Austin Butler plays Elvis Presley in the movie “Elvis”. (Courtesy: Warner Bros. Pictures/TNS)
The recipe for a biopic is simple. After identifying the subject matter, we mix fact and fiction to present the final work to our audience.
According to Andy Rhodes, senior lecturer in the film studies program and veteran screenwriter, biopics, short for biographical photography, are cinematic adaptations of real-life personal lives. These films seek to exploit the intrigue surrounding celebrities and landmark events.
Biopics released over the past year, including ‘Whitney Houston: I Want to Dance With Someone,’ ‘Blonde,’ and ‘Elvis,’ coincide with a significant influx of celebrity idealizations, Rose said. Due to the cultural value of social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, people increasingly feel entitled to receive other people’s personal information, he said.
“Everybody wants to know everything about someone famous,” Rose said.
According to Rose, inaccuracies are a prominent problem plaguing the biopic genre. A highlight of the authentic human experience Filmmakers tasked with creating his reels sometimes feel pressured to embellish the truth, he said.
“Real life is boring and boring for most people, even celebrities,” Rose said. “Even if you have a week where nothing happens in real life, you have to keep the story moving for 90 minutes.”
David Cassady, a third-year Film Studies student, 2022-2023 Film Student Ambassador, and liaison between future and current film students, believes that paring down a nuanced life story into a feature film is said it was difficult. Unfortunately, he said, minimization occurs frequently in artistic and educational mediums.
“I’m thinking of Native Americans,” Cassady said. “The American school system has simplified their troubles to like his two sentences in the history books.”
Focusing on milestone moments rather than recreating a person’s entire life is one strategy biographers employ to avoid oversimplification, says Cassady. The 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody explores the legendary career of rock star Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), but with the historic 1985 Live Aid concert as its climax and focal point. using.
“Many celebrities have iconic moments in their lifetime that can be used to make great movies,” Cassady said.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, set to release in September 2022 and starring Daniel Radcliffe, is another biopic experimenting with storytelling techniques, said Rose. The script serves as a parody teasing its muse and the entire biography. He said most of the situations depicted were made for comedic purposes.
“It was kind of a fictional satirical story about this weird character, but it was a weird movie based on a weird character, so I thought that was a good angle,” Rose said.
Still, many moviegoers are looking for biopics because they want to familiarize themselves with pop culture, said Isabelle Tettau, a senior in video production and 2022-23 film student ambassador. Audiences need to approach biopics with a degree of nihilism, she said, as they can be intensely commercialized.
“That’s why I love fictional works, because it is you who find your truth in fictional films,” said Tettau. “I still think I can do that in my biography, but I need to be a little more conscious.”
Tettau said he finds biopics about lesser-known figures most intriguing.
“I really like movies like ‘Selma’ and ‘Hidden Figures,'” said Tetau. “They give me a point of context so I can investigate further.”
Biopics are still attractive and profitable, but the general public’s appetite for biopics may wane over time, Rose said.
“I think we can get to the point where we’re doing biographies about people no one even cares about anymore,” Rose said. copy it.”
