of my favourite music biopics, with an extraordinary central performance by Sam Riley as Ian Curtis.

the Cheadle film is almost worth it for his performance, it's almost sad that that perfect piece of casting is wasted on a not-great script -- "almost" because I have loathed music biopics for a long time, though I do like a couple of the praised ones mentioned (e.g., Coal Miner's Daughter). someone should figure out a way to use him as Miles again like Val Kilmer in True Romance.

speaking of Val, I remember thinking The Doors was, let's say, interesting though I am not eager to revisit that opinion

Oh sorry, Josh did mention it xp

haha yeah The Doors is a hot mess but "bad and hated" is a stretch

(xp)

I still love The Glenn Miller Story even though it is somewhat Disney-fied.

xp lol yeah my primary residual sense is that it is An Oliver Stone Film, which is a different category

I think the answer is that a good biopic has to be able to stand on its own artistically as a film first and foremost - acting, script/story, direction, etc. - which I suppose is, ironically enough, pretty rockist. But a lot of these biopics, if you took out all the familiar behind the music/best of beats, there's just nothing there.

I didn't see the Springsteen one and don't plan to, but I have read the book, and I do think it was intriguing that it focuses on this really specific non-crowd pleaser slice of his life (the making of "Nebraska" and his depression). Though I suppose I am also intrigued at how the film apparently still falls into all the familiar biopic cliches *despite* being on paper a more unconventional biopic.

I generally liked A Complete Unknown, but I also considered how much more interested I might have been had it been about Pete Seeger, with Bob as a supporting character/cameo, than as yet another take on the familiar Dylan creation myth, as fine as that take was.

I keep typing and deleting and typing and deleting. Basically: biopics are always gonna be bad because a musician's life is never as big-screen interesting as one would think, but it's far-more interesting than one would ever expect, just in subtle ways. Everybody should watch "Step Across The Border". I'm gonna watch it again tonight. Not a biopic but it's something else and something better.

I liked "A Complete Unknown" only because I'm anti-Chalamet and it's thrilling to see an actor you dislike turn in a fantastic performance. I was tepid on "Last Days" when I watched it because I like Van Sant but don't care about Cobain, but in retrospect, that's a pretty good biopic. I remember liking "Bird" when I saw it but that was a long time ago.

I always forget that "Funny Girl" is technically a biopic, my brain thinks that the movie is just about Streisand herself. Maybe my brain is right! I love that movie.

haven't seen any of this recent rash of biopics and have no interest to. i also prefer documentaries and concert films but i guess those don't do the kinds of numbers that these biopics sometimes do?

i hate em because i'd rather listen to the music - a contemplative and spacious experience - instead of watching a biography that tries to locate the essence of the music in someone's life story. bios can be interesting sure but the music bios always try to hitch a plot with ups and downs to the brilliance of the music and i find that really false and wildly obnoxious for being so omnipresent. the only music-related films i really like are basically concert films.

I don't think music biopics suck on some level that's specific to the musicness, biopics in general are just a wretched genre* so why should them being about a musician change that?

* Yes you can list some exceptions, so can I, but consider: how many biopics do you think are good compared to literally any other genre?

Right--I think of something like A Beautiful Mind, which took out the best part of an interesting book: all the math.

a musician's life is never as big-screen interesting as one would think,

Same goes for writers. Queer worked b/c we hardly if ever saw William Burroughs writing.

biopics do tend towards being dire in general, music biopics seem to be particularly so due to how often they're brand management exercises

XP upthread to Unperson - You can grab Endless Waltz from Archive.org - the MKV file has English subs, and it is a decent rip.

https://archive.org/details/endless.-waltz.-1995

I came up with a list a few years ago:

1. Sid And Nancy (1986)
2. The Buddy Holly Story (1978)
3. Bound for Glory (1976)
4. Lady Sings the Blues (1972)
5. The Doors (1991)
6. Ray (2004)
7. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
8. Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)
9. 24 Hour Party People (2002)
10. Nowhere Boy (2009)
11. Velvet Goldmine (1998)
12. Sweet Dreams (1985)
13. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1994)
14. Bird (1988)

Queer worked b/c we hardly if ever saw William Burroughs writing.

Naked Lunch, on the other hand...

