The one that you want?
SCREEN SCENE
FOR Australian actors, it used to be the path to … well, if not fame and fortune, then maybe recognition and a Logie nomination: portraying a reallife person onscreen.
Lately, however, the biopic seems to have become a bit of a poisoned chalice, and any performer who takes a sip from it ends up with a mouthful of social media vitriol.
The latest victim of all this? Delta Goodrem, who dared to take on the role of Australian sweetheart Olivia NewtonJohn in the two-part Seven mini-series Olivia: Hopelessly Devoted to You, which premiered last Sunday night and concludes tomorrow night.
Now, even though Goodrem and Newton-John aren’t exactly dead ringers, this is casting that makes sense to me.
Beyond their superficial similarities in appearance and career trajectory, both women have a kind of wholesome, girl-next-door quality that, of course, belies something a bit deeper and more complicated. Put simply, they’ve been through some stuff.
Whether or not Hopelessly Devoted to You will actually tackle said stuff with any depth in its second half remains to be seen, although it’s unlikely, given the precedent set by the first episode (which only featured Goodrem for a portion of the production; young Olivia was played by the talented Morgan Griffin).
Like many a recent biopic of Australian celebrities or prominent figures, Hopelessly Devoted to You was kind of by- the-numbers, seeming to check off milestones, achievements and incidents rather than delve into who the person really was.
And as a viewer, if you’re not getting that kind of insight, the main reason you’re tuning in is to see how the star handles the starring role.
Sometimes they pull it off. By stacking on a bit of weight and slapping on a bit of makeup, Lachy Hulme did a terrific job of playing two generations of media tycoon — Kerry Packer and his father Frank — in two different productions in the same year.
And Samuel Johnson took his resemblance to music industry guru Ian “Molly” Meldrum, topped it with Molly’s famous cowboy hat and provided audiences with a stunning likeness of Meldrum’s traits for the 2016 Seven mini-series Molly.
More recently, though, Josh Lawson caught a fair share of flak for taking on the role of Paul Hogan in the mini-series Hoges, with disgruntled viewers taking to social media to gripe about the miscasting.
To be fair to the likes of Lawson and Goodrem, these local biopics do often have a paint-by-numbers quality to their screenwriting, giving them precious little to work with. But there’s something else about the nature of the modern biopic that may well come into play, something I started considering the other week while watching a new documentary on Netflix.
The four-part Bobby Kennedy for President chronicles the political career of Robert F. Kennedy, who in the 1960s served as US Attorney-General under his brother John F. Kennedy before launching his own career as a senator and presidential candidate before his assassination in 1968.
It’s an excellent, intelligent and comprehensive piece of work, one that makes great use of interviews with Kennedy’s colleagues and loved ones (who provide vivid and candid insights into the man) but especially good use of archival footage, of which there’s plenty.
As time moves on, and we reach a stage where we’re looking back at history that was caught on film, there may be less and less use for dramatic recreations.
Rather than have an actor portray a person in the public eye, there’ll be enough sound and vision of the actual person to provide an accurate representation of who they were and what they accomplished.
It might make winning a Logie a little harder, but it’ll almost certainly bring viewers closer to the truth of the matter.