The Hazard of the Authorized Biopic

Look, I’m not going to see Michael. I just can’t. Michael Jackson shaped my childhood, sure. I remember singing “Billie Jean” on my bus in kindergarten. I remember when Colleen Rhemm fell of the monkey bars and broke her arm and got weirdly into him because the Pepsi commercial thing was at about the same time and “he knew pain.” (Second grade, man.) I’ve got lots of stories. And, yes, the day he died, I heard while I was driving and had to stop my car and turn around and tell someone I kind of knew because I had to share and no one else I knew was around. None of that is enough to make me watch that movie.

And it’s because it’s authorized. The family worked with the filmmakers. Prince Jackson is an executive producer. His nephew is portraying him. (Jermaine’s kid, for those of us old enough to remember any of the brothers.) The family is deeply involved in the movie, and that means we’re not going to see reality. It does appear that it delves into the issues with Joe, but come on—that’s not exactly cutting edge stuff. I’ve known for decades that Joe Jackson sucked, and I’m pretty sure not a member of the family disagrees on that.

Any time you’ve got an authorized biopic, you have to be aware that it’s going to be working to appease someone connected to them. Walk the Line is a phenomenal picture, but it’s also based in part of Johnny Cash’s own autobiographies. There are things in the movie he wouldn’t have brought up himself, and at least Rosanne Cash wasn’t particularly involved, but still. It’s well known that Bohemian Rhapsody suffers greatly from the interference of the surviving members of Queen. They were, it seems, concerned with “protecting his legacy” and didn’t want the unpleasant bits mentioned.

It’s even a problem outside music. Frank Abagnale, Jr., was a consultant on Catch Me If You Can and therefore perhaps forgot he’s an unreliable narrator of his own life. John Nash was involved enough in A Beautiful Mind to have written the equations on chalkboards for it. The Theory of Everything is based on Jane Hawking’s book. JFK is just Jim Garrison’s Point of View: The Movie. The Wolf of Wall Street has the same problem. Ali is authorized by the man himself.

Limitations of the sort aren’t new. At least we don’t have to deal with the Code anymore. I haven’t seen Blue Moon, not particularly liking Ethan Hawke as I do, but it’s got to be a more accurate telling of the life of Lorenz Hart than Words and Music. Even if it apparently, sigh, involves his infatuation with a woman, they declare him an “omnisexual” and let him be interested in men, too, which never would’ve flown under the Code. I cannot imagine 1940’s Brigham Young mentions the word “polygamy.” And boy was a lot left out of The Babe Ruth Story.

And boy was a lot left out of The Babe Ruth Story.

It’s also true, of course, that no biopic can cover everything. Honestly, one of the things I like most about several of my own favourites in the genre is that they don’t try to. Lincoln, of course, is a notable example. The whole movie takes place over about four months and is the story of one thing instead of the man’s entire life. Both of the Cate Blanchett movies about Elizabeth I take the same tactic. And if I can’t think of any biopics of living or recently dead people that follow that plan, maybe they should try.

I understand doing authorized biopics of the living. However, legally, you can’t defame the dead, at least in the US. It’s fully possible to do a film about Michael Jackson that actually discusses what a deeply traumatized—and, by certain accounts, traumatizing—individual he was. You can do a film about Freddie Mercury that talks about his sexuality honestly and openly; ditto Lorenz Hart. These days, go ahead and do a movie about Jim Garrison that shows that he was mobbed up and homophobic and obsessed with conspiracism over truth; that movie would be worth watching.

Most of the time, it’s relatively mild stuff getting glossed over. A little light drug addiction, possibly. Affairs. A less than sterling personality. I also won’t deny that working with the person or their family can still produce amazing results; I already spoke of my fondness for Walk the Line, and of course What’s Love Got to Do With It even had Tina Turner teaching Angela Bassett how she does her makeup. Which, you know, that’s a mental image. But the worst things in Tina Turner’s life was Ike, and no one but Ike wanted to hide how terrible Ike was.