The Big Picture - ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Baz Luhrmann’s latest film, a life-spanning biopic of Elvis Presley, is here, and Sean and Amanda are breaking down this exhaustive, expansive new film (1:00). Then, Adam Nayman joins to discuss the prescient comedy ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story’ and their favorite music biopics (24:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Adam Nayman Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the hosts that brought you to Coding Westworld and Westworld the Recapables comes the Ringer Prestige TV podcast on Westworld. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Danny Heifetz. And I'm David Shoemaker. Welcome to Westworld Season 4 on the Prestige TV podcast feed where we're going to break down every episode of Westworld Season 4.

Every Monday, the day after the show comes out on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, but get them on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Elvis. That's right. Baz Luhrmann's latest film, a life-spanning biopic of Elvis Presley,

is here. So today we are talking about this new film. Also the movie Walk Hard, which is sort of a prequel to Elvis in some ways, and our favorite music biopics. Adam Naiman's going to be joining us a little later in the show. But first, Amanda and I

are going to dig right into Elvis. This is one of the big spectacle films of 2022. Baz Luhrmann has not made a movie in almost a decade since the Great Gatsby adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio. And he's taking on one of the most iconic figures of Americana ever, Elvis Presley. Let me start here. Do you care about Elvis? Are you an Elvis fan, Amanda? Yes, I am. I think I grew up listening to like, he's always been a character in my life. And I just assumed he was and everybody else's. But

you know, my dad used to torment me by singing Blue Suede Shoes. So perhaps that was like a outsized presence in my life. But yeah, I mean, he's Elvis, you know, he's, again, like part of the cultural firmament. I think that might be specific to our age. And I wonder if that's true for people even five years younger than us, certainly 10 years younger than us, because my parents at least were around and a part of the initial Elvis frenzy and could pass it along to me. But sure, aren't you? Yeah, 100%. I love his music. And I think he's a fascinating figure in the story of American music and spent a lot of time as a music journalist, looking at him as this kind of skeleton key interloper connecting figure that kind of explains

everything that I care about in a lot of ways. I mean, he really is the person who some might say borrowed, some might say robbed, some might say interpreted Black music and brought it to America and brought rock and roll into the mainstream. And he's obviously one of the most important figures in pop music history. He's somebody who represents a lot about America,

about its kind of rise and fall, about its excesses, about its extravagance, its pageantry, its beauty, its soaring ability to entertain, and also some of the darkness that's a little bit underneath the skin. So you can see why Lerman is interested in him, given the stories that he's told before. This is a guy who modernized Shakespeare. This is a guy who reinvented musicals, really, with Moulin Rouge and redefined the idea of the jukebox musical. And took on the Great American Novel, novel arguably in the Great Gatsby and somebody who's been obsessed with America in a lot of ways Baz is of course Australian but loves to dive into our

culture and examine our culture with a slightly different lens on it it's so crazy that you know he's been making movies for over 30 years and this is only his his sixth movie. But he takes a long time in between projects. And on the one hand, when you watch this movie, you can tell why. Because it is intricately, excessively, overwhelmingly made. I could feel the effort watching the movie. It's two hours and 40 minutes. It feels every minute of that runtime. And there is an extraordinary amount

of things accomplished in the movie, but I really didn't love the movie at all. And I think it's an interesting Rorschach test for your taste because you can't say that Baz Lerman isn't talented, but it's so hard for him to get out of his own way. What did you think of this movie? This movie is a lot in every sense of that cultural phrase now. I mean, there is so much packed into it. You noted that it's two hours and 40 minutes long, feels like it's forever. It also moves so quickly. And the pace is frenetic, doesn't even seem to do it justice.

You can miss entire plot points plot points yeah years of his life like quite literally i missed that graceland was purchased as graceland you know like two hours in the movie i was like oh that fancy house that they're all living in that's graceland you know like which is his own like cultural you know icon moment So there's so much happening. Baz Luhrmann style is maximalist, jams everything in. And he almost seems to be commenting on his own style in this, in terms of like the montages and the different,

like the references and the musical genres. It's not just Elvis music being played in this. And it's zipping through decades and time. I mean, it's just like, it's trying to fit literally everything, not just about Elvis, but I guess what Elvis has meant pop culturally. And I guess in terms of America from the last 60, 70 years into one movie. So in one way, it's not surprising that there is reportedly a four hour cut. On the other hand, just like, like, yikes, it's a mess. It is, it's a mess in the literal, like not well organized and hard to, hard to follow, or

it's maybe not hard to follow because you're just on the ride, but it just does kind of feel like a zip line through Elvis's life and history. And then it is also just a mess in terms of the storytelling decisions, if you can even call them decisions, because some of it is just like, well, I'm not going to make a choice. I'm going to do this and this and this and this. I think that there are some just absolute failures, including the Tom Hanks character, and which is really how the story is ultimately organized to the extent that it is organized, which is around the character of Colonel Parker, who is played by Tom Hanks. And there's the frame and the perspective of the story is from the perspective of this manager,

Svengali figure. And that turns Elvis into almost a supporting character and also makes you spend a lot of time with Tom Hanks's truly baffling accents and, and choices. And I don't know that I, I don't know why Tom Hanks wanted to do this role and this movie. Um, but none of it's really working and that, and, and, and that character and that narration and that like primary storytelling choice always seems to interject itself just when you've forgotten that they did it and just when you were like on the wave of Elvis and you're

like you know what this is kind of a mess but like Baz Luhrmann is like a huge like stylistic visionary really understands like pop music and and music as performance and there's almost like a cinema like a capital c cinema quality to him doing so much. And then the Tom Hanks narration comes back in and you're like, damn it. This isn't working. We're on the exact same page about that. The way that you just described that is exactly how I felt, which is that we haven't said the name Austin Butler yet.

He plays Elvis in this film. Oh, yeah. He's a relatively inexperienced actor. And people may remember him from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He played Tex in that film. He's a relatively inexperienced actor and people may remember him from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He played Tex in that film. And he is, I don't know if he looks exactly like Elvis, but man, he embodies him so well. I thought he was really, really good in this movie. He was amazing. And that sense of that magnetism that Elvis had and that has like been off parody and is even parodied in this movie like somehow this movie is doing a parody of the walk hard parody of the scene of like women like busting

open literally shirts literally which which I almost thought was funny I was like okay if you're gonna be in on the joke and we're referencing and taking this to like an eighth meta level and I think there is something really like primal about the way that, well, I was going to say, you know, a teen girl, but really anyone responds to that level of charisma and power and just like sexual energy that Elvis had going. And Lerman recreates it. I thought like those scenes were actually

like really powerful, even as he's commenting on them. And I walked away from this. I like I didn't really give Austin Butler the time of day, even though he was in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He's I don't know, like in the like Disney Kaya Gerber orbit. And I was just like, this is not my generation. You know, like I'm a grown up now. I thought he was amazing. I really did. I just I was like, oh, I get it. Yeah. And I think it weirdly detracts from his performance that the story keeps clicking back to Colonel Tom Parker and using him as this framing device. And the film sort of opens with him looking back on his life and interpreting his life through the eyes of the work he did managing Elvis. And, you know, I'm trying to wrap my head around what it is that attracted Lerman to this frame of the story, because Elvis explains itself. You know, his music is, you know, fascinating and rich, and his voice is like everlasting and beautiful, and that mash of gospel and blues and country and Western. And he really did, he did create something. He borrowed from a lot of different art forms, but he made something singular. So you get why Lerman likes that,

especially when you've seen Lerman's other films. But it makes me think that Baz Lerman had an experience with some sort of manager or Svengali figure that screwed him over that is animating this story. Because using this as the portal in, it makes it difficult to really understand the interior life of Elvis. Because we don't spend any

