In a world where mimicking the gestures of a historical figure is awards bait, Biopic: A Podcast Story examines the good, the bad, the unspeakable, and the hilarious about this category of film that frequently dominates the Oscars but just as often offends our sensibilities. Biopic: A Podcast Story looks at the casting, the acting, the quality of the script, and the endless tropes that dominate these movies. Hosted by Rena and Sara. We have watched a lot of biopics. Biopic: A Podcast Story sits at the meeting point between movie, comedy, and history podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday.
We score episode on a scale of one to ten based on ten categories:
Outward Appearances (Makeup/Hair )
Acting/Casting (Do they capture the spirit of the people they are playing? Beyond that, is the acting good?
Passage of Time
Costuming
Quality of the script
Accuracy
Storytelling (was it clichéd/was it interesting/was it inventive?)
Production value
Production/Direction decision making
Do we care?
We rate each category on the one to ten scale, then divide by ten to reach the final score. You can learn more about the scoring system and about Biopic: A Podcast Story in general by listening to our very special introductory episode, "Introduction: Who Are We and What Are We Doing?"
To see how past episodes have fared in the ratings, please check out our comprehensive ratings page.
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. Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
This is a re-recording of an episode that originally dropped on June 4, 2024, as the first film in our 2024 Pride Month series. We are re-releasing it because the original version sounded like we recorded it inside a wind tunnel on board a submarine. It sounded that way because we didn’t know that we needed to turn off the air conditioner before recording an episode. 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-n9 nOkia 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. Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Bluesky: @biopic-podcast.bsky.social Threads: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/biopicapodcaststory Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
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. The clips in this episode were taken from the following episodes: Introduction: Who Are We and What Are We Doing? Episode 1: The Doors Episode 3: Caligula 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. Were both Andrew and James Garfield assassinated by Charles Guiteau? 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 Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
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 Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
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. Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
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. Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
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. Visual Aids: https://imgur.com/user/BiopicAPodcastStory Follow us! Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/ Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com
Rena and Sara are two media/entertainment world professionals living in NYC. Rena is the history person, mostly.* Sara is the film person. Rena has no business doing a movie podcast without Sara. Sara has no business doing a history podcast without Rena.
Sara is a publicist with experience in the retail, real estate, lifestyle, finance, technology, publishing, e-commerce, nonprofit, and entertainment sectors. Rena is a journalist/web producer and has worked for media outlets including Billboard, Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, MSN.com, and WWD as well as consulting at companies including Sotheby's, Time Inc., Disney, and Princeton University Press.
Rena and Sara have been friends for over 20 years. We know each other because our moms attended Ithaca College together.
Sara is the blonde. Rena is the brunette.
*Sara takes care of the 20th and 21st centuries. Rena takes care of all the other centuries.
Biopic: A Podcast Story
In a world where mimicking the gestures of a historical figure is awards bait, Biopic: A Podcast Story examines the good, the bad, the unspeakable, and the hilarious about this category of film that frequently dominates the Oscars but just as often offends our sensibilities. Biopic: A Podcast Story looks at the casting, the acting, the quality of the script, and the endless tropes that dominate these movies. Hosted by Rena and Sara. To learn more about us, our rating system, and how we choose movies, please listen to our special introductory episode, "Introduction: Who Are We and What Are We Doing?"
