Biopic: A Podcast Story

Episode 8: Rocketman

Rena and Sara discuss Rocketman, the 2019 musical biopic about the life and work of the one and only Elton John. 
Are musicals realistic biopics, or not? We discuss the parameters of why they totally are, and why everything about this movie is pretty darn delightful, from the brilliant costumes, the fabulous singing and dancing, and the stylish exploration of the sad, desperate world of being a superstar drug and alcohol addict. Come for the world’s most improbable twelve-step meeting, stay for the glorious digressions about football hero John Madden (no relation to Richard), Bernie Tau-PAHN, Queen Latifah, inner children, bad parents, and how Taron Egerton makes Elton John so freaking hot.
Rocketman stars Taron Egerton, Richard Madden, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Gemma Jones, Stephen Graham, and Harriet Walter, and is directed by Dexter Fletcher and written by Lee Hall. 
 
Sources: 
Was Elton John’s Manager John Reid Really Such a Jerk?
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/elton-john-manager-john-reid-jerk/#:~:text=Richard%20Madden%20stars%20as%20John,television%20credits%20to%20his%20name.
Scattershot by Bernie Taupin 
Me by Elton John
Rocket Man: The Life of Elton by Mark Bego
Captain Fantastic: Elton John's Stellar Trip Through the '70s by Tom Doyle
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Episode 7: Bessie

Rena and Sara watched Bessie, the 2015 HBO movie starring Queen Latifah as Blues Empress Bessie Smith.
We dissect the glory that is Mo’Nique, the spiritual battle between Dee Rees and Horton Foote, and the world’s fakest-looking pair of emerald earrings as we journey through Bessie Smith’s rise, fall, and recovery (and thankfully, not her tragic death). The all-over-the-place screenplay inspires us to whip out our corkboard, red thread and tinfoil hats with a theory about the 22 year journey the original screenplay took to film. It cannot be overstated: Rena really hates the (extremely fake-looking like they came out of a crackerjack box) emerald earrings.
Bessie stars Queen Latifah, Mo’nique, the late, great Michael K. Williams, Khandi Alexander, Mike Epps, Charles S. Dutton, and Oliver Platt.
 
Sources:
https://slate.com/culture/2015/05/bessie-hbo-accuracy-fact-vs-fiction-in-the-hbo-biopic-of-bessie-smith-the-empress-of-blues.html
Bessie by Chris Albertson 
The Famous Lady Lovers by Cookie Woolner
 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Episode 6: Milk

Kicking off Gay Pride Month with a masterpiece, Rena and Sara discuss Milk, the 2008 film directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black. Sean Penn won an Oscar for Best Actor for his outstanding, joyful portrayal of the late San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, who shattered closet doors while battling the Christian Coalition, Anita Bryant, and the mediocre white schmuck colleague who would assassinate him between bouts of allegedly eating too much junk food and complaining about the need for traditional family values. That colleague sucks, but Harvey Milk – and this film – do not.  
There’s also plenty of discussion of San Francisco’s local political scene, the development hell of the Harvey Milk biopic that went on for nearly two decades, the astonishing number of problematic actors in this film, a hair-raising encounter between Sean Penn and activist and film hero Cleve Jones, and why Allison Pill should be president. Rena and Sara also both noted that at no point in Milk is that unspeakably mediocre colleague who assassinated Harvey Milk shown eating a Twinkie.
Milk stars Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Allison Pill, Denis O’Hare, Diego Luna, Joseph Cross, Stephen Spinella, and Lucas Grabeel. The film was directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black. 
 
Visual Aids: milk-biopic-podcast-story-episode-6-n9RnOkw 
Mediocre White Male Bonus Content: https://imgur.com/gallery/dan-whites-got-issue-patron-saint-of-mediocre-white-dudes-ftAS3UX
References and sources mentioned: 
“Everything Milk Doesn’t Tell You About the True Story,” Looper.com 
“Remembering Jonestown, Dan White, and the two weeks that ate San Francisco,” by Paul Krassner, San Francisco Guardian, November 23, 1993 
Season of the Witch by David Talbot 
 
The Mayor of Castro Street, by Randy Shilts
When We Rise, by Cleve Jones
The Times of Harvey Milk (documentary)
 
LGBT Equality Index
https://www.equaldex.com/equality-index
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Irrelevant Host Banter: Edition 1

Rena and Sara prefer that our podcast be at least half an hour shorter than the movies that we talk about. Rena generally dislikes listening to other podcast hosts banter about their personal lives, so she's happy to cut all of that out. But we needed to learn some new audio skills, so she spliced together a bunch of random irrelevant host banter and a few things that were cut for running time.
Topics include:
The excellence of Teresa Anne Savoy's hair in Caligula.
Sara's insights regarding the role of dinosaurs in American history.
A trip to Père Lachaise.
Listener feedback.
Rena's least favorite biopic.
Plus much, much more.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Imgur: https://imgur.com/user/BiopicAPodcastStory

