When a magazine does one of those quick filler half page interviews with a minor celebrity like a MasterChef winner or a travel show host they always ask the question “who would play you in the movie of your life?” I’m always amused by this question, not only because it invites the interviewee to give a gross overestimation of themselves, (“Oh, I suppose Brad Pitt could handle the role”) but because it leads me to think “who would actually WATCH that movie? You’re a minor celebrity. You don’t even warrant a feature interview let alone an entire team of people dedicated to telling the story of your life. WHO ARE YOU?”
It’s generally understood that when we watch a biopic the story will be a celebration of a long and illustrious life. It isn’t the life of just any old shmo that gets immortalised on celluloid. However, what we fail to recognise is that even the world’s greatest people who have lived the world’s greatest lives were once shmos themselves. In fact, it’s the journey from shmo to stardom that makes their story worth watching. This, of course, presents a few problems.
Firstly, shmos must amass many, many exciting events and achievements in their life in order for that life to be deemed interesting enough to be made into a movie. Scriptwriters then face the problem of trying to cram this lifetime of events and achievements into a 120-minute biopic and the resulting film often fails. When such a film is just a list of every significant event ticking over until credits roll there is little room for character development. Some biopics retell the events artfully (like
La Vie En Rose), some less so (like
The Iron Lady) but whichever way you look at it, an entire life time is a long thing to fit in one film.
The other anomaly created by the biopic is the resurgence of interest a successful film will create for the subject. When
Walk the Line was released in cinemas, Johnny Cash enjoyed a revival of public appreciation, and many, many new fans – which did him a fat lot of good as he’d been dead for two years. While a good biopic has the power to win the hearts and minds of an audience long after the artist in question has left behind their hey day, the only people seeing any real material benefit from the films are the actors and filmmakers. J Edgar Hoover’s legacy might currently be enjoying a renewed interest but Leonardo DiCaprio will be walking away with the cash, riding on the coattails of Hoover’s achievements like a freeloader.
So, with these two problems in mind I suggest it might be time to take another look at how we approach the biopic, with a view to benefiting all involved parties. The problem seems to be that we are choosing subjects far too late in the game. Choosing a long dead president, historical gangster, or legendary musician may seem like a ticket to an easy Oscar victory, but with a whole lot of messy back-story to cram in, and a subject who will enjoy no enhanced fame in the wake of the film, we may be better off choosing all together younger people to honour.
And there seems to be plenty of material available already. Today’s young music stars are notorious for releasing memoirs and autobiographies as soon as they can, striking while the fame iron is hot. Justin Bieber’s memoirs, First Step to Forever: My Story, were released when the star was just 16. Some might say that this is a premature approach – apparently sizeable sections of the book are comprised of large graphic reproductions of Bieber’s tweets – but I say a lush dramatic depiction of these tweets would be compelling and very watchable.
As an audience we also get to fully appreciate our current social landscape. I can’t count the number of times I have watched a biopic and come away with an acute sense of nostalgia for a time gone by. Also, telling the story of a star before they actually do anything will allow the movie to be rather concise. We’ve all looked at our watches as a biopic drags through a star’s blue period. Making a biopic about a young subject will help us of the YouTube generation to fully grasp the film.
There’s benefit for the actors involved too. It’s a bit of an industry joke that an actor may struggle for years but it isn’t until they play the lead in a grand biopic that they get nominated for a golden statue. If we lower the limits, our scope for biopic subjects becomes much wider. Richard Roxborough received praise for his depiction of a bull-headed and bawdy Bob Hawke in the Channel 10 telemovie in 2010. Just think, if we weren’t so picky about who we focus on, Richard Roxborough could star as a politician every week! Anthony Albanese, Stephen Conroy... oh boy, the possibilities are endless, and, surely this would only increase Roxborough’s chances of success. Likewise with all the rumours currently circulating about who’ll play the role of Gloria Steinman in the upcoming Linda Lovelace biopic... Demi Moore? Sarah Jessica Parker? If there were more biopics, more actors get work and more inspirational yet slightly revisionist life stories will be recorded via the annals of historical drama.
So there you go. Getting in early and creating the biopic before the subject has actually achieved anything and reached legendary status benefits all parties. The subject enjoys more fame, the filmmakers benefit, and the audience can finally appreciate the minor celebrities around them, because we all know that can’t truly happen until the celebrity has had a movie made about them. Win win. I’m here to help.