time with him reflecting on what mattered to him. Now, if Baz Luhrmann's read on him as a figure is that he was just all performance, that he was just this raw nerve of charisma and that he had these people around him who were shaping him, so be it. But we do see his marriage to Priscilla Presley. We see a little bit of the Memphis Mafia, like his cadre of friends who surrounded him and supported him and played with him over the years. But those are huge parts of his life and his story. And if you read any books about him, if you read the Goralnik book,

or if you've seen The Searcher by Tom Zimney, you know that there's like a lot more to his life and to his story than this movie is interested in. This movie is interested in the big moments and it's interested in this collision between commerce and I guess popular art, for lack of a better word, and how Elvis sits at the intersection of those two things. And I don't, it's weird for somebody

who talks about box office reports to be kind of annoyed by that, but I was kind of annoyed that they kept circling back to this controlling figure as opposed to deep more deeply exploring this creative person yes i think i understood lerman's draw to it as style as substance which i think is like certainly something you could say about lerman's career and it's like there's an argument that you that there's an aspect of elvis's career. And it's like, there was an argument that there's an aspect

of Elvis's career about that. I mean, as the Elvis gets into, you know, late Vegas, fat Elvis phase and the absurdity of that, I was like,

oh, I see how this informed Lerman style, like, you know, there's some symbiosis here. So I get that. I think that that can't hold up a film as we've learned in like many other Baz Luhrmann films,

including Great Gatsby, which is maybe like the greatest like style is substance. You know, there's a lot and commerce and money and America, I guess, wrapped into it. So it can't hold a whole movie.

And then the Tom, the Colonel Parker element of it is so bungled and so uninteresting that it takes away from that thesis statement. I didn't walk out of this being like, I'm really frustrated that they didn't explore Elvis's interiority, even though that is like a very complex, I mean, he has a lot of demons that are completely, there's like one scene about drugs, I would say,

maybe two. And, you know, huge part of the last five years of his life. Of course it is. I mean, he dies at the age of 42 and you know, it's coming and you're just kind of like, all right, well, like this soap opera has got to end sometime. And there is something really like operatic about the way that Baz Luhrmann makes movies and certainly this movie that just, I guess, decided to fast forward over those key elements. elements like I didn't walk away being like I wish I understood Elvis the man and we're going to talk

about music biopics and I think that's one of often the flaws of these movies is like we gotta like really understand like the man and sometimes the appeal or what's interesting or compelling about the person is what they can put on the stage you know and i i think that's certainly true of elvis but it doesn't have anything to to fill in the holes that are left by the fact that you're just fast forwarding through the death of his mother which i i honestly sean i zoned out and i like missed that his mother died it because it was like two seconds long and i didn't realize i was like oh did she die did i miss that i think that's one of the one of the failures of the film is that there are certain sequences that are so remedial that they're they feel over explained and you're just

waiting for them to be over because you know all the beats of the steps and then there are other sequences where things are moving so quickly like his romance with Priscilla Presley is one scene when he's serving in Germany and then all of a sudden they're married and then all of a sudden they're having marriage trouble. And you're like, what happened to your marriage? And then all of a sudden it's 1968. It moves so quickly. I know.

This gets through the entire movie career. The whole Hollywood era is just basically skipped. I mean, it's like one quick montage, but there's literally no Ann Margaret in this which just seems like a you know mistake of filmmaking personally just like put Ann Margaret on your screen is my you know number one recommendation to all filmmakers or someone doing an impression of Ann Margaret how much did you feel that the Austin Butler performance was like impersonation versus actual performance.

Well, he doesn't really sing, which is a cardinal sin for you typically. I think it's probably wise that he didn't sing because Elvis's voice is so singular and it's very, very hard to capture that. And there is a long history of Elvis impersonators and the Elvis impersonator is itself a kind of figure of Americana at this point. And I think it would have been difficult. I think there are a handful of moments. There's that moment. There's obviously that first moment that you talk about where he's sort of playing the county fair

and is wowing the teenage girls in the audience. And then there's another one where the Mississippi government is attempting to kind of corral him and he reveals the real Elvis. And then there's the comeback special, the 68 comeback special. And in all three of those special, the 68 comeback special.

And in all three of those sequences, the movie is worth seeing for those three sequences because one, the music is electrifying. Two, Lerman does something that really, he kind of invented a recombinant version of cinema where he's like, I'm going to take a little bit of hip hop, a little bit of film score, a little bit of pop music, and I'm just going to smash them together and make this kinetic imagery that only I can do. And like you said earlier, you have to give him credit. He is an original in that sense. But Butler has to work very hard and Lerman has to work very hard to be cutting very quickly and moving very fast through those sequences. Because unlike Elvis Presley, who was in a one-shot or a two-shot throughout his whole career,

when he was on Ed Sullivan, there's just one camera just sitting on him, and he is the show. This movie, to recreate that, it literally cuts a hundred times in a two-minute period of performance. Because that's almost sort of what it takes to match the Elvis Presley magnetism.

But I liked him. I mean, I think that's a really, really tough task to try to represent someone like that. And we'll talk about in other music biopics, like the tall task of recreating Freddie Mercury or Ray Charles or Aretha Franklin most recently. It's basically impossible. So I think he did about as well as you possibly could have the Hanks thing though, remains the thing to me that is, is absolutely bewildering. You know, he's doing basically the gold member accent, you know, Colonel Tom Parker was a, was a Belgian, I guess. Um, I don't, I guess he fled the country at a young age or we don't, we still, I still don't totally know his story having watched this film other than he built Elvis out of millions and millions of dollars.

And also because of his murky international status disallowed Elvis from touring globally. And that is like the mortal wound of the movie is that Elvis couldn't go play in Japan and Australia and Europe throughout his whole career, which is fascinating. I can't remember whether it's a title card or just someone, an awkward voiceover, being like, Elvis invented the live stream concert. You know? I was like, cool. Good job, Elvis. Thanks so much. Who do you think is the target audience for this movie?

Because you and I, it sounds like we both grew up with Elvis. We both like rock and roll. I think you were completely right that if you're under the age of 30, Elvis in some ways could be defined as a figure of what's wrong with our culture in terms of the way that he absorbed the culture of others and reinterpreted it and profited off of it. We should just say this movie just is not equipped to handle in any way, shape, or form. And weirdly, I don't think you have to give it credit for trying it

does try it does almost like a satirization of like the the racism in the industry you know but in a way that doesn't land yeah well we should i mean we should say we see like two versions of inspiration for elvis we see him entering sort of a i guess it looks like a Pentecostal revival tent where he is observing gospel and he's like these recitations of like dramatic, emotional, spiritual moments among Black folks in Mississippi. And then also we see him observing like, you know, older blues musicians. And then he goes into cohort with B.B. King and Big Mama Thornton and a handful of significant blues and early rock and roll figures and being inspired by them and and being friends with them and admiring them and trying to show that Elvis which I think he did had a lot of respect for the music that he ultimately borrowed

from to reinterpret I just don't think Baz Luhrmann understands that milieu at all and so when you're watching it it feels like a a like a Chevy commercial representing like gospel culture, which it just doesn't work. Again, it's also done so quickly and sort of a montage fast fashion. And the tone is trying to do this sort of like parodic, but not tone that a lot of the movie is trying to do. Once you fast forward to 1968, by the way, and they try to deal with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and like tying that to Elvis also being, it's just like for Memphis, that's just really not effective. I think it's very possible that that is how Elvis felt.

I'm not sure. And I actually did, one of my favorite moments in the movie was at the conclusion of the 68 special um let me just see if i can remember the name of the song is it if i could dream elvis yeah okay so at the conclusion of the 68 special or at least the sequence in the film they show elvis singing if i can dream which is this original song that is kind of sort of a song of social progress. It's as close as Elvis got to a change is going to come.

