So the production of Bohemian Rhapsody is well under way with director Bryan Singer who debuted with The Usual Suspects back in the 90's and went on to make no more good movies, and of class action lawsuit for having sex with underaged boys at his Hollywood mansion fame. Just so you know, this production went through like 18 casting changes and I don't even know how many fall outs over creative differences. Apparently the gramps with amps, leftovers of Queen; Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor want to make it more about the band than a Fred bio-pic. Let's be real, people only liked or in my case loved Queen because of Fred Mercury. He was the creative glue that gifted us with truly one of the most amazing stage presences and one that seems impossible for imitation, some of the most innovative songs in the Rock 'n Roll cannon, and an unforgettable voice making him truly one of the greatest front men of any era. And without him, the others would have faded into obscurity before the 70's even started. Sasha Baron Cohen was in line to play him and I supported that. He has a great voice as he's proved in the terrible film Les Miserables, and it's an inspiring casting decision considering he's a comic actor but has a presence and eccentricity factor akin to Mercury himself. Then they cast Ben Whishaw, I mean...whatever. Eventually it all fell on Rami Malek's gorgeously flawless shoulders, and early release photos are indicative that he's got this down. What is kind of annoying, aside from having a confirmed rapist directing a film about one of my favorite icons of music, is that Freddie has been dead for 20 years, his long time lover and life partner Jim Hutton died in 2010, and Brian and Roger are the only ones who 'want to do Freddie justice' granted, they know him very well, they were like a family, a band is a marriage blah blah blah, but it still seems like this would be their baby and their interpretation of Fred's legacy rather than an objective homage to this god-like figure. Well, we'll see. In this spirit of this highly anticipated film here's a list of other very inspired casting decisions in music bio-pics
The film culminates in Queen's iconic performance at Live Aid in 1985.
Val Kilmer as Doors frontman Jim Morrison and everyone in the supporting cast of Across the Universe can fuck off.
Also goes without saying that Jamie Foxx and Ray Charles and Angela Bassett as Tina Turner are iconic and it their performances are basically seamless. So here are some lesser-known imitators.
Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter because well yeah.
O'Shea Jackson Jr. as his own father Ice Cube in Straight Outta Compton. That's quite the responsibility, in fact I kinda dig the whole cast of the film.
Gary Oldman's premiere performance as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. I remember thinking; holy shit who is that. They found his fucking twin, also they make being a junkie look pretty glamorous. Also, lest we forget, this is the film premiere of one Courtney Love. (Strangely not as Nancy Spungen).
Most bio-pics about The Beatles really suck. This isn't that. In Nowhere Boy, Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays a very young John Lennon in his art school days, wanting to start a skiffle band and reuniting with his estranged mother only to have her die in a car accident a few months later. He meets Paul McCartney and the seeds of the Beatles are planted. It's really not about the band at all, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gives a very mature performance while being only 17 during shooting and falling in love with his director Sam Taylor-Wood...they went on to get married despite the 33 year age difference, and she went on to direct Fifty Shades of Grey...it was a simple time.
The main cast of The Runaways. Yeah Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart did Twilight movies together, but let's just forget that happened for two seconds and focus on this tiny film where no doubt the main cast had to take major salary cuts in order to play one of the most important glitter rock/punk rock cross over all-girl bands in an era of cock rock. But i'm sure Dakota and Kristen could afford it with their Twilight money to play Cherie Currie and Joan Jett respectfully. They actually nailed it. Teenage chicks in corsets and electric guitars...in the 70's...it was just so damn cool. I miss them.
professional alcoholic and pouty lip caddy John Rhys-Meyers was only 21 when he undertook the role of Bryan Slade; a Marc Bolan and David Bowie hybrid in Velvet Goldmine, hands down, one of my favorite films; one of my favorite sub-genre's of music; Glam rock. Directed by one of my favorite living filmmakers Todd Haynes, so really pretty fucking perfect.
Ewan McGregor; same movie. Curt Wild was an amalgam of two of my favorite musicians; Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. And all the other favorites I mentioned prior, so you get it.
Out of the 7 actors that played a version of Bob Dylan, Cate Blanchett definitely outshines all of them in I'm Not There (again, by Todd Haynes), not just because of the gender fluidity, but her speaking style, mannerisms, and attitude of Bob Dylan during his rock transition was absolutely something else. She should have won the Oscar that year. You know what? She should win every Oscar she's nominated for.
Oddly hot weirdo Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line was the role he was born to play. It was nuanced and really worked on, you could tell that it was almost an immersion and not an imitation.
