The next great biopics

No one wants to talk about a Marvin Gaye movie. Or one about Janis Joplin, or a Jimi Hendrix biopic. As film subjects go, they’re problematic. Heirs to the Joplin and Hendrix estates have blocked films by withholding music and image rights. The pieces to the Gaye story are in so many hands that no one has been able to collect them all in one place.

No, the talk these days is about Queen and Sam Cooke, 2Pac and Teddy Pendergrass, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, Frankie Valli’s days in the Four Seasons and Brian Epstein’s career managing the Beatles. A key factor – and this is a shift in the movie-making paradigm – is access to life rights and music, a desire by stars and heirs to have their stories told and a new level of activity from rights holders.

Securing recordings and publishing rights has become the first order of business rather than the final step in setting up a film.

Heirs and family members are making better efforts to co-ordinate with publishers before taking stories to film-makers. The 20th-century model relied on a studio or production company having an interest in a musician’s story – Benny Goodman, Loretta Lynn, Charlie Parker, for example – and once all the pieces were in place, they’d approach the copyright owners.

In the post- Ray universe, where budgets are smaller and independent companies are the most interested in these stories, rights are secured before a film-making team is assembled. Only one of the 15 or so active biopics with directors, stars, writers or scripts attached has studio backing.

The exception is the story of songwriter/producer Dennis Lambert ( Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got), Don’t Pull Your Love) and his musical reawakening, with Steve Carell ( The Office) in the lead role. It’s attached to a Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley script at Warner Bros. And only one biopic, the Mahalia Jackson story – starring Fantasia Barrino – has reportedly begun shooting.

The Lambert and Jackson stories are among a dozen musician biographies that have made significant strides in the last six months toward becoming reality.

“The time is right” is a common refrain among film-makers, about half of whom note that their movies will focus on a specific time in an artist’s life rather than an entire life span.

For decades, biopic scripts have dramatised a rise, fall and redemption arc, but an increasing number of film-makers are focusing instead on a specific issue and/or time period – Queen as superstars, Dennis Wilson’s post-Beach Boys years, Lambert’s tour of the Philippines. In most cases the story involves overcoming an obstacle, becoming more than just a chronological detailing of a life and career.

“The power of music and second chances drives the Lambert story,” says Jody Lambert, who shot a documentary about his father’s career revival. The 2008 movie Of All the Things was screened at South by Southwest and other film festivals. “Any place where people get their mojo back is a good story, very universal,” he says. Lambert knows the tale will get some Hollywood-style tweaking in the retelling.

He’s not alone, though, in taking an active role in ensuring the story is delivered correctly. The living members of Queen – Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon – created the company Queen Films and joined producer Graham King’s GK Films in getting the band’s tale – which will begin in 1980 and end with Queen’s Live Aid performance in 1985 – turned into a film. Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen will star as the late Freddie Mercury.

ABKCO president Jody Klein owns and controls Sam Cooke’s recordings and publishing and has commissioned a script based on Peter Guralnick’s 2005 book Dream Boogie: The triumph of Sam Cooke(Little, Brown). With the blessing of Cooke’s heirs, he’s shopping it to directors.

The life of Beatles manager Brian Epstein, aka “the Fifth Beatle”, is moving forward with six to 10 Beatles songs, according to executive producer Vivek Tiwary. His Tiwary Entertainment Group, which has produced the road tours of musicals American Idiot and The Addams Family, has been involved with the project since 2005.

A son and daughter of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson have teamed up with former Warner/Chappell executive Brad Rosenberger and film-makers Randy Miller and Jody Savin to tell his story (focusing on the ’70s) in The Drummer.

Jersey Boys, the musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, is aiming for a release in 2013 from GK Films. King calls it “a passion project, something I pursued stronger than anything else in my career”.

Judy McHugh Larkin has commissioned a script about the life of John Larkin, an itinerant jazz pianist who, despite a stuttering problem, sold millions of CDs as Scatman John.

On the flip side, and proof of how valuable a family’s involvement can be, last year the Jerry Garcia estate put the kibosh on Amir Bar-Lev’s film based on Robert Greenfield’s 1996 book Dark Star: An oral biography of Jerry Garcia(William Morrow). The estate said it would not license recordings from the Grateful Dead or Garcia’s solo works and access to family members wouldn’t be provided.