It's not quite there, but I thought one Austin Butler was very powerful in that sequence. And two, it did show the idea of like something that we've seen a lot of pop culture figures get confronted with in the last five or 10 years, which is like, what do you really mean to the world other than entertaining us and him having to cope with that? But it's so distracted by this seemingly completely made up

obsession of Colonel Tom Parker's desire to get Elvis to make a Christmas special. And the idea of angry network executives fighting Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis as he pursues the producers of the Tammy show to make his progressive special, even though the 68th special is really more like an act of nostalgia in which Elvis reminds people that he's really cool. It doesn't really have anything to do with Dr. King's death or anything like that. It's just a very awkwardly arranged series of cultural explanations of our last 50 years of our history.

It just seems like flashing the buzzwords as opposed to actually connecting any of the... Yeah. series of cultural explanations of our last 50 years of our history. It just seems like flashing the buzzwords as opposed to actually connecting any of the... Yeah. Anyway, it does not make a lot of sense. And I imagine that if you're under the age of 30 and coming to this for the first time, you're like, you guys did what? This happened how? Really? I'd like to know.

I'm very curious to see how this film performs because it's obviously designed, I think, for older audiences who have a bigger relationship with Elvis, older audiences. Little hit and miss at the box office recently. Baz Luhrmann is a very successful filmmaker. You know, actually every single one of his films has made more money than the last that was released.

And this is going to be a big test of that success because it's not going to get great reviews and it's two hours and 40 minutes. Definitely does not need to be that. Is it the rare case where it should have been a TV show? Would that have been ridiculous? Well, do you want to sit through 10 hours of Tom Hanks' voice? I feel really sad about it. I love Tom Hanks. This doesn't work. I think it I love Tom Hanks. I just, this doesn't work. Um, I think he,

it reminded me a little bit of cloud Atlas where he's like, I want to have some fun. I'm going to try something new and it might not work, but it's a big, big, big bolt swing. He did this in the terminal. Anytime he goes into the accent zone, it's always a little bit dicey.

That's not really where he excels. He excels kind of in the opposite lane, which is the extremely familiar version of him. Sure. But I agree with you that I'm not totally sure why he wanted to spend his life. And this is of course the film where which is the extremely familiar version of him sure but i agree with you that i'm not totally sure why he wanted to spend his life and this is of course the film where he uh uh contracted covid so yeah while he was making this movie so it's it'll be an ass a fascinating bullet point on his career cv um very very strange movie uh i i definitely will never watch it again

um but maybe i'll watch a couple of clips on YouTube. Did you have a bad time though? I needed it to be over. Sure. I needed it to be over. I did actually. We were at the same screening. We didn't know this. And I did watch you just leaving with like alacrity, even for you. It was like, well, I guess I'll see Sean later because I'm not going to catch up with him today. I didn't know you were there and if I had known I wouldn't have done that to you but uh it was I I like I said I felt its length even though I agree with you that it feels like it's moving so fast I've not I'm not sure quite quite sure I've ever felt that in a movie yeah where it was absolutely endless and yet was so frenetic that I was exhausted um so anyway that's that's Elvis but you mentioned

walk hard let's let's let's bring in our pal Adam Neiman let's talk about walk hard which is So anyway, that's Elvis. You mentioned Walk Hard. Let's bring in our pal Adam Neiman to talk about Walk Hard, which is something he wants to talk about and talk about music biopics and our favorites. The big man, Adam Neiman, is back on the show. Hi, Adam. How are you? Hey, nice to be back with you both. Adam, we just talked about Elvis,

which you wanted to pretend you'd seen, but you haven't seen. But, you know, honestly... I thought it would have been really good if I had just reviewed it sight unseen. You probably can, honestly. With the exception of a couple of choices, it's what it looks like on the

label. It's pretty straightforward. So much so that Amanda and I were just talking about how there is a scene that is almost beat for beat preceded by Walk Hard 15 years ago. And it's almost hard to tell if Baz Luhrmann is self-aware

and acknowledging that or if he is oblivious to the idea of the biopic cliche does Elvis have to think about his entire life before he goes on stage uh not exactly however Colonel Tom Parker does and so that's basically the framing device of the film um you did want to talk about Walk Hard and I I'm curious why you flagged it so hard to us. Yeah, I did flag it hard. I mean, it's always interesting when you have a movie that captures a genre or parodies a genre so adeptly, you can't imagine anyone could ever make another one, right? Because the way that you just framed what you said, you wonder if Baz Luhrmann has seen Walk Hard or has heard of Walk Hard. I imagine Baz Luhrmann lives in like a glitter strewn bubble and you know nothing nothing penetrates it unless

he wants it to um and he you know he's like one of those guys who has quote unquote a sense of humor which is not the same thing as an actual sense of humor so I don't know if he's like throwing Walk Hard on on Friday night the way I often do but um that film coming out in the wake of things like Ray and especially Walk the Line, right? Which is like, you know, in the same way that Airplane is modeled mostly after Airport and then it copies everything else.

I mean, Walk the Line is, Walk Hard is obviously doing Walk the Line and then whatever else. But it is such a perfect note for note, beat for beat, cliche for cliche demolition of this kind of movie with just the right amount of contempt and affection that ratio is really hard to get in in movies like that but also you know assuming we've all watched it recently and

sean because of social media i know you did watch it recently and gave it five stars which is right because it's a five-star movie i just want to talk at some point about the music in it, because the music is unbelievable. Yeah, so let's... An incredible soundtrack. Let's set the frame, because if you haven't, if you're not familiar with Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox story, and you might not be, because this is a movie

that actually did not do that well at the box office. It only made $20 million. It stars John C. Reilly as a Johnny Cash, Elvis, Ray-esque figure rising through the world of American popular music in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And it has become a cult fascination. And one of the interesting things about it is that, obviously, it was preceded by Ray and Walk the Line and a handful of movies. But we're kind of living in a boom time for movies like this. So even though it feels like a demolition, as you say, Adam, I mean, Amanda and I have covered Rocketman on this show. We've covered Bohemian Rhapsody on

this show. We've covered Respect on this show. These movies keep coming out. So it didn't actually deflate anything. If anything, it almost raised them up and certified them as an ongoing sub-genre in film. I wonder if the common denominator between all the filmmakers of those very great movies you just mentioned, really great, terrific movies across the board there, they may also not have much of a sense of humor. But like a lot of comedies, I mean, Walk Hard is one of those things where as much fun as it was to see in a theater, I saw it twice in theaters. I mean, it very much finds a kind of audience and a constituency on what used to

nostalgically be called home video and is now you know streaming of different kinds it's a very youtubable movie i don't know how many times i've watched the beatles stop fighting here in india excerpt online on youtube i probably watch that like once a week um but yeah it's a film that had a really big comic pedigree when it came out, because of course it is produced by and shaped in a good way by Judd Apatow, right? Who's very hit and miss with me in terms of the movies he's worked on, but that's one of the better ones that his name is on. And it was a hard movie to market too, because they actually did a marketing campaign that made it just actually look like a real one to some extent,

like the poster of John C. Reilly is modeled on Val kilmer in the doors right and because reilly's a credible dramatic actor people who are only half paying attention to their media feed could be like is this a real thing and the movie isn't really trying to be plausible the way something like spinal tap is i mean spinal tap's worth talking about too as a movie that just demolishes conventions i mean no one's really watching Walk Hard all that seriously. But it's so liberating to watch it because people who are aware of the kind of cliches these movies are hammered together out of, when they weaponize those against you and sort of are like, really? You sat through this in Ray?