He writes CIA reports! With the aid of Mugwump jism. I can relate.

thanks Alfred for the 32 Short Films…love—I saw it once on TV about a year after it came out and is one of those films that is indelibly imprinted on me

I eventually realized Gould isn’t the end-all of Bach interpreters but still love the guy

Bohemian Rhapsody is so unutterably terrible for so many reasons that any biopic I've seen since I've been fairer on. Rocketman I quite enjoyed which is probably because I'm less of an Elton fan and less invested in his story than Queen's, and its central crux of the necessity for emotional support is a rather stronger one, so I can forgive when a few similar problems arise (funny how both films depict the recording of The Disco Album sans usual colleagues - Mr. Bad Guy and Victim of Love - as where it all goes wrong for our stadium rock heroes). Plus it's a musical as is Better Man, which also has the magic realism of him being an ape so I'd assume no one is going to leave that thinking any of its fiction is for real.

Freddie Mercury's problem, according to Bohemian Rhapsody, is that his wandering eye for man-flesh doomed him and the band.

Tommy & Jimmy play themselves, except they are both in their 40s and not at all convincing as their younger selves, their acting is so bad that they aren't even convincing playing their own story

Madness were young enough to be convincing as their younger selves, but Take It Or Leave It doesn’t even have enough of a story for anyone to play themselves badly. Band lineup changes a lot while they write songs, then they play a packed pub gig with the lineup who became successful.

Kneecap, on the other hand, are all incredible playing the members of Kneecap in the Kneecap biopic, Kneecap.

(which has the exact same plot as the Madness one but bothers to make it a story, by giving the individual and collective members each reasons to want to become good enough that they’re worth hearing.)

Listen fellas, I'm sorry for being so rude to you and splitting our band Queen up, even though we haven't split and we've been touring for a year and we're in great live shape, and I'm sorry for going off and having gay sex with men, unlike you with your straight sex with women which is of course the right kind of promiscuity - looking at you in particular Roger, who always has a woman or two on your arm(s) and (along with wisecrack Brian) must be shown to be as equally witty as I am throughout this film as consultants thereof - but I've been diagnosed with AIDS now, even though I haven't and won't be until 1987 or so, so let's have a group hug and go and play Live Aid as our final triumph.

And then there is the issue of chronology bullshit (We Will Rock You written in 1981 etc.) taking you out of the film, and how the diagnosis scene is followed by Freddie walking down a quiet, deserted doctor's surgery - lit atmospherically dimly because no one has electricity in 1985 - except for one person, a Freddie fan, who clocks him as he passes and meekly goes 'aye-oh', 20 seconds that are so The Comic Strip Presents The Strike but REAL I felt really quite depressed. I had eye surgery a few weeks later and as the surgeon was scratching my eye away he made conversation about Bo Rhap and how he "never realised all those things about Queen". Well quite!

Alfred is good at lists and keeping track of Oscar winners so I will defer to him, but Rami Malek has to be up there on the list of worst actors who won an Oscar

I missed a lot of stuff you've been talking about because I turned it off after 20 minutes or so, just abysmal

Alfred is good at lists and keeping track of Oscar winners so I will defer to him, but Rami Malek has to be up there on the list of worst actors who won an Oscar

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

lol didn't you mean "and" instead of "But"

The James Brown one was very forgettable.

In high school I liked Bird, and The Doors, I don't really want to re-watch and find out if they still hold up though (actually that's a lie, I would totally watch The Doors).

The Doors is good because it's unintentionally (?) quite silly

Haven't yet seen Take It or Leave It but I've owned the VHS of it for about 16 years now and I don't know why.

I think the late 00s/early 10s was a relatively good time for UK music biopics at least if Good Vibrations and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Telstar count for much, although the latter is a bit annoying mostly because every now and then it needs to insert a "ha the Beatles are rubbish they'll never catch on!" or "I hate you Joe Meek I'm joining this new band called the Kinks instead!" to keep the uninitiated onboard.

xpost lol yes

No movie with the line "Jim Morrison, you have ruined Thanksgiving!" can be all bad.

Yeah, Coal Miner’s Daughter really is pretty great.

A Better Man was... actually more worthwhile than I was anticipating. I'm even less well-informed about Williams' life than Loretta Lynn's but I did enjoy that he seemingly gave his blessing to being portrayed as, on balance, a bit of a dickhead!

The Doors is so good, perfect match of subject matter and director

I disliked Chalamet’s Dylan because it struck me as one note. Dylan could be goody and silly and he contains multitudes and Chalamet stuck with brooding with an occasional smile.