Petit Frenchy Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for her performance of national treasure Edith Piaf. I kind of am severely in love with Edith Piaf, the first music I listened to was all of her recordings, so it's kind of an unhealthy obsession. I truly believe that no better music exists. A lot comes close but Piaf poured her heart into every song and the passion of her voice gets under your skin and grabs you by the spine. This metaphor is not making any sense. She is the greatest torch singer to ever torch sing, and the pain of her life is in every note she hits. Marion did her own singing, and she nailed the fuck out of this.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the Ziggy Stardust inspired character, Maxwell Daemon
Let's face it, Glam Rock is nothing more than a distant memory and the music of Bryan Ferry, The Sweet, Slade, T. Rex, and others is no longer played even on rock stations. It was an offshoot of the rebellious hippie trends that recognized the hypocrisy of a movement based on political revolution that never actually manifested, and decided to exploit the fashion, spirit, and aesthetic of the sexual revolution that was also taking place.
It's ironic that the one time we as a society became reflective of that was in the 90's mainly, not sure why, Bowie had just released a new album and newbies were all introduced to the music of Iggy Pop when Trainspotting came out in 1996. I wouldn't call this reflexivity disingenuous because behind the camera were some of the best storytellers working today like Todd Haynes and Neil Jordan.
I remember watching Velvet Goldmine for the first time when it first came out in 1998 and being like 'yeah, awesome, glitter, free love, sex drugs and rock n' roll' but then I saw it again when it was taught in one of my classes at NYU and introduced to us by our learned professor as 'his favorite film'. I began to understand that like the Glam Rock music, Velvet Goldmine was a film rooted in the deepest of hedonistic, stylized and self-reflexive nature. In fact, if you do enough research for the film, you'll find out that a good majority of the script comes verbatim from the work of Oscar Wilde, whom in the film, Todd Haynes singles out as the 'inventor' of Glam Rock.
Johnny in costume being coached by director Todd Haynes, keep in mind he was only 19 when he was cast in that role. And given how complex and layered it was, it was a tour-de-force performance.
Thereby Glam Rock was a rebellion. It was a movement that dained to be daring, incendiary, and throw out all repository hypocrisies and norms we as a society had picked up, and for its idealism, that's perhaps why it had such a short run in the mid-70's and never really fully resurfaced. Yes David Bowie just came out with a new album but his Ziggy Stardust days are far behind him. One can really say that Glam Rock started with The Velvet Underground and their connections to Andy Warhol who was all about exploitation of the fabulous and the non-boring in life which was parlayed into a devil-may-care movement where men proudly donned glitter eye-shadow and lacquered hair, openly practiced bisexuality as a means of being sexually ambivalent, and created some of the best, outlandish, and moving music ever.
I'm going to list three films from the past 20 or so years that accurately, if not brilliantly portrayed this movement and then leave you with clips. As I said before Velvet Goldmine (1999) is nothing short of a masterpiece, both in storytelling, but also in aesthetic. It utilizes not only the work of Oscar Wilde but also a soundtrack based on covers from one of the most seminal Glam Rock bands of the 70's; Roxy Music. It's masterfully acted and directed, not to mention written with a narrative that copies that of Citizen Kane (1941) where a lowly journalist is sent on a mission to find out what happened in the mysterious shooting of a Bowie-esque figure that in his time encapsulated everything people wanted out of their pop icons. What's great about it, is that it's told in modern time and flashbacks to the magical times of the 70's. That time is aesthetically presented as colorful, magical, and whimsical, while the modernity is bland, dystopian, and harsh. Meaning to say that without the effervescence of those influences, we have all returned to a dull and mundane existence, and let's face it we really have, and no Lady Gaga has not been our messiah.
The second is a Neil Jordan film called Breakfast on Pluto (2005) which takes place in war-torn Ireland fraught with protests and attacks by the IRA. In the midst of everything a young androgynous student named Patrick 'Kitten' Braden (Cillian Murphy) who is completely ambivalent to the turmoil and decides to go to swinging London looking for his mother in order to piece together the cracks in his identity.
Cillian Murphy in drag for his role in Breakfast on Pluto (2005) and to make up for his lack of breasts he often refers to himself as a 'svelte gamine'.
The third, is not so much great of a film, but it heavily features the music of Roxy Music, and uses that as inspiration in a lot of the scenes. My favorite song of all time is 'If there is Something' written by Bryan Ferry and performed by Roxy Music. It speaks to me because it has such a deepness. It starts off as a jaunty little tune about a man falling in love with a woman and then there is an outcry which seems to come out of no where in which the man proclaims his love in the most heartbreaking way, and then there is about a 5 minute interlude which seems menacing and all the while you're wondering where is this going? After which, there is a lament about a love lost, or a reflection of an old man on the great love he once had. I had literally thought this song had faded into obscurity forever ago but apparently it still has resonance in a film starring Daniel Craig and Claire Forlani called Flashbacks of a Fool (2008). Again, the movie is wildly flawed but just for those moments I adore it. Enough from me, enjoy the clips.