You sat through this in Walk the Line? Like, what is wrong with you? It's so satisfying. Amanda, so 2007 is a pretty important year for Judd Apatow. This is the year of Knocked Up. This is the year of Superbad. Walk Hard is sort of the third or fourth sibling from this year. Did you see this movie in theaters?

Did you have any relationship to it? No, I don't think so. I think this was certainly a, I guess it would have been a home rental, pre-streaming era movie. You hit a blockbuster? Yeah, no. I was living in New York. Did they have blockbusters in New York in 2007? I think that was done.

I don't think so. Yeah. Netflix? Netflix mailer? Yeah, I think it was probably a Netflix mailer. And I have vivid memories of sitting on a couch with a group of young people watching it at home, which is how I think all this entire generation of movies

should truly be experienced. What to me was really funny and interesting about Walk Hard on Revisiting It, which I did last night, is that it's not just a great deconstruction of these movies, a genre of movie, which I have a real soft spot for. I like very much. And so I can appreciate how effectively Walk Hard skewers it. And, but also just kind of like pulls the part, the pieces and it's like, this is how this is made. It's also a great deconstruction of pop stars and about like the mythology of, you know,

musicians who transcend a certain level of fame and what we expect for those people, how those stories get told, how they get sold to you. And the music biopic is a very effective part of that mythology. And I think we're living through a renaissance of them right now because once again, musicians have discovered, well, now a streaming service will be like, sure, would you like to do a documentary? Would you like to do a biopic? How would you like to present this like well-trod narrative that everyone wants from you?

So I think it's really like insightful and very fun in addition to being very funny. And it predicts as much as it kind of like comments on past wise. I also think, you know, Adam, you were saying that the movie, you know, one of the things that distinguishes it is that the songs are genuinely good. They're catchy. They're clever. They, they, they parody the work, but they also stand on their own. And if, if you don't have that, and you know, we should say dan burn and mike viola the candy butchers wrote most of the songs here but if you don't have that then i don't think

this feels more like um you know epic movie or like one of those really bad kind of post airplane style parody movies and it's not that like it is more loving it is more sincere and it is like a little bit more artfully crafted than your typical parody movie. Well, there's also some songwriting credits on it, I think, for Marshall Crenshaw, who's a great power pop singer from the 80s, like such a keen melodic compass and songs that should have been big hits and weren't. And there's like a catchiness to some of the music in Walk Hard and all these different modes where, yeah, they're not just like well textured but they're like credible you know i mean like it's a high bar to match someone like weird al in his song parodies not when he does individual songs when he does styles and these kind of like meet that high bar at times like the fake roy orbison song he does the life without you is really quite stirring and the the the fake

hippie numbers especially are are great i really, he sings a song about a change is happening and never specifies what that change is. You know, and they have like two or three sort of Dylan parodies that you'd think are easy to do, but it's not easy to do or people would do it well. And they're like the only funny Dylan parodies I've ever seen. I like, you see him doing one of them and standing off stage, Chris Parnell and Tim Meadows as his backing band. And Parnell was like, I don't understand any of this.

And Tim Meadows with his perfect delivery is like, you don't understand. This is very deep. There's a way the movie has a lot of good comedies of this kind do this. The jokes are so full frontal. They kind of annotate themselves. That's why I was saying that line, like Beatles stop fighting here in india it's like it's parroting the way that these movies will always

have characters introduce themselves or their friends by name there will always be like a thesis statement for every scene that's restaging famous people it's like you know dewey cox has to think about his whole life before he goes on stage meet elvis presley like this is such a genre convention and this movie puts it out front and just kind of stares at you. It's like daring you to call it, call bullshit on this trope of just people saying

who they are at all times, which I think is priceless. Well, one of the other fascinating things is, of course, one of the great comic bits of the movie is the wrong kid died and that Dewey, in fact,

slices his brother in half with a machete at the beginning of the movie. And this is kind of the, you know know inciting incident for his musical career and that's also the premise of Elvis is that you know his twin brother died or at a very young age and after that that like informs the way that he's raised in his relationship to his parents and especially his mother and you can't like obviously they were drawing on that when they were writing walk hard and they're they were looking at music biographies and looking at movies that told these stories. But I am so fascinated by the fact that this completely dead shotted the whole genre and no one blinked. No one acknowledged that we don't have to do this. This persists in this very specific kind of way. And I wonder for both of you, do you think that

music biopics right now are getting worse in the afterglow of Walk Hard? Or is it just like a difficult nut to crack? And these stories are tricky because these iconic figures are hard to represent on screen. What do you think about the state of this subgenre at the moment i mean it's pretty bad but i think in some ways it was always bad and like that's the genius of walk hard is that it's revealing to you as adam said like oh you sat through all of these tropes like really it you know um you accepted this this is working on you and the reality is like when it works it still absolutely works on me as we will discuss but um we were talking when we talked about respect how which i which i think is a movie that doesn't really work um even though i thought jennifer hudson was very good but you

know that's that's a classic case of like there's only one aretha franklin right um so she she did her best and it's just not Aretha Franklin. But that scene when they're in the studio and they're playing the piano and then I'm like, oh my God, they're writing Respect 10 out of 10 times. As I've said, I'll be like, oh my God, they're writing this song. And that was one of the disappointing parts of Elvis.

Adam, I'm sorry to let you know, there's no point where they're just like, oh my God, they're writing Jailhouse Rock or whatever. How could they ever improve on the bit in Forrest Gump where you find that Elvis didn't actually get his moves or style from black music? He took it from a kid in leg braces, right? I completely forgot.

I forgot about that. So, you know, it's a stupid genre that sometimes works anyway and it just has not really it's really aggressively has not worked and i guess people are trying more now they're trying to it's all ip yeah yeah because everybody's reaching a certain age and so that's tough but i don't know i'm not gonna say like when i need to get back to some golden era but i mean ip is really the separating element right because there was that bowie one that had no bowie songs in it yeah which is almost like a lars von treer style like obstruction it's like how do you tell the story of david bowie when you can't play any david bowie

songs right and walk hard solves that problem by inventing a fake musician and giving him songs that almost sound more credible than the real ones. But the other thing I want to say, connecting Walk Hard to Spinal Tap, because I think there's a deep spiritual communion between these movies, is that the whole point of Spinal Tap, really what's funny about it is that the band has no principles or identity whatsoever.

Right? In the 60s, they're a folk band, and then they're the fake Beatles, and then they're the fake beatles and then they're peace and love and then by the 80s it's the decline of western civilization literally it's the penelope spheras doc on heavy metal and punk and they just turn into that and walk hard tweaks that a little bit where it's not that dewey doesn't have principles but he's almost kind of the forrest gump of american popular music because he inhabits all of them like he's not just johnny cash he like has his brian Brian Wilson phase where he has like, you know,

the Maori tribesmen and stuff in the studio and 8,000 instruments. And he's kind of Roy Orbison and he kind of invents punk music. And then at the end he gets remixed in a hip hop song. And then he performs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the greatest band of all time, which is Jewel, Lyle Lovett and Ghostface, who are all good. They're all great. All of them deserve lifetime passes for that song.