2. The Buddy Holly Story (1978)

Yes! Granted I haven't seen this in years, but the movie made me a huge Buddy Holly fan when I was 10 or so. Gary Busey's really good! I also really like the Glenn Gould movie. I love Sid and Nancy but not so much as a biopic, more as kind of a dream.

It's not a music biopic, but I happened to catch most of Basquiat again the other week and it's not great but Jeffrey Wright is so good.

Oh also, the BEST music biopic is Topsy-Turvy.

Forgot about that one - yes, great film by a great director and one of his very best.

XP upthread to Unperson - You can grab Endless Waltz from Archive.org - the MKV file has English subs, and it is a decent rip.

https://archive.org/details/endless.-waltz.-1995

Thread needs Ken Russell.

Let's not forget Ed Harris as Beethoven in a film I sadly haven't seen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copying_Beethoven

Bloody hell there's a Hildegard of Bingen biopic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_(2009_film)

Oh yeah, Tom D OTM! I've never been able to get through Lisztomania but every other Russell composer film I've seen is... well, I'm yet to regret watching any of the others, at the very least lol.

ctrl+f 'party monster'

you've screwed this up, chums!

ctrl+ ‘party monster’

you’ve screwed this up, LJ!

let macaulay culk, bitch

Ken Russel's Delius Song Of Summer is peak music biopic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy8Crdh3Mh8

you have two main phases of Ken does composers though; the BBC ones which tend to be pretty mild but very beautiful (saying that, the actual fact of him using humans to pretend to be other existing real humans was controversial and disliked by a lot of people at the time!) - and then the post "Women In Love" blank cheque composer films, where his full phallic id is released and you get some real epic shit that is almost always down to how he thought/dreamed/imagined these composers might have been, but very little in terms of accuracy/normality.

Love & Mercy has a lot of ridiculous shit in it iirc, but the scene where Wilson is directing the recording of Pet Sounds in the studio is really wonderful.

Didn't know about the Kaoru Abe biopic Unperson mentioned above - sounds wild!

Like most music nerds, I have a love-hate relationship with biopics. I remember watching a 90s Beach Boys miniseries, shown on UK TV one Easter as a 3 hour movie. Terrible, with hilarious fake beards and evil psychedelic hipsters offering Brian drugs etc. But there's a scene where it cuts to a lovelorn Brian singing Let The Wind Blow at the piano which absolutely got me.

Of recent ones I've seen, the Amy Winehouse one is absolute garbage, as offensive as Bohemian Rhapsody in its way. I wouldn't say I'm a megafan, but I like her music and find her an interesting character. But this reduces her to a tragic fuck up, with very little focus on her artistry. One bit that really stuck in the craw is where she meets her future husband and claims she doesn't know who the Shangri Las are - total sexist bullshit.

The Springsteen one isn't great but there's something oddly admirable about its dour, depressive mood. You get a big triumphant concert performance at the start, then it's pretty downbeat, with even the typical biopic beats - battles with clueless record execs, troubled relationships etc - played low key. I did enjoy the nerdy stuff about the recording of Nebraska, Echoplex and tape transfers et al, plus it's fun to see Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Brooklyn improv fame playing Max Weinberg.

A big problem with a lot of the biopics above - especially if they're big studio films - is that they basically dumb down and oversimplify the story, undermining the biggest strength of re-telling a real-life story (exploring the complexities and ambiguities of real-life) and reframe everything within hoary movie tropes. It's come to the point where it's become synonymous with "biopics," a big reason why the genre has such a dubious reputation, but it's telling that so many of the greatest films are biographical films that are rarely referred to as "biopics." The Passion of Joan of Arc, Raging Bull, Andrei Rublev, Lola Montès, The Enchanted Desna, The Color of Pomegranates, etc.

*It's come to the point where the movie tropes themselves are synonymous with "biopics"

Personally I would watch the hell out of a Townes Van Zandt or GG Allin biopic, I'm just not sure there's a market for films like that

Ditto Henry Flynt.

would watch

I think the fundamental problem is that musicians generally aren't interesting people. They're like Formula One drivers. They do an interesting job, in an interesting field, but the reality of being a professional musician is mostly logistics, and writing music is about as cinematic as writing in general. I mean, a biopic of Fatboy Slim's career in the 1990s would mostly consist of him hunched over an Akai S1100, turning the little jogwheel, so that instead of saying NEW_PROGRAM13 the screen says FNKLOOP14. "Why did I remix 'Brimful of Asha'? They paid me a lot of money. Then I went out with Sara Cox. When I came back I worked out a touring deal with my agent then had a go installing some ASIO drivers."

