Biopics box office gold — but beware of big egos
Stars' hands-on approach can hinder telling of their tales
These days it's as though a pop star hasn't existed unless their life has been immortalized on the big screen.
Freddie Mercury and Elton John have recently had the biopic treatment, in Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman respectively, and films about Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan are in the works.
There are rumours of Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse and Celine Dion films, while The Who's Roger Daltrey is planning a feature about Keith Moon and Big Little Lies director Jean-Marc Vallée has been linked to a film about John Lennon.
And now Madonna has announced she is co-writing and directing a movie about her life. The as-yet-untitled Universal Pictures film will be co-produced by Amy Pascal, whom the singer worked with on the 1992 baseball comedy A League of Their Own.
It doesn't take a genius to see why the project appeals to her and to Universal.
Biopics about music stars have been doing good business at the box office.
But the template for the modern “star as a human being” biopic took off after the back-to-back critical triumphs of 1978's The Buddy Holly Story — for which actor Gary Busey received an Oscar nomination — and the 1980 Loretta Lynn biopic Coal Miner's Daughter, which earned Sissy Spacek an Academy Award.
Since then, music biopics have been the route to Academy Award success for, among others: Jamie Foxx, who won best actor for playing Ray Charles in 2005; Reese Witherspoon in 2006 for portraying June Carter Cash, the wife of Johnny Cash, in Walk the Line (2005); and Marion Cotillard who won best actress for her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose in 2008.
More recently, Rami Malek took home the best actor trophy for his portrayal of Mercury, while Renée Zellweger won recently for Judy Garland.
The genre has myriad built-in attractions for producers. With a story arc that invariably goes obscurity-fame-crisis-redemption (or death), a musician's life is made for the big screen. And the gap that often exists between a star's public persona and private life is a gift to screenwriters.
Then there is the box office performance: biopics can win big here too.
The genre accounted for just 0.6 per cent of films released in the U.K. in 2018 but took six per cent of the total box office, according to the BFI's statistical yearbook.
And yet as an art form, music biopics are always compromised by the issue of consent. A musician (or their estate if they're dead) must grant permission for their music to be used, and no one is going to do so if a project paints them unflatteringly.
Therefore, if consent is withheld, a project will gain realism at the expense of its one crucial ingredient. The unofficial 2013 Jimi Hendrix biopic, Jimi: All is by My Side, contained no Hendrix music, an omission one critic politely described as “hobbling.” Artist-sanctioned biopics lean toward the hagiographic.
Announcing the film, Madonna said it's “essential” that she tells her “roller-coaster” life story with her own “voice and vision.” That's fine in one sense. Madonna will be able to bring details to the screenplay that only she knows. Yet it will inevitably be a one-sided account. People's character flaws are always as illuminating as their strengths, but a person's natural inclination is to omit those unedifying blemishes that actually make them who they are.
The project has a co-writer — Diablo Cody, herself an Oscar winner for the brilliant coming-of-age comedy Juno, and no wallflower. But the chances of Cody inserting anything into the film that the Queen of Pop doesn't like — such as details about Madonna's long rift with her brother, or the excoriating reviews she's received over the years for her film roles (Swept Away, anyone?) — are non-existent.
The early years of Madonna's career are the most interesting. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in Michigan in 1958, she studied the piano, learned ballet, got good grades at school and then moved to New York in 1978, aged 20, where she went from a Dunkin' Donuts waitress to a pop superstar in five years (with singles Holiday, Borderline and Lucky Star).
Her impact on pop culture and fashion was immense.
But it will need some hardbitten realism to prevent it from being “Madonna does Flashdance”.
After that, the story — the official one, anyway — lacks a dramatic arc. Madonna has never suffered any cataclysmic fall from grace, a massive career downturn or, as far as I know, addiction issues. Which is great for longevity but less gripping for a 90-minute film. Of course, we must reserve judgment. Bohemian Rhapsody was oversimplified, its chronology was wrong and it didn't show just how dark Mercury's life was. But as Adam Lambert, Queen's new frontman, put it to me last year, it “reminded (people) how good these f-----g songs are.”