It gets inducted by Eddie Vedder, who should have won an Oscar. It's the funniest performance ever in a movie is Eddie Vedder doing a parody of himself because he inducts everyone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He inducted the Ramones and REM. He's just shameless, and he's making fun of that so it's a wonderful idea that this that dewey cox is just this like savant and it's not that he has no principles it's just every musical moment kind of calls him and he he fills it right i love the horrible like disco

cover of walk hard that he does it doesn't to amanda's point where it really is about the packaging of pop music i thought that was a smart point and the film's very clever about it the only other one since that has taken that as its subject as well and of course it was also a flop but it's a great movie is pop star the the lonely iowa movie which has a lot of the same kind of jokes that Walk Hard does but very millennial way more about the internet and about social media and Instagram

and that kind of self presentation but if you drew a line from Spinal Tap through Walk Hard through Pop Star that's like just this expert satire even though Walk Hard's really the only one that is a biopic as such. But those three movies together

would be a very instructive little trilogy, I think. Well, we've dumped on a handful of movies here and obviously we've celebrated most of the biggest parody of the films. Let's talk about good versions of these kinds of movies. I think very few of our picks are actually in the exact same

complete life-spanning parody that walk hard is after and that elvis is trying to recreate too but some of them are so why don't we just let's do our top fives amanda do you want to start i i like your number five i'm glad someone picked it um my number five is sel, which is what gave us Jennifer Lopez. I mean, and that's not totally true, obviously. But this is her big breakthrough performance. And this is an example of just someone taking over the screen and the presence, especially in the performances, is just so bewitching that you can overlook what is otherwise, you know, pretty standard biopic, like not particularly inspired filmmaking, but she is extraordinary. And I just, on the big picture, I have to pay respect to all of the cinematic achievements that gave us Jennifer Lopez in all of her forms

today, including, you know, so here we are again. Thank you for everything that came after. I like Selena. Gregory Nob, a pretty good filmmaker who made this movie. You know, he's definitely not just a, just a journeyman. You know, he made El Norte and my family and he's made some good movies. So I like this movie a lot. And they literally showed us this movie in intro to Spanish when I was in high school, like on a quiet day where the teacher didn't want to do anything. They were like, learn about Selena and Tejano music. And we did. And it was great. All right, Adam, what's your number five? I have a movie that I have very sweet feelings about because it was my mom's VHS collection. And I watched it before I even knew who Loretta Lynn was, which is Coal Min. Have you guys, if either of you seen this or seen it recently,

I haven't seen it a while. Yeah. So we insist, he space sec plays Loretta Lynn. And because space sec such a malleable actress, like it's not a full life movie. Like she doesn't age until like, cause I mean,

even 1980 Loretta Lynn was already a veteran, but she's not old at, at that point. Right. It's not a, a full scale career thing, but it, it's one of those movies that has the

thesis that the subject music was really truly a reflection of her life and her upbringing and her environment, and there's that kind of ornery country music pride, right? The title song is about having pride in being a coal miner's daughter and coming out of this part of America and this part of culture that outside the country music industry is often condescended to, and inside the country music industry is often kind of sentimentalized. And, you know, Loretta Lynn's such a brilliant singer. You make a case that she's like one of the five greatest American recording artists of all time. I'm not even like a big country music fan, but I love her, right? And the movie is very conventional and plodding and hits the various beats. There's like, she's discovered and she succeeds and her marriage suffers and she has a

breakdown. I mean, I don't know if it's that movies are cliched or maybe just rock stars are walking cliches. And that's just what happens in their life when you get famous. But I just pick it because of the uncanniness of SpaceX performance. She's probably good in everything. Sissy SpaceX,

like you never leave a movie being like well sissy spacek wrecked that movie but she was very afraid to play the part the story is that she actually asked she was like praying for a sign about whether she should take it because i think what happens loretta lynn went on johnny carson and was like sissy spacek's gonna play me and sissy spacek was like what you know she had done some movies i mean she had been oscar nominated for carrie and she'd done films with robert altman like she's not nobody but she's not as famous as loretta lynn and supposedly she was driving around and coal miner's daughter came on the radio in the car

and she was like okay i'll do this and then because the subject was still alive she spent lots of time with loretta lynn and got to know her and know her mannerisms and i just think the performance is in the absolute top tier for movies like this. And she did all her own singing. I think she's just, she's incredible. So this pick is not so much for the filmmaking, which is very ordinary, but for Sissy Spacek, she's just great. Very good film. If people haven't seen it, nominated for a bunch of Oscars made by Michael Apted, who just passed away last year and who has really one of the more fascinating filmographies of any director

in the history of the medium. He made the Up documentaries. He made a James Bond movie. He made Gorillas in the Mist. He made this movie. He really was a shapeshifter. So very good pick, Adam. My number five is Behind the Candelabra.

And this is Steven Soderbergh's portrait of Liberace and his lover kind of in the last decade or so of his life. I really like this one because it dispenses with everything before.

It is disinterested in the rise. And I find the rise usually like a little dull in these movies. I do. I wish there was a little bit more Fat Elvis in the film Elvis.

And Behind the Candelabra is one long stretch of Fat Elvis as Liberace becomes entrenched in this sort of addictive, excessive, absurd lifestyle that he has come to build in which he is constantly getting plastic surgeries. And he is supporting his lover getting plastic surgeries. And they're getting entrenched in lawsuits and it is um a kind of glib and kind of sweet portrayal of true love and asking the question of what is true love when you have all the money in the world and you all you care about is beauty um steven soderbergh directed this movie one of our faves on this show uh funny to think of this as an HBO movie now that Steven Soderbergh is making HBO movies on the regular. But this was an HBO movie

before that was his full-time job. It was made almost 10 years ago now. And, you know, Michael Douglas, of course, is brilliant as Liberace. And Matt Damon is absolutely hilarious as his lover, Scott Thorson.

Some of the best work Damon's ever done. Great cast all the way through. Dan Aykroyd, Rob Lowe, Debbie Reynolds, Scott Bakula. Really just a murderer's row of people who know exactly what movie they're in and exactly the tone of kind of slip, like slippery comedy that they're doing about this person's life while not

necessarily mocking Liberace or the people around him. It's, it's not out and out. It's not parody. It's not comedy, even though it is very comic. So behind the candelabra, love this one. Okay, Amanda, number four.

So my number four is another performance film. It's La Vie en Rose, which is Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf. And I don't think that this, again, the filmmaking is kind of scattershot in this. But in making my list, I realized that I really am, I guess I'm just a child of MTV. And if you have the person being brought to life, and if it's a person who I don't have like a lot of first person knowledge of necessarily, I, you know, I don't, I'm sure that there's some Edith Piaf content on YouTube, but I haven't spent a lot of time looking for it. So bringing to life sort of an interpretation of someone whose music I enjoy or has like a specific moment and a cinematic quality, but that I haven't had a lot of access to and thus can't nitpick and be like, that's not how it really was is,

is compelling to me. I just also think this is a great Marianne Cotillard performance. I like her a lot. It's one of my favorite Oscar acceptance speeches. It is true that there are angels in this city tonight. Great line. Thank you, Marianne Cotillard.

So yeah, this is another performance, just incarnation, I guess, piece. And we won't comment on the politics of this film. What are the politics? I don't even know what they are, actually. What happened to Olivier Dahan?

Is he still making films? He must be. I'm not sure. Was this the Coneyard Oscar speech where she said that jet fuel can't melt steel beams? That was later. But we wouldn't have that without La Vie en Rose. Yeah, I forgot if that was on the Oscars. We can all be grateful for that.

Adam, you and I share a number four. What is it? That's 24-Hour Party People by Michael Winsterbottom, who, like his countryman Michael A you cannot you cannot sum up this guy's career true and it's whether it's like he's a maverick or he became a bit of a hack or he's just adventurous or he's just industrious like it's such a buried body of work but he kind of has this through line which is when he does things with steve coogan they're very good you know like 24 hour party people but also tristram shandy which is is a great movie, and the Trip series, which I really like. And 24 Hour Party People stars Steve Coogan as a supremely unreliable

narrator, right? Taking us through his own role in basically the blooming of a sort of alt-rock, indie-rock, dance music, Manchester club scene that ended up intersecting with some of the most important careers in British rock music, right? The careers of Joy Division and Out of the Ashes of That. You get New Order, you get the Happy Mondays. And the film is just made with this real picaresque wit to it. You don't take Coogan's word for granted.