I mean, Jimi Hendrix is iconic, but he doesn't seem to have led a particularly interesting life. I can understand making a film about the impact he had on the film-maker, or the impact he had on society, but a film about his life would be boring. Ditto John Coltrane. Even Gary Numan - even Gary Numan! - spends most of his time relaxing now that he's retired from flying. If you can't make Gary Numan's life interesting, what's the point of cinema? What's the point of art at all? It doesn't get results.

Ken Morse or Ken Burns might be able to make the process of writing music interesting. Imagine a two-dimensional photograph of Thom Yorke, in black and white, with the camera panning over it and then zooming in on his face. Suddenly a caption appears. FASTER JONNY. That's cinema. But can you imagine live action footage of Thom Yorke? Can you imagine listening to him speak? It would be a load of boring nonsense about his influences and his inspiration etc. There wouldn't be any drama.

Even a film about a band with a long and eventful history, such as The Rolling Stones, wouldn't really be a story. It would just be a series of events. That might work as a depiction of how a bunch of mates turned into a bunch of businessmen who hated each other, but from what I've read The Rolling Stones were like that even in the 1960s. The breakdown of the Jagger / Richards relationship isn't tragic because they never really had one.

I mean, the best films have car crashes, or robots, or people in spandex leaping through the air, punching each other. Do you remember Eight Legged Freaks. Now that was a film. That was cinema. Giant spiders. Scarlett Johansson in an early role. A scene with a spider fighting a cat. Can you imagine a biopic of Duane Allman that has a scene where a spider fights a cat? No, not unless it leans heavily into the drug aspect.

But then again Texas has giant insects, so perhaps it's not as ludicrous as it seems. Chu-pu-cabras. That's what they call them. They're haunted. Technically Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash, which is cinematic, but rock star car crash deaths have a "dog bites man" quality. A drug fiend dying in a car crash isn't cinematic because it's what you'd normally expect. It would be surprising if he actually managed to negotiate a series of complex interchanges and off-ramps without incident. But that wouldn't be very cinematic.

How can a film make me care about Duane Allman? I can't help but notice that Wikipedia has an entire article, "death of Gram Parsons", which actually puts me off Gram Parsons because the existence of a dedicated "death of Gram Parsons" article exudes powerful Boomer energy. How can a film make me care about Gram Parsons?

Tetsuo Inoue, there's a potentially interesting film. A man who existed, then ceased to exist, who worked in a mileu where artists often use pseudonyms, which raises the possibility that he didn't ever exist, and yet he apparently did. Imagine a man who didn't exist. Oh, that poor donkey. I care about the donkey. Balthazar. That's the power of cinema. Imagine if the donkey played guitar.

Even you have to admit that a Wesley Willis biopic would have something going for it.

GG Allin is so boring

i recall liking The Runaways -- the movie

I mean, Jimi Hendrix is iconic, but he doesn't seem to have led a particularly interesting life.

Errr, I think he did actually.

I think the fundamental problem is that musicians generally aren't interesting people. They're like Formula One drivers.

I interviewed a Korean gayageum player today (for DownBeat; she plays it in a free jazz context and Tyshawn Sorey is in her band) and she made exactly this comparison.

The breakdown of the Jagger / Richards relationship isn't tragic because they never really had one.

I disagree! On the facts. And I'd watch a Stones movie if it concentrated on this sliver of data.

I think the fundamental problem is that musicians generally aren't interesting people. They're like Formula One drivers.

And when they are interesting, there's usually enough interesting footage of them that makes a dramatized version superfluous and inferior. I don't need to reiterate why Bohemian Rhapsody is garbage, but why the hell would you even bother when you can queue up 90 minutes of Queen footage (including Live Aid) and watch the real thing.

Since you mentioned Formula 1, Asif Kapadia's 2010 documentary on Ayrton Senna is one of the most gripping documentaries I've ever seen. I've watched it with folks who never thought once about F1 and came away with similar thoughts - it's *that* good. Kapadia also directed the 2015 documentary about Amy Winehouse that's just as good. There's zero reason to watch Back to Black or (deity forbid) the six-episode Netflix series on Senna.

Anyway, a couple of searches:
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. It's not a great movie, but it's not terrible either. Gainsbourg is a non-stop provocateur, the movie itself didn't need to try so hard to be as provocative.