Emergency Episode: The Reagan Trailer

Reagan is finally here and boy does it look mighty bad.
Rena and Sara try to make sense of the Reagan trailer, a film that has been waiting for its moment since filming in 2020, and speculate on its contents, whether its director is an auteur, and the putty and prosthetics budget. We play a game called “Desperate or Canceled.” This film will star Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan, Mena Suvari as Jane Wyman, Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, Dan Lauria as Tip O'Neill, king of accent work Jon Voight, Robert Davi, Kevin Dillon, Scott Stapp, and maybe Kevin Sorbo. 
We peel back the infinite layers of Jon Voight's unconvincing de-aging makeup on our journey through development hell and production purgatory, in search of empty cowboys. Along the way, we meet an unholy daisy chain of banally-named production companies, make bets on the still-unconfirmed running time, explore the choices made while filming during COVID, and identify the bad guys and the absentees.
Spoiler warning: We might spoil everything? We’ll know more when the film comes out on August 30. 
Visual Aids: https://imgur.com/gallery/reagan-trailer-emergency-episode-of-biopic-podcast-story-tvdbwrk

Introduction: Who Are We and What Are We Doing?

Rena and Sara do an introductory explainer episode for Biopic: A Podcast Story.
This is where we explain how the rating system works, how we choose what movies to cover next, and what is and is not a biopic for the purposes of this podcast.
We talk about ourselves a little bit, and Rena serendipitously pitches Sara’s dream biopic project: Andy Warhol Presents Abe Lincoln’s Sleep.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Episode 5: The Conqueror

Rena and Sara discuss The Conqueror, a 1956 Howard Hughes production starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. You read that correctly. This one is a doozy. Join us as we dig into all the things that make The Conqueror, er, special, including radioactive sand, a demoralised RKO studios gutted by Hughes, a supposedly tame panther, future Klingon gear, and a script full of insane, stilted, pseudo-archaic dialog that Wayne didn't bother reading until he arrived on the Utah desert set that was posing as the Gobi.
The Duke told screenwriter Oscar Millard that he couldn't say any of this dialogue, and was told that it was too late to change anything. It all went downhill from there in a shoot that would affect much of the cast and crew for the rest of their lives—because they were shooting 137 miles downwind of a nuclear test site.
The Conqueror also starred Susan Hayward (whose glamorous wardrobe makes no sense in the Gobi), Agnes Moorehead (of Bewitched and Citizen Kane), Pedro Armendáriz (who returned to the set eight days after breaking his jaw), and future spaghetti western luminary Lee Van Cleef, and was Dick Powell's first venture as a director. He was apparently a very nice guy.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Episode 4: Respect

What do you do when your assessment of a movie is out of step with critical and public consensus? That is a question that we found ourselves pondering on watching Respect, the 2021 Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson as Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, Forrest Whitaker as Reverend C.L. Franklin, Marc Maron as Jerry Wexler, Audra Ann McDonald as Barbara Franklin, Titus Burgess as James Cleveland, and a dude from White Chicks as Ted White.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Episode 3: Caligula

Rena and Sara slog through Caligula, the infamous 1979 life story of the notorious ancient Roman emperor, starring Malcolm McDowell as Caligula, Helen Mirren as Caesonia, John Gielgud as Nerva, Peter O'Toole as Tiberius, Teresa Ann Savoy as Drusilla, and a slew of miserable or clueless-looking naked and barely dressed people. It was produced by Penthouse owner Bob Guccione Jr. from the remains of a Gore Vidal script and features incest, paper mache, and the world's first Zambomi-slash-head-chopper-off machine. What else does this movie have? Trial-free delivery via mail chute to crazy people jail, magic, pornography, suicide, poison...everything. We had so much to unpack. It was insane.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Episode 2: Coal Miner's Daughter

Our second biopic is Coal Miner's Daughter, the life story of country music legend Loretta Lynn. Rena and Sara discuss the Academy Award-winning 1980 flick, directed by Michael Apted and starring Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn, Tommy Lee Jones as Doolittle Lynn, Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline, and Levon Helm as Loretta's dad, Mr. Webb, the titular coal miner. Hot topics include poorly executed hair dye jobs, whether coal mining is glamorous, and how young is too young to get married.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Images: https://imgur.com/gallery/coal-miners-daughter-episode-2-g63YPsO 

Episode 1: The Doors

It's called The Doors. It's mostly about Jim Morrison.
Our first episode! Rena and Sara watched Oliver Stone's The Doors, starring Val Kilmer as lead singer Jim Morrison. Join us as we learn about leather pants, freshmen lit 101, and how to get famous fast in the '60s.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Images: https://imgur.com/gallery/doors-episode-1-gdklSEO