He breaks the fourth wall he tells you certain things were invented or this is just kind of how it felt versus what really happened and the soundtrack just kicks ass i mean it's great music right and the movie moves to that rhythm and that beat i just like it as a kind of irreverent scene film a film about a scene and the blossoming of a scene and it just you, you know, when it has cliches, it calls itself out on them. I love that about it. It's like very annotated as a rock biopic. Yeah, it's having its cake and eating it too. You know, it is simultaneously telling the story of this really exciting period in popular music in England. And it's also making fun of it. You know, there's that amazing moment where we see

Howard DeVoto having sex with Tony Wilson's wife. And then there's an extra in the frame who turns to camera and says, I definitely don't remember this happening. And the person who does that is the real life Howard DeVoto. And so there are all these little Russian doll gags throughout the movie that are really, really fun. And you nailed it. This is Winterbottom and Steve Coogan coming together for the first time, and they made eight movies together. They'll probably make more movies together. They have this long collaboration, and they just get each other.

I think Winterbottom really gets Coogan and gets what's fun about Coogan, even when not all those movies are great. He understands his sense of humor really well. And we're living in this moment where this fourth wall breaking is now quite dire. I mean, this is like what happens with Adam McKay's stuff. And it's like, it's hard to do that well. Yeah. You know, and there's a lightness to the way Winterbottom directs it.

I think so much of it has to do with Coogan as well, who I can't think of an actor who's kind of better at staying just on the right and wrong side of obnoxious than Steve Coogan is. He can have some gravity and some soul to him too. And his Tony Wilson isn't a complete degenerate. He's quite funny and has a sort of rueful philosophy about what he's been through. And it's also just a great primer for people learning about that scene. I like the paradox that it's a great primer and learning tool, even though a lot of it isn't true. But I still think it's a great way to get into it. Amanda, you're number three. Surprisingly, when I put out the call on Twitter about what do people think is the best music biopic, another film that's on both of our lists was probably the

number one response. But the number two response, I think was your number three movie. So what is it? Yeah, I think so. Oh, that's so interesting. It's love and mercy, which is a Brian Wilson biopic. And it's told in it's from 2014.

Um, and it's told in two parts. There is, which I don't normally like, but I guess does get away with like the, the aging makeup of the cradle to grave it's about brian wilson and um older brian wilson is played by john cusack and younger brian wilson in the pet sounds era is played by paul dano and so i think this is a bit more sophisticated and how Now it's telling this story of a long and illustrious and often troubled career.

It kind of it doesn't quite separate the professional and the personal struggles, but it gives you kind of two lenses to to go through the 60s and the creation of the Beach Boys and then kind of like the aftermath connecting them, but not having to do that narrative Wikipedia straight through line. I think the performances are really great. And also I just, you know, I like every other person in the world loved the Beach Boys. So I do think part of the appeal of these is having some sort of connection to the music um but i i think that this is in its structure and the way the story is told it's sensitive and it hits a lot of the familiar biopic beats but not in that kind of plotting biographical way yeah i think this is a good movie it's an unusual uh artifact it's It's one of the only movies directed by a guy named Bill Pollad, who is the son of Carl Pollad, the billionaire owner of the Minnesota Twins. And he has spent his life producing movies mostly. He was one of the

producers of Brokeback Mountain and 12 Years a Slave and The Tree of Life. And he's considered sort of like a benefactor of sorts for great filmmakers and and fund some of those movies this is really the only real movie of note that he directed and clearly a passion project for him that's pretty good it's pretty good for the son of a billionaire you know kind of helicoptering in and telling a sensitive story um i i do think that um it's a good movie um bobby our resident baseball expert is sharing that um he's not much of a benefactor for great baseball teams unfortunately which is in fact true if you're a minnesota twins fan in the last 10 years uh okay my number three is going to come up later so why don't we skip that but we will do your number three adam what is it this is an interesting one

i re-watched this recently what did i pick as my number three oh yeah no of course i picked bird by by clint eastwood a really obscure and under-discussed american filmmaker who we've never brought up on the big picture before um you know i i think that it's really there's this period in the 80s where eastwood is cashing in his chips you know and then of course in the 90s and the 2000s and now he keeps cashing in his chips because he has a lot of chips right you make the orangutan movies and make a fortune and you can do whatever you want and like no one is asking for a depressing two hour and 40 minute slow-paced biopic about like you know the tortured the tortured relationship between charlie parker

and his and his wife and just the difficult life of Charlie Parker. This is not a market driven film. People would have much rather Eastwood made another dirty Harry movie or, or something, but Eastwood is a jazz fan. He's in, he's an aficionado. He sees so much about the artistic process and about the agony of creation

and a certain principle in Charlie Parker, who you might not think is the poster boy for ethics on one hand, but he, you know, he was so committed to his craft and that theme of craft as self-destruction is interesting to Eastwood in different ways. It's kind of what Bronco Billy's about. It's what White Hunter Blackheart is about. So he's not so arrogant as to turn Charlie Parker into a self-portrait of himself, but clearly as a filmmaker and as a jazz fan, he's like, who was this guy? And he just has one of the great casting strokes of the 80s, which is he gives you Forrest Whitaker as Charlie Parker. He won the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival. And it's a haunting, eerie, uncanny inhabitation of a part.

I mean, you know, he's not playing his instrument, Whitaker, you know, in a realistic way necessarily, but the performance is note perfect. And the people I like reading when I've read about Burt over the years, not so much film critics, because they say the same 10 things about Eastwood that we all say, but it's interesting reading Parker's biographers

and jazz fans, because it's not a film that people like. People have lots of issues with it. And I have friends who are kind of old jazz heads who are like, this is wrong and this is wrong and this is wrong. But, you know, as someone who likes Eastwood and likes him in his kind of grave, severe, slow paced mode, I even like Jersey Boys. You know, I think Bird is a... Now, now, let's settle down, Adam. Adam, settle down.

I do like Jersey Boys. Are we really... We're going to rescue Jersey Boys on the pod now? That's what we're doing? It doesn't need to be rescued. Jersey Boys can rescue you. But I think... I just think Bird's very strong.

There's an interesting thing about Bird. There's two interesting things about the pre-production of it. One, for years, it was supposed to be Richard Pryor portraying Charlie Parker and it ultimately became Forest Whitaker. And two is that it was, I think the rights to this story

were owned by a different studio and not Warner Brothers where Eastwood has made all of his movies for many years. And they had to do a trade. They had to trade the Kevin Costner, Tony Scott movie Revenge

from Warner Brothers to Columbia and the Charlie Parker story from Columbia to Warner Brothers in order for these two movies to get made. Revenge and Bird would be quite a double feature. I'm not sure they have a ton in common. What a gift to history Revenge turned out to be. I don't know if anyone here listening to this has watched Revenge recently. That is not a movie that social media should go anywhere near. It is. That is, that is, that is, that is, they do not make them like that anymore. That's all I'm going to say.