Backbeat. Once I forgot that I was watching a movie about The Beatles, it's pretty good!

Destroy:
Beautiful Rebel. Disconnected mess of a movie about Gianna Nannini. I wasn't familiar with her story at all, but I feel like I came away knowing less.

Thumbs up for Todd Haynes' 1988 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Thumbs down for the similarly-titled 1989 TV schlocker The Karen Carpenter Story.

why are any of you engaging with "Ashley"'s nonsense, good lord

absolute worst current poster

or sock

worse than Poopy

Big Gram Parsons fan, are ya, sleeve?

Can you imagine a biopic of Duane Allman that has a scene where a spider fights a cat? No, not unless it leans heavily into the drug aspect.

idk man i lol'd

and "death of Gram Parsons" does exude boomer energy. i consider mr. pomeroy a somewhat entertaining unreliable narrator with an occasional dip into slightly distasteful humor ala a british sitcom rerun ca. 1996. i might watch a few minutes of his biopic if it ever shows up on a late night pbs block.

mr. pomeroy

Wait, is Ashley supposed to be presenting as male? I had been reading those posts as coming from a snippy teenage girl.

i'm pretty sure ashley is an older british guy but i have no real evidence

Backbeat. Once I forgot that I was watching a movie about The Beatles, it's pretty good!

Yeah, it helps that it's mostly the Stu Sutcliffe story.

XXXP to jamiesummerz. YES! Agreed. Funnily enough Song Of Summer was the first Russell film that piqued my interest some decades ago. I've seen too little evidence of folks having seen that one, let alone enthusiasm for it!

I watched The Debussy Film (1965) on Youtube last night, having been reminded of Russell. A groovy BBC film-within-a-film thing which kinda presages later impressionistic "epic shit". (Indeed it is wisely sub-titled *Impressions* of the French composer.) Fun realisation: Oliver Reed doesn't actually look entirely unlike Debussy if you squint a bit.

Thumbs up for Todd Haynes' 1988 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

YES, forgot about this. FYI it’s been officially restored and looks great, but if you want to see it, be on the look out for any “surprise” or “secret” screening presented by Todd Haynes because it’s 99% likely it’s this, they just can’t say it is. (He’s done this every so often in NYC and I think LA so those cities are most likely to have these screenings.)

I'd like to see a good print of it, but I also enjoy the low-quality pirate DVD I have of it for the samizdat vibe.

i think Ashley is dryly funny and he usually has a point there

no mystery why these shitty pointless movies suck, in fact i am at a loss as to why these films aren't universally hated.. and are even "appreciated" and "enjoyed" by some. cringe is not a positive emotion for me.

you get so much more out of reading a book. more details, more truth, the ability to pause and contemplate.. i read trouble boys last year, the replacements movie is going to suck so hard.. can't wait for the scene where they go back to twintone to steal the tapes! huhuhuhuh!!

and i'm not being all "eat your vegetables" wrt reading. reading is fun, it's for everyone, it's not hard, books entertain you for longer durations than movies.

end rant

i think Ashley is dryly funny and he usually has a point there

There's occasionally a point in the first or second paragraphs, even if it's invariably wrong, I don't bother reading after that.

I've probably blabbed on about this before on ILM, and it is adjacent to the thread - as the band is fictitious, of course - but 'That Thing You Do!' - being a 90s feel-good movie - is somewhat overlooked. However, it is greatly enjoyable. The period details and little nods to music history are rich.

Ashley remains an A+ quality poster merely for having a voice, being funny 50.1% of the time is an added bonus

that said

I mean, a biopic of Fatboy Slim's career in the 1990s would mostly consist of him hunched over an Akai S1100, turning the little jogwheel, so that instead of saying NEW_PR

absolute nonsense, that’s what he had Simon Thornton for

Shout out for St. Louis Blues (1956), starring Nat King Cole as W.C. Handy.

I think it has some kinship with _Ray_ in terms of the actor's charisma melding with the subject's charisma.

You cannot say that of Cary Grant portraying Cole Porter in the embarrassing Night and Day (1946).

Walk Hard is fun but only makes sense if you had seen Ray and the other biopics it references. It's the Galaxy Quest of music movies.

Every person is fundamentally interesting, it is the artist's job to zero in on what is interesting about them.