As stars age and the internet threatens to mash up all but the most recent pop culture history, more musical artists are volunteering for biopic treatment.

Aretha Franklin has suggested actresses she would like to portray her – Halle Berry, Jennifer Hudson and Patina Miller – but specifics about a script or financing aren’t forthcoming, though the Queen of Soul has said she’s secured funding. And Ice Cube recently said he was working on an NWA film.

Are such moves a pre-emptive strike? If artists or their heirs publicly state they’re working on their own film, a rival production might back down. The biopics that do get made require a tenacious film-maker and the support of rights holders, usually family members.

“When you look at how long it takes to make a biopic, it’s easier to do these stories as documentaries,” says film-maker David Leaf, who’s branching out into scripted films after having made documentary features about chapters in the lives of John Lennon, James Brown and Brian Wilson.

“There are different storytelling challenges. As a screenwriter, we talk about emotional truth and in documentaries it’s literal truth. You can compress time and characters in a biopic in a way that you can’t in a documentary.”

The current crop of proposed biopics could enhance awareness and value of the artist’s catalogue – crucial for those acts whose songs wouldn’t otherwise be licensed.

Hinging on the Carell film being made or the documentary released, Lambert plans to get his father’s music back in print, especially a newly pressed vinyl version of his lone 1972 solo album, Bags and Things.

The Drummer not only brings attention to Wilson’s 1977 album Pacific Ocean Blue, which Sony Legacy reissued two years ago, but also gives Rosenberger a shot at issuing unreleased solo tracks, possibly on his label Omnivore Recordings.

Biopics once required a star or at least a hot newcomer to play a legend to get a green light – Kurt Russell as Elvis Presley, Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens.

Walk the Line, the 2005 Johnny Cash-June Carter story starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon – and the highest-grossing musical biopic yet – reinvigorated interest in such superstar stories as James Brown and the Beach Boys, but those films never materialised.

Instead, for several years cult artists have been the focus of biopics, many of which target niche audiences. This year’s lone biopic with a release date, Gainsbourg: A Hero, follows that pattern: The French film targets hipsters and Francophiles enthralled by singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg’s work in the ’60s and ’70s.

Other movies benefit from well-documented stories. GK Films’ King says he has seen the Jersey Boys musical more than 20 times in at least five cities. “It’s pure entertainment,” he says.

“We have to capture the essence of the musical but tell the story slightly differently. This is Goodfellas with good music.”

The story of Tupac Shakur, which Morgan Creek is doing with Antoine Fuqua directing and the hip hop superstar’s mother Afeni Shakur Davis executive-producing, is much talked-about. No one has been cast as the rapper – unknowns are being considered, and Soulja Boy told MTV he was asked to audition – but it could be in motion soon.

Such a nonfictional hip hop story might be attractive to film financiers. The semifictional 8 Mile, starring Eminem, was budgeted at $40 million and pulled in $116.7m in the US in 2002. The 2006 film Get Rich or Die Tryin’, loosely based on the life of 50 Cent, had a worldwide gross of $46m and a production budget of $38m. Notorious(2009), about murdered star Christopher “the Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, pulled in more money at the box office – $36.8m in the US – than any other musical biopic of the last five years. But rap, despite the success of 8 Mile, is still considered a niche subject for many distributors.

Focusing on a specific moment in an artist’s life helps keep music licensing costs to a minimum. Such a tack was taken for Nowhere Boy, the 2009 biopic about John Lennon’s childhood and teen years.

A similar film has been proposed about Bob Marley’s year in London that would somehow be made without the songs from his albums at the time – Exodus and Kaya– due to the Marley family’s disinterest in the film.

“So much people want to capitalise,” Ziggy Marley says about some of the proposals regarding his father. The Marley family has tabled biopic offers for now, choosing to support a documentary by Kevin MacDonald ( Last King of Scotland) for Steve Bing’s company Shangri-La.

“The documentary is from us – a much closer look at Bob’s life because of my personal involvement,” Marley adds. “Other people might do something but that’s not our thing. One day there might be a biopic but that’s one day, not right now.”

But when the financing is found, the movie shot and the film finally released, “(biopics) are great performance vehicles for actors,” Rosenberger says. “These are the kinds of movies that make people want to buy soundtracks.” – Billboard.com