Dark energy in the film Revenge. Very, very dark energy. That's, that's for a different pod. So like I said, I'm going to hold my three, but Amanda,

you and I share a number two, which is, maybe it should have been number one. I don't, I don't know. Pretty perfect film. Speaking of five-star films. I know. We got cute with our list making and where you put the best thing at number two and the

passion project at number one. I don't know. You know, we're just trying to create content for you guys. It's Amadeus, which is a masterpiece of a film and it counts. It's definitely made up large parts of it but the it's still it is creative in how it tells the true parts of the story and thus the character of mozart is like a lot more alive and vibrant and the film itself is more interesting because you aren't tied to a Wikipedia page. And, you know, it's three hours, just like a huge, like the music and the costumes and like

and the production value, just like the creation of it is like at the highest level. While also being pretty weird. This is a weird movie. Yeah, it has some stylistic tricks, the way that music is kind of rendered on screen, the way that we see Mozart kind of imagine the way that he wrote, I think is a fascinating aspect of it. It actually has a little bit in common with Elvis in that it's the story of this titanic, almost imperceptible figure in the culture through the lens of a lesser and perhaps more frustrated figure that is, you know, entrenched in their life. And that's the figure of Salieri and F.

Murray Abraham's performance of Salieri in the film. And, you know, it's funny that, like, I think the lasting memory of this movie is not Tom Hulse, but F. Murray Abraham, you know, and that's in part because of the way that the film is constructed and the way that it is sort of like imagined, as you said, Amanda, like the fact that they kind of mess with the specific details of Mozart and Salieri story, but nevertheless, it's really effective in conveying like the titanic nature of the music that he wrote. Yeah. And I think that this movie actually does manage to convey some of maybe like not the interiority of Mozart, but at least the genius of Mozart by not trying to do that. Like who was Mozart?

Right. Like what made him click and all of those things that I think it's smart that Elvis doesn't do that, even though you feel the lack of it because Elvis doesn't fill anything else in. And, you know, I think also Amadeus has the benefit of just like jealousy being a very compelling narrative structure that everyone can relate to in some way. But yeah, it manages to tell you something, maybe not about the man, but about the art of Mozart, while also, I think, portraying in a very interesting way, like the phenomenon of Mozart that we're all familiar with,

which again, I think is like a really important part of these movies DNA. Yeah. I mean, Milos Forman directed this, Peter Schaeffer wrote it. It's one of the, one of the historic movies in the last 50 years,

one, all the Oscars, huge, huge deal. If you haven't seen it race out tonight watch it um okay so adam i'm gonna ask you to hold your number two i'm gonna let amanda cook with her with her number one so i thought a lot about this and was like almost a little embarrassed but then i went 360 on it or 180 i I'm not really sure directions wise. You did 720.

You Tony Hawk'd your way to it. 1080? I went through like all of the stages of putting something in public and I just decided to put Walk the Line at number one because you know what? I really like this movie and I think there is, Walk Hard is like a beat for beat parody of all of it

because I watched them in succession last night and that was both sobering and a reminder to me that for something to be an effective parody, it has to be working from something that actually works and walk. The line is straight down the middle, every single trope cradle to grave. There's a, there is literally someone gets, has an incident with a buzzsaw,

a brother, a favored brother, and that sets the whole movie into motion. But it is just like a really effective version of what it is. I think the performances are very good. Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Johnny Cash, and Reese Witherspoon, who plays June Carter Cash, do sing, which we can debate whether that was the right move. I admire that they tried. I think Reese Witherspoon's pretty good. I think it's a great performance in general. Also, she's lit like a Greek goddess. It's extraordinary how beautiful she looks in this movie.

I'm happy for her. But I think the other thing about this movie is that it is a, it's a love story and it helps that it's a true life love story. And so it is, it's framed around a redemption, I guess, but also just like a nice cinematic moment that happened in, in real life. And I like a love story. And I think they're very good together in that chemistry. It's a little surprising, actually. Joaquin Phoenix, despite being the Joker, is one of my favorite actors.

And I think he's really good and kind of weird in this. Despite being the Joker. Well, you know. And then he moves very beautifully, as we learned in Joker and also on stage in these performances. So they, I think it hits the notes just right. And the notes are very predictable.

But I, I just, I like it a lot. And I went with my heart. Adam, you're number three. Excuse me. You're number one is my number three. What is it? Speaking of love stories, right? Speaking of, of rock and roll love stories. This was one of these films and we all have them based on our age or where

we're getting our movies from. This is like on the short list of things that like 10 or 11 year old Adam rented when he shouldn't have, and just severely fucked him up, which is Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy, which was watched almost without really an understanding of who Sid Vicious was. I mean, the movie was kind of teaching me that because as much as we all try and lie

and beef up our cool credentials, I was not like cool Sid Vicious when I was 11, you know, that my parents' record collection did not extend to that. You know, they had the Beatles and they had the Rolling Stones, but they did not have the Sex Pistols. And I was watching it because like as a young pre-tween or whatever,

I was like, I want to see things that people say are tough or challenging or difficult. And it had just this irresistible cover box art that didn't even make it look like it was about musicians. It just made it look like it was about deeply unhappy, you know, kind of like it was about deeply unhappy, you know, kind of like tired people, addicts, basically. And I watched it, and it's just such an incredibly upsetting movie.

And it's not made like a documentary, but the acting has a documentary texture in it. Like Gary Oldman and Chloe Webber, they're not acting. I mean, they are acting, but this does not feel like acting. It's like they're possessed, you know? It's fairly factual, I think, from measuring it against documentaries and stuff I've read about those two, and, you know, Sid Vicious is one of those guys who lives up to his own self-appointed surname. I mean, this is not a sympathetic or likable character to say the least

and the sex pistols are not even necessarily a great band i'm sure someone's going to tweet at me and be like they're great you suck i mean to me it's not about them being a good band they transcend being good or bad because they just were willing to go to certain places like the style of music they wrote and the lyrical subjects that they took on and what and when they existed in british culture was like seminal they don't have to be good they're more than good they're like formative but just seeing what the upshot of all that was and what that did to sid vicious and nancy spongin is very harrowing the last 10 or 15 minutes of this movie are very hard to watch and maybe i think they're harder to watch than

most people because of when i watched them in my life. It's like not a good thing to see when I saw it, but I just think it's kind of above reproach. It's like kind of an unbearable movie, but it's really good. And Oldman, again, I mean, what an amazing actor. Before he was capital G

Gary Oldman and you know, playing Mank or whatever, he's incredible. Not or whatever. How dare you? Back when he was, he played Mank. All right. There's nothing wrong with that, Adam.

He's, he's, he's, he's incredible in Sid and Nancy. They both are. And you could also see a youngish Courtney Love in the background of the, of the movie before her own. Yeah. In the very first scene. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Before her own rise to deserved in my, I should say, deserve notoriety and stardom on certain terms for courtney love but uh and i think it's an amazing movie well there's almost like a post-modern concept of a figure like courtney love appearing in a movie like this about this kind of doomed love affair between these two rock figures um the ending of this movie is just a gut shot it's just brutal when he gets into the back of the car and the cab drives off and he thinks he sees her and then the postscript hits and it's just like you know sid vicious died of a heroin overdose like it's just an incredibly dire movie feat with amazing performances and um alex cox going repo man and sid and sid nancy back to back

is pretty pretty amazing well especially, especially because Repo Man is a kind of punk movie, but the vibes are good in Repo Man. Or like they're good in a they're affirmative, right? And Sid and Nancy, it's only two people, so you can't call a movie about two people apocalyptic, but like the vibe

is apocalyptic. You're like, this is not the end of the movie or the end of these people. This is the end of everything when that ends. And yeah, no, it really did a number on me. Speaking of almost castings, this is almost Daniel Day-Lewis. It almost wasn't Gary Oldman, which would have also been a fascinating

wrinkle. And where would Gary Oldman be, I wonder, if he was not Sid Vicious? Playing Meg. Still. And thriving. That's what you want to say. Okay, last one. My number one is adam's number two it's i'm not there i suspect adam you've got it pretty high on your list for the same reason that i do which is that we're probably at this stage having seen too many movies and also being extremely admiring of the subject of the movie more interested in the mythological deconstruction