I want to talk about a phenomenon in music biopics _and_ music documentaries ("Behind the Music" etc.) that I am especially alert to: the relative weight given to "struggling in obscurity" vs. "meteoric rise to fame."

Sometimes the steps between "getting booed in a dive bar" and "discovered by a major label" are handled by just a montage, and I feel this does an injustice to the struggle of an artist paying dues - busking, playing clubs, getting a following, touring, opening for others, etc.

Every biographical work about a famous person has to handle this, and some handle it better than others. It's boring to fixate kn but I am disappointed when the movie just fast-forwards to stardom.

Compare how much time gets spent on "nightmare descent into drugs/booze/groupies" and then "rehab and clarity through the love of a good woman."

If I were King of the Movies I would require 20% fewer "detox / withdrawal / rehab / love of a good woman" sequences and 20% more "paying your dues / working your way up in the clubs" sequences. That's a more inspiring style anyway.

I will accept (once per movie) a montage that shows an artist moving up through shots of Billboard listings. But only once.

Musicians are indeed fundamentally interesting. I think that what most people mean is that outside of the spectacle of shows and occasional rock 'n roll antics etc, their day-to-day lives are not particularly eventful: i.e. they're working on their music, travelling to play gigs, negotiating contracts etc. And while it's fascinating to hear musicians talk about their process, their aesthetic values etc, translating that into compelling drama is another thing. Not that filmmakers shouldn't try.

I do think you could make a great movie along the lines of Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy about Peter Brotzmann and Han Bennink's trip to the Black Forest to record Schwartzwaldfahrt. 90 minutes of them improvising to birdsong and the wind through the trees, drinking, smoking and gruffly philosophising.

All of the silliest, sappiest clichés of musical biography have been written by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig into the script. And Richard Thorpe has directed in a comparably mawkish, bathetic style. Caruso, according to this picture, was just a boyish, lighthearted troubadour who lost that heart the very first day that he arrived in romantic New York.

That's biopic-hater Bosley Crowther in 1951 writing about The Great Caruso starring Mario Lanza, a successful film that nonetheless led to the Caruso family in Italy suing MGM over inaccuracies. It's too bad there aren't a lot of biopic lawsuits these days, but I guess it's unlikely since they're all authorized now.

In terms of the classics of the genre, The Eddy Duchin Story is highly fictionalized but not that bad. Starring Tyrone Power and the still-living Kim Novak.

I will accept (once per movie) a montage that shows an artist moving up through shots of Billboard listings. But only once.

Can it also include the later shot where it starts at #1, but it's Andy Gibb or somebody, and we have to zoom all the way back down to #39 to find the failing rock star's latest single?

Klaus Kinski's sole directing credit, 1989's Paganini, looks like it out-Russells Ken R himself but is sadly only on YouTube with Portugese subs. There does seem to be an Italian film from the same year called Paganini Horror you can watch dubbed, but it's about a female rock band accidentally raising a demonic Paganini from the dead. So not really a biopic.

I didn't see the Morrissey pic, but our Alice did and said it was very dull, and that focusses on the non-famous times of Moz.

On the other hand, I did see the latino based "Is It Really So Strange" and it's very silly, but funny and daft but great in the end. Well, I thought so, but that's not a biopic...

"A Complete Unknown" was fine, but I did want to play "Dont Look Back" to my wife just to show her 1) how amazingly similar Albert Grossman was to the portrayal, and 2) Dylan had more than just the one mood, but the one mood portrayed was very well done.

He’s faded from the zeitgeist so it will never happen, but a good Ray type movie could be made about Roy Orbison. Plenty of tragedy, ups and downs, and he’s sort of a blank as far as his image goes. A good actor would have a lot of room to move.

Wasn’t there a Patsy Cline move?

I heard that John Carpenter’s Elvis movie was good, but I haven’t seen it.

There have been various Patsy movies but the one with Jessica Lange is the standard one.

IIRC the soundtrack has "I Fall to Pieces" playing over the plane crash, which amused me greatly as a child.

That Lange-Patsy biopic is terrific -- it made my list. Lange and Ed Harris are having a great time.

I've always wondered about the movie where George Hamilton plays Hank Williams.

The breakdown of the Jagger / Richards relationship isn't tragic because they never really had one.

I disagree! On the facts. And I'd watch a Stones movie if it concentrated on this sliver of data.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 5:45 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

what if they did it like the Springsteen one but it was just the making of Dirty Work?

