Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? A lot of Oscar buzz. And it's also, I think it's fair to say, a bad movie.
Rob, would you agree? I would. I'll tell you the most electrifying moment of this movie for me is when I was walking toward the theater. It was Theater 11.
And I passed Theater 10, and I heard the beginning of the shadow scene from A Star is Born. And I instinctively just walked into that theater, walked up far enough to see the screen, right? It's like Lady Gaga's going, ah! And I just, I cried.
I watched the whole scene. I walked out of that theater and into Theater 11 to see Bohemian Rhapsody. That was the best part of the movie going experience. I suspect this will be not the last time we talk about A Star is Born.
It's truly a rock and roll fall of the movies. Let's start here, Rob. What is your relationship to the band Queen? You know, I can vividly remember the Bohemian Rhapsody scene from Wayne's World, like sitting in the theater without washing over me.
You know, however, I was like a pre-teenager at that point or whatever. And so, like, I don't call myself a Queen super fan necessarily. Like, I'm not one of the people who can tell you what songs here are chronologically out of order. But, you know, like, I've internalized 30 to 35 Queen songs just by living in America, you know, for the past four years.
And so I was super hyped for it. And I was prepared for what seems to be the party line, which is that Rami Malek himself is awesome. And it's awesome to just listen to 30 Queen songs really loud in the dark for two hours. And the movie itself stinks, you know, but that doesn't matter because of all the other stuff.
And so, yeah, I was prepared for it, you know, and it met those expectations. I have a similar reaction. Let's just set some of the key talking points of this movie. This movie made $50 million over the weekend, made $140 million across the world, which is a lot for a biopic about a band whose music we like, but maybe we don't really care about that band anymore.
I haven't had a conversation about Queen in 15 years, 25 years. I can't remember the last time. I mean, you and I, 10 years ago in bars in New York, we're not shooting a shit about, you know, their third record. Not as I recall, but, you know, those times are hazy, I suppose.
Yes, they are. Well, they're growing increasingly hazy. Speaking of hazy, the production of this movie sounds like it was difficult. It was directed by Bryan Singer, sort of, who many people know as the director of The Usual Suspects and some of the X-Men films, and also recently was accused of some sexual misconduct by a number of people.
He is a controversial figure in Hollywood. He also is known at times for disappearing from his own sets, and that is something that he did here, he said, to attend to the health of his mother and some personal health issues of his own. Nevertheless, that sounds like that frustrated Romney Malick, who was at the center of this movie, and people were brought in to finish the movie. It's impossible to know for us what Singer did, what Dexter Fletcher, who was brought in to do some of the work on, did.
It's really just hard to parse, because the movie is not. I don't think the movie is messy, necessarily, even if the storytelling is a little bit messy. It's just kind of drab and predictable. Is that fair to say?
I think it is. I mean, it sort of moves in that standard biopic way. You know, reading up on all that stuff, like the production, what I was really struck by, we were talking about the Sacha Baron Cohen version that was supposed to happen, that was in production, and he wanted it to be this really, really R-rated, hedonistic, wild thing, like to just go full bore into the total rock star element of it, and basically he clashed with the surviving members of Queen about it. And what finally brought that movie to a halt is just the members of Queen weren't having it, you know, and just getting the sense that, do you want that movie, which would probably have been a better movie, or do you want the actual Queen songs, you know, because you can't have both.
And so, yeah, the element of the production, you know, the calamity for however many 10 years it's been that really interested me was just the movie that almost was, or, you know, was supposed to be, that would have been very different, that would have been better in some ways, but would have been worse, just because Queen wouldn't, the band itself wouldn't have gone along with it, and you wouldn't have had the actual music in it. Like, do you want a good movie, or do you want a bad movie with Queen songs? Yeah, it sounds like that film would have been directed by Stephen Frears, who obviously made Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, has a real affinity for music, and also high drama, that would have been a good movie, would be my guess. This, as we say, not a good movie, and it's an interesting bad movie in some ways.
I think it's interesting that you noted that the band would not really give the rights over to the more debauched version of the Freddie Mercury story, and you can really feel the thumbprint of the band on a lot of these scenes, because there's several scenes in which people, all four members of the band, look at each other and say, we're just a bunch of outcasts who don't fit together, but so we fit together, we are all the outcasts. It's like, you know, most people, even though Brian May is an incredible guitarist, Roger Taylor, a very gifted musician, the fourth guy's name I don't remember, those four musicians were incredible together. You know, Bohemian Rhapsody lives and dies by Freddie Mercury, he is the centerpiece, he is the centerpiece of the storytelling here, and there's a lot of effort made toward making sure that everyone's included. Now, I will say, Queen is unique among some bands like this, in that all four members actually wrote songs, and all four members actually written hit songs, so there's some reason for that kind of democracy among the storytelling, but in general, I found myself being like, why are we spending so much time with Roger Taylor?
I don't really give a shit about Roger Taylor. Do you feel similarly? Yeah, I mean, it's only by default, it's forced to be an interesting depiction of a band dynamic, like you never see that. Like, these movies, it's always one person just imposing his will on everybody else, and they sort of bow down to him, and it's true that, you know, all four members wrote songs, like Brian May in particular is very important, but like, yeah, when there's a scene where John Deacon literally stops, like, a band argument in the studio by playing the Another One Bites the Dust baseline, and they're like, that's the rest, baseline, and then they play, they record the song, like, yeah, like, the other stipulation that the surviving band members had, clearly, was that it'd be depicted as a band, that they'd be depicted as characters and as important people.