deconstruction than the reconstruction of their stories. And this is Todd Haynes' amazing vision of Bob Dylan and the many sides of Bob Dylan, the many parts of Bob Dylan, what he represents to America, what he represents to songwriting, but more really what he represents, I think, to us on an individual basis. Bob Dylan is one of the great artists of getting into different phases. And because his career is so long, great artists of getting into different phases. And because his career is so long, there are so many versions of him. This movie, in fact, I think has seven different versions of Bob. Some of them rendered an impressive performance. Some of them rendered an unbelievable performance in the case of Cate Blanchett. This is a really beautiful and daring

and utterly unique vision of music on film. And I'm a massive Todd Haynes fan, as listeners of the show know. And so it's just a movie that really speaks to something that I care about a lot. I like Elvis. I love Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan shaped how I think. And that's trite, but it's true. And so I think that this movie is really, really profound and fascinating. And there's a lot to pull apart on third, fourth, fifth viewings. So it's definitely my favorite of the genre. Well, we should give a shout to a movie that's kind of the spiritual progenitor of I'm Not There, which is Superstar, which is the first thing Todd Haynes ever made, which is like a mini Karen Carpenter biopic where he uses Barbie dolls. The Karen Carpenter estate was not happy with that movie,

right? He's conveying the story of struggle and anorexia, and he's front foregrounding the cliches. And he's like, well, how does this look if someone's basically, you know, starving herself to death if she's an actual Barbie doll, right? I mean, that's the art school part of Haynes. And then when he gets a slightly bigger canvas, he makes Velvet Goldmine, which is like not a rock biopic exactly, but it's like a B-side or an A-side not a rock biopic exactly but it's like a b side or a an a side to 24 hour party people where it's like looking at the scene through that musical history and you know like very good and yeah i'm not there kind of culminates the pop tendency that haynes has and as you said you know multiple iterations iterations of Dylan to mirror the fact that he's such a shape-shifting artist, hugely pretentious movie, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Hugely pretentious and very, and I'm saying these things with a smile, but like pretentious and impressed with itself and very aware of its own like daring, but it blows through all those things because it is smart and it is and it is daring and the collaborators haynes is able to work with it's crazy to me that 20 years after making a movie with barbie dolls it's like christian bale come on down heath ledger come on down kate blanchett anyone who's a good actor you know richard gear who's terrific he's not really good i think he's really

good um so yeah and also like not just different iterations of Dylan, but just different iterations of period filmmaking. He styles one segment after D.A. Pennebaker and he styles one whole segment after, you know, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He's he's playing around. Right. And I know that another way of saying playing around is that he's jerking off. And so you can sort of, you know, you have your own. We all playing with his dolls like every director. Yeah, we all directors do. We all have our tolerances for these things of, you know, you have your own. Playing with his dolls, like every director. Yeah, that's what all directors do.

We all have our tolerances for these things. And you know what? I'm not even like an exceptional Dylan fan. I admire him. I actually rather listen to Llewyn Davis sometimes than Bob Dylan, which is a whole other kind of disguised music biopic. Not hearing any money in that take, Adam. No, there's no money in that take. And I don't really mean that. But what I mean is that Dylan is like genuinely spacious enough that one movie won't do it.

Yeah. So let's make seven movies in one and make the act of doing that be the meaning and be the significance. Todd Haynes is in like the 99th percentile of smartness for American filmmakers having interviewed him. He is the smartest, smarty, smartness for American filmmakers having interviewed him. He is the smartest, smarty, smart guy that you will ever meet. And I think that I think I'm not there as a pinnacle of that smartness, which doesn't mean there isn't feeling in it. Right. But it is a deeply conceptual movie and some other biopics, even whether they're good or bad or so bad, they're good and we love them anyway. They bypass that smartness and go more for just the kind of direct connection we sometimes

make to pop music. And that's an interesting thing to debate, I think, with I'm Not There. Is it too smart for its own good? I don't think so. But the argument is there. It's funny. I really like this movie. And Sean and I did, I think, a regular biopics episode.

And I believe that I'm Not There was on my biopics list, but not my music biopics episode. And I believe that I'm not there was on my biopics list, but not my music biopics list. And I think some of that is just I was trying to, you know, do variety, but also that I do think of it more as that, you know, image deconstruction. And, you know, there's a bit of like the arthouse to it. And maybe I'm just being rude to music biopics, or I have a very narrow definition. But no, I agree, but no i agree adam it's it's i mean it's an amazing film and really smart and definitely like speaks to my interest in celebrity um but then somehow i didn't put it on my music list well it's just unraveling all of the conventions but the one thing that i like about him and i agree with you adam that he is very intelligent and has thought through deeply every decision that he is making, which you can

feel. And I just so appreciate it because most directors, I don't feel that that's the case. The same thing was true in the Velvet Underground documentary that he made. The thing that fascinates him is originating power. It's like, where did this come from and how did it come together? And if the Velvet Underground movie is about the scene that informed the rise of that band and the way that the all of the people who are participating essentially contributed in small ways to this you know essential american band the same is true for this but just in reverse it's just like here was a piece here was a piece here was a piece here was a piece when you mash them

all together you get this one singular figure and you can feel the intentionality in all of his movies. And since you mentioned the Velvet Underground doc, can I make one stray observation, which is not only would Velvet Underground be a good double bill with I'm Not There because of the auteur thing, what an interesting double bill the Velvet Underground doc is with Get Back. Because Haynes is the sort of filmmaker who, I'm not using manipulation in a negative context, but he controls and shapes and contours everything.

Not that the film is dishonest, but it's so schematized and conceptual. Like that Velvet Underground doc is anything but just sit and listen to the music. And then Jackson in the Beatles film, no less intelligently, but just such a different approach. He's just like, I'm not going to shape this at all. I'm going to tweak with like you know skin tone and i'm going to insert a calendar every so often you know just so you know what day it is but i mean jackson doesn't fiddle with it at at all and they're both epic i mean get back is way more epic because it's literally endless but i love the idea that for when it it's great. I love Get Back, don't get me wrong.

But like with Hanes, all control and all shaping and very cerebral and something like Get Back is no less about a scene and an epochal moment and whatever else. But I mean, there you don't,

you don't get any tropes. You don't get any technique. You kind of just sit, you know. Let's conclude our conversation there. Adam, thank you so much. Where can we we where can we read you on the ring what are you writing about what's coming up what am i writing about i'm hopefully what did i just write about i wrote about the original top gun which is not as good as the new top gun agree and i wrote about the you know what i wrote about which which could maybe be an episode of this podcast when it's over or one of your other podcasts.

You guys watching Irma Vep? Yeah, I am. Should I talk to Olivier Assayas about this? Yeah, you should. Someone should talk to him. He should talk to, he should also talk to somebody. Because, you know, not to hijack this into Irma Vep, but for the people out there who have seen the movie Irm of Ep, if you're not watching this show, you need to, and then you need to find like five other people and have a group chat about it because it is insane. This television show, because I was

only writing about it for you guys or for us based on four episodes. And I've now seen episodes five and six, and all I want to do is talk about them. It's driving me nuts. I'm going to call you so we can talk about it. Because I watched the first two and I didn't know anybody else who was watching it. And I was like, so what do I do with this? Do I sit here alone? Well, no, I did the film comment podcast about this already. But it looks like, yeah, who's watching this? And it's like people who remember Irma Vep, who remembers Irma Vep,

which then begs the question, why is HBO doing this? I am so fascinated. Anyhow, we can get into that in a future episode, perhaps. Adam, thank you. Amanda, thank you. We'll be back on The Big Picture next week. Chris Ryan and I will be building a Hall of Fame to Ethan Hawke and talking about the black phone.

Thanks to Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. We'll see you next week. you