I heard that John Carpenter’s Elvis movie was good, but I haven’t seen it.

I should have put that on the search list. It's great!

In terms of the classics of the genre, The Eddy Duchin Story is highly fictionalized but not that bad. Starring Tyrone Power and the still-living Kim Novak.

It’s a pretty good film. The story is fine and the acting is solid, but it’s a beautifully directed film that’s strikingly composed in quite a few scenes (the musical numbers in particular but also Novak’s final scene and probably many others).

what if they did it like the Springsteen one but it was just the making of Dirty Work?

That could be a really good movie, honestly. Aging band needs to make a new album because the last one didn't really sell, the singer and guitarist hate each other (and are writing songs about how much they hate each other), the producer wants to make it sound like Today even though the band's fan base wants them to sound like they did 15 or even 20 years earlier... there's a ton to work with there.

what if they did it like the Springsteen one but it was just the making of Dirty Work?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, April 29, 2026

This is what the gay thread is for, sailor.

I understand what Josefa meant by "the still-living Kim Novak." But I confess on first reading I saw it as "still alive when they made the movie," which is be pretty sensible casting decision imo.

'That Thing You Do!' - being a 90s feel-good movie - is somewhat overlooked

Yeah there's a separate genre of movies about fictional artists set in specific eras and scenes that are often more entertaining than biopics. Almost Famous (where the only "real" characters are music critics lol), Velvet Goldmine, Grace of My Heart all come to mind.

Frank!

the greatest moment of any music biopic, or any movie for that matter, is the part in Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo's biopic where you help get her car fixed

https://www.gofundme.com/f/aid-for-chriss-car-repair-and-living-expenses

incredibly stirring, ten stars, chef's kiss

*their, sorry, whoops

This might be peak biopic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPNWd_Hb0Lw

Straub Huillet's The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach is the best one

Did think of that earlier!

after further thought I have decided that 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould is the best example of this genre

Man, maybe one day I'll pull this one up on Tubi, but until then, there's too many places I've got to see.

https://i.ibb.co/Y47wBYzX/81-YWZVv-Hck-L-SL1500.jpg

It does irk me that the movie's title really is Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash.

https://i.ibb.co/HDFggzfM/Screen-Shot-2026-04-29-at-7-02-19-PM.png
https://i.ibb.co/4RDC9yhN/Screen-Shot-2026-04-29-at-7-02-43-PM.png
https://i.ibb.co/pBjVdQ1c/Screen-Shot-2026-04-29-at-7-03-23-PM.png
https://i.ibb.co/ns1jRfqJ/Screen-Shot-2026-04-29-at-7-03-57-PM.png

I'm pretty sure the M*A*S*H* helicopter flew over that mountain back there.

lol all the dead Skynyrd dudes on the poster look like the same actor

and they clearly did not have a Cool Hats budget

It's all done like a TikTok where the same person is playing all the roles.

not wearing a hat
- "Hey, are you sitting up here in the front near the cockpit?"

wearing a hat
- "Uh, yeah? I want to be next to the 8-track player."

not wearing a hat
- "OK. That's cool. I'll go sit in the back then."

My favourite weird bit in a cheap made-for-TV biopic is the introduction of Todd Rundgren in the Meatloaf movie, where we meet him imitating Nixon in front of the studio mixing board as if it was something he did every day for years instead of a pose for the gatefold of Something/Anything.

"song sung blue" was well done, especially in the early scenes where hugh jackman and kate hudson's characters are figuring out how to harmonize with each other. they capture something real about the collaborative process and they let it play out without rushing it.

Oh also, the BEST music biopic is Topsy-Turvy

yes truly great

An evergreen:

That reminds me of my favorite overheard record store owner humor:

Customer: [Discussing how the Bohemian Rhapsody movie pushed up the price of Queen records.]
Owner: When the Mantovani movie comes out, I'm going to make a killing.

― perhaps I myself was the object of my search (PBKR), Wednesday, March 10, 2021 8:19 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I thought A Complete Unknown was quite good, but haven't liked many recent biopics. I did think Rocketman was pretty solid, because at least it experimented with a weird narrative approach. I think if that director had been able to actually go back and re-do the Queen movie that might have been good if done in a similar manner.

Also put me down at pro-Ashley Pomeroy

movies about fictional artists set in specific eras

I'd include Last Days in that list rather than as a "Cobain biopic".

