ROCKET FUEL
DEXTER FLETCHER SALVAGED BO RHAP AND NOW RELEASES HIS OWN VISION IN THE SUPERIOR ROCKETMAN. LARUSHKA IVAN-ZADEH MEETS THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO PLAY IT STRAIGHT
‘DON’T mention Bohemian Rhapsody’ is the friendly advice we’re given before interviewing Rocketman director Dexter Fletcher. You can understand why: when Fletcher took the (uncredited) gig to finish off the Queen biopic after original director Bryan Singer was sacked, he saw it as a handy boot camp for his Elton John biopic, Rocketman. Little did he know it would become an Oscar-nominated sensation, grossing nearly $1 billion worldwide. And given both films are 1970s-set jukebox crowd-pleasers about the sex-and-drug-addled rise and fall of a flamboyant, secretly gay rock icon, there’s a risk of the media positioning Rocketman as a kind of Bo Rhap 2.
‘I get that comparison. I understand it,’ says Fletcher who, being one of the nicest blokes in British film, is too
big-hearted not to answer my question. ‘But Bohemian Rhapsody is someone else’s vision. I came in and I tried my best to honour that. And if it lays some groundwork for people to go, “Oh, I think I might go and see that Rocketman now”, then I’m thrilled to bits. But Rocketman is my vision. This is the story that I want to tell.’
Of course, it’s not just his vision. Fletcher was hired by Elton John and David Furnish on the recommendation of producer Matthew Vaughn, who he’s known since he starred in Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. Yet despite Elton’s notorious reputation for tantrums, Fletcher was largely left to his own creative devices and no toys were thrown out of prams.
‘I never got the phone call telling me “don’t put that in”,’ Fletcher insists, pointing out that it was actually a huge advantage in making a story like this that his subject was still alive and around to defend himself. ‘Freddie, for example, is not around to defend himself. All he can do is be protected by those who loved him. But Elton’s a big boy. Which is why Rocketman can afford to push to the edge.’
A joyous, cheesy, fabulously uplifting and outrageously costumed celebration of Elton’s life and music, Rocketman is arguably a better film than Bohemian Rhapsody precisely because it takes an edgier, less PG approach to its complicated hero. As Taron Egerton, who portrays Elton John, declares at one point in the movie: ‘I started acting like a c*** in 1975 and I just forgot to stop.’ That Dexter Fletcher himself had, as he puts it to me, his own ‘past issues with substance abuse’ instantly connected him to Elton’s story. ‘I’m no stranger to all that,’ he says.
At the age of nine, Fletcher found fame as Babyface in Bugsy Malone but later became a classic child-star-goes-offthe-rails case, developing a serious cocaine habit and burning through his money to the point where, aged 27, he was reduced to sleeping in his car. It gave him an emotional investment in Rocketman that he never felt with Bohemian Rhapsody. Elsewhere, while not gay himself (‘though I have many gay friends’), Fletcher felt it was equally important to authentically show the young Elton properly getting it on with his first male lover, John Reid, played by Richard ‘Bodyguard’ Madden.
‘It’s a seminal moment in the story,’ Fletcher explains. ‘Elton’s always been gay and proud, even if he may have experimented in other areas in the course of his life, which we look at in the film.’
The message is clear: no ‘straightwashing’ here. It’s an attitude that might ultimately cost Rocketman dear. The mega box-office of Bohemian Rhapsody was partly down to it getting a release in China (the world’s second-biggest movie
‘Macca won’t stop phoning and Jagger’s dancing around my living room’
territory), where any references to homosexuality were censored. How would Fletcher feel about similar snips happening to Rocketman?
‘I’d be pretty distraught,’ he says, ‘because everything that’s in there is in there for a reason. But I don’t think I’d get any say, to be honest.’
With Elton executive producer, it’s unlikely to happen anyway. And Fletcher’s relieved to say he has pleased the boss. Incredibly, the first time he watched it with Elton was at the film’s rapturously received premiere at Cannes.
‘Elton’s really proud of it and loves it,’ says Fletcher. ‘He said, “I see myself up there on screen, not Taron”, which is an incredible endorsement.’
So now he’s Mr Rock biopic, who’s calling him up saying ‘me next?’
‘Macca won’t stop phoning, Jagger’s dancing around my living room as we speak and Noel Gallagher’s been on the blower,’ guffaws Fletcher. ‘It’s getting relentless!’
We think he’s joking.
Rocketman is in cinemas from today