If the new Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t include at least one party scene featuring dwarves with platters of cocaine on their heads, I am asking for my money back. While that might look tasteless today (even if the party in question is well documented), there is an impression that the film will seek to put a slant on Mercury’s life, since it is co-produced by his Queen bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor.
That was why Sacha Baron Cohen exited the movie in 2013. According to Cohen, May and Taylor’s idea was that Mercury dies halfway through then “we see the band go from strength to strength”. While May denied that, suspicion lingers that Bohemian Rhapsody will dial back on Mercury’s hedonism and life as a closeted gay man, and fade up the contributions of his band.
Similar doubts hang over Rocketman, next year’s Elton John biopic. It is “based on a true fantasy”, which is already a hint that it’s not going to be an unflinching study of the troubadour’s darkest extremes (“Freddie Mercury could out-party me, which is saying something,” Elton once said). Another hint is that it is co-produced by Elton and his husband David Furnish. The trailer alludes to moments of crisis – 70s Elton daytime-drinking in his dressing gown, winding up in hospital – but, as its star Taron Egerton has explained, Rocketman is more fanciful musical than conventional biopic, with “his songs used to express important beats in his life”.
That is not to say we demand to see our music icons at their most debauched, merely that the involvement of band or close family can mean skeletons remain in the closet. It happened with NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, which counted Dr Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy E’s widow, Tomica Woods-Wright, among its producers. The movie was great, but you would never guess that NWA often had less-than-progressive views about gay people, or a history of assaulting women.
Even when they are not co-produced by them, such “official” biopics rarely happen without the say-so of music rights holders and family estates, who often have terms and conditions, and stand to gain from promotion of the back catalogue. Chadwick Boseman had to dance the mashed potato for James Brown’s family before they approved him for Get on Up, which skipped over much of Brown’s history of domestic violence but made full use of his music. You can tell the ones that didn’t go down this route, such as Stoned (Brian Jones biopic), Backbeat (the early Beatles), and Jimi: All Is By My Side (André Benjamin as Hendrix). In each case, the score was composed of cover versions rather than the artists’ own.
It’s a trade-off: we know we’re never getting the whole truth with music biopics, but it’s good to know whose truth we are getting.
Bohemian Rhapsody is in UK cinemas on 24 October