The ultimate hair-metal movie could come about if someone options Star, Pamela Anderson's roman à clef about a young actress's affairs with rockers Michael Stetson and Jimi Deed.

I like how both Straight Outta Compton and Bob Marley: One Love have this one prominent character (Dr. Dre and Rita) who is the voice of reason throughout the whole thing, if the rest of the cast had just listened to them none of all the bad shit would have escalated. And once the credits roll up we see, inevitably, "produced by Dr. Dre/Rita Marley".

Oh also, the BEST music biopic is Topsy-Turvy

Stellar, BTW. Still pleased I saw it on its theatrical run.

It's just such a beautiful, poignant, patient take on the let's-put-on-a-show template. Everyone is so good.

And I appreciate how the ending isn't An Ending. It's just the departure point from their (represented) lives intersecting with ours, briefly.

Yeah everything about it is just so good, it's great on the process and the fraught relationships between G&S and then their whole crew of regulars, and also sort of a wondrous evocation of the period. Plus you get to see a significant chunk of the actual show. Really one of my favorite movies.

And a nice Shirley Henderson role, for those of us in the small-but-devoted Shirley Henderson fan club. (We're watching Dept Q, was happy to see her there.)

yall just rolled right past pplains’ weirdo Skynyrd biopic huh

his one prominent character (Dr. Dre and Rita) who is the voice of reason throughout the whole thing, if the rest of the cast had just listened to them none of all the bad shit would have escalated

This was Artimus Pyle in the Skynyrd movie.

Still losing it at it being called STREET SURVIVORS. Because, you know, they weren't SKY SURVIVORS, now were they?

VG, everyone's forgiven for not diving in on such a niche genre.

Would be interested in seeing either Midnight Rider: The True Story of the Duane Allman Motorcycle Crash or Metal Guru: The True Story of the Marc Bolan Automobile Crash.

Also interested in the Hendrix movie starring Avon Barksdale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btFJocGs740

Flying High Again: The Story of the Randy Rhoads plane crash

And a nice Shirley Henderson role, for those of us in the small-but-devoted Shirley Henderson fan club. (We're watching Dept Q, was happy to see her there.)

Ooh, thanks for the tip.

I want to give a shout out to The Dirt, the Motley Crue biopic, just hilariously goofy b-movie sleaze, the movie that band deserved. I had a blast with it. Some absolutely absurd scenes, you'll get the idea by 5 minutes into it.

Shirley Henderson

Very, very briefly confused her with Shirley Hemphill.

i have yet to dive into this but i hear from ilx's metal crew that the 3 hour long cannibal corpse documentary is worth a watch for fans. not a biopic obv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGPot3rP53o

that Motley Crue movie is a fun hatewatch, for sure. the wigs are especially terrible.
also i object to the fact that modern-day Vince didn’t get winded performing (or getting to the stage) even once!

Elvis: Haven't seen this but some friends say it's good because it goes for extravagant magic realism instead of trying to play it straight

― Throw It Down Binman (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, April 27, 2026 11:44 AM

the 1979 john carpenter "elvis" tv miniseries starring kurt russell is good. well, at least it has prominently featured pinball machines, which is good enough.

I mean, the best films have car crashes, or robots, or people in spandex leaping through the air, punching each other. Do you remember Eight Legged Freaks. Now that was a film. That was cinema. Giant spiders. Scarlett Johansson in an early role. A scene with a spider fighting a cat. Can you imagine a biopic of Duane Allman that has a scene where a spider fights a cat? No, not unless it leans heavily into the drug aspect.

no offense but after what happened the _last_ time they tried to make a duane allman biopic they had fucking better not ever try again

GG Allin is so boring

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

idk, i rather liked the dicksucking

ashley pomeroy's posts read like he's writing a column for the austin chronicle in the 1990s

you decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing

If you want some terrible hatewatching. Also includes a car crash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gId_BrymXgA

(Anthony Michael Hall as Mutt Lange!)

ok you know who i wanna see a music biopic about? bob mcgrath in the 1960s. seriously. that dude rules.

has anybody seen that film about farinelli? i haven't, all i know is that IRCAM went to a lot of trouble to reproduce the supposedly unique vocal range of, like, a perfectly normal human voice. castrato mystique was fuckin' WILD.

omg i actually have seen that movie -- i went to see it by myself when i was studying in Colombia and to this day don't know a single other person who has seen it!

i was proud that i watched it in Spanish lol

I also saw Casino while I was there