Like, I think there was a line, Vulture did, like, this big rundown of, you know, the Sacha Baron Cohen version, and Sacha Baron Cohen said, like, he had a conversation with somebody in the band, and they're like, yeah, what's great about this movie is that Freddie Mercury dies halfway through it, and you get to see the band carry on without him, and Sacha Baron Cohen's like, that's a terrible movie, no one's going to go see that movie, people want to see Freddie Mercury, like, that's all they want to see. Like, it's just interesting to see all that backstory, like, still taking, you know, still being fought out in the movie that you're actually watching. Yeah, I think ultimately it is finally truly a Freddie Mercury movie. We didn't get a movie where he dies, and then a former American Idol contestant takes over and sings for the band, as Adam Lambert has been doing for the last 10 years.
I'm interested, though, like, for somebody like you, who is really adept at rock history and is going to see the big picture of this stuff, pardon that pun. Does it matter to you if the facts are straight in a movie like this? They don't have to be absolutely correct, you know, you don't want to be the guy in the theater who leans over and is like, actually, Fat Mountain Girls was recorded three years later, like, don't be that guy, ever. But sort of reading up on this, and, like, the people who know this band really well, like, they start fudging a lot, and by the time you get to Live Aid, like, the entire way Live Aid is portrayed is, like, they broke up, which isn't quite true, like, they hadn't played in, like, several years, which isn't true, and they reformed just for Live Aid, and that was their first show in forever, like, none of that, apparently, was true, you know, and I don't think it's knowing exactly when he found out he had AIDS and when he told the band that he had AIDS, but it almost certainly didn't happen the way the movie says it happens, and, like, even, it was such a minor thing, but watching the actual Live Aid scene, like, the thing inside the phone banks where, like, nobody's calling in the Live Aid and, like, everyone's looking worried, and then Queen starts playing, and everyone starts calling in the Live Aid, like, just the insinuation that Live Aid was saved entirely by Queen, it's like, all right, guys, like, settle down, like, it's, I think there's a line in a spectrum, and this movie, especially late, like, starts to cross it.
The facts, all the facts don't have to be right, but I think that the little inaccuracies and, like, the tilt toward myth, it all starts to pile up, especially toward the end. Yeah, we should note that Live Aid was a concert that also featured performances by Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, like, this is probably the biggest concert ever, is that fair to say? Yeah, I think that is fair to say, so, yeah, I mean, that was the best performance, and, like, that's the thing that we're still talking about, you know, but I don't think you, I think you can say that without implying that, like, Queen did it single-handedly. One thing I think we can say, though, undenightly, and we're not really spoiling anything, but the Live Aid scene comes near the end of the film, and it's sort of the denouement.
I thought it was definitely the best moment of the movie. It's this long, extended, 20-minute, almost shot-for-shot recreation of the band's performance. Does a moment like that make a movie like this worth it for you? Absolutely, I think.
Yeah, it's wild. This morning, I was re-watching the actual Queen Live Aid performance, and, like, you say, the shot-for-shot thing, like, I'm really curious, you know, once this comes out, you know, on DVD, or just streaming, or whatever, like, there's always people on YouTube, when they take Rockstar biopics, and they line up footage, like, they do split-screen of the movie, and, you know, live footage of the person the movie is about, and I'm really curious how exact, you know, the movements, down to Freddie Mercury his, like, movements, like, where he is on stage during Live Aid, because just sort of eyeballing it, you know, like, all the Pepsi cups, and the beers on the piano, and the way he, like, fiddles with a knob on the speaker, like, right before he starts, and, like, when he blows a kiss, like, just from what I can tell, like, I think it's as close to exact as they can make it, like, every specific detail of that scene very specifically, and I'm curious how exactly he got it, and, like, yeah, I mean, it's enormously effective, and it's just sort of a relief, you know, for 20 minutes or so, that there's no, like, dramatization, and there's no explaining, like, how they wrote the song, like, there's no cheesy biopic aspect, you know, it's just them performing, you know, and, yeah, it's incredible, and I, you know, I think that's the bulk of what everyone loves about this movie, and what will bring people back to it. Let's talk about Rami Malek. He's going to be probably nominated for Best Actor.
This is a really interesting role and performance for him. He's obviously best known as Elliot from Mr. Robot, which is a very interior performance. People might have seen him earlier this year, though, probably not, in a remake of the Steve McQueen movie, Papillon.
He also has a very internal performance in that movie. He has an internal performance in The Master, if you may recall, but Rami Malek has never done a character this big, and this crazy, and larger than life. What did you think of what he did? I mean, it was pretty incredible, like, just the physicalness, you know, just down to the teeth, and just the cheekbones, and sort of the way he carries himself, like, just as a pantomime, as just an impression of a human, like, it's really, it's really striking, like, immediately.
I was trying to decide in a moment if it bothered me, like, the lip-syncing, like, the obvious lip-syncing, but, like, first of all, I don't think you're going to get, like, a competent actor who can actually sing, like, Freddie Mercury. Bradley Cooper would say otherwise, right? Well, there's a scene in the movie where specifically they're, like, lip-syncing is bullshit. We're not doing that.
It's a good comparison for this movie. I was watching scenes from Walk the Line this morning, the Joaquin Phoenix, Johnny Cash movie, and I have to tell you that that, I don't believe that has aged well, that film. Tell me more. It just, it strikes me as very cheesy now, and he is obviously singing, you know, and he's doing okay, but he's not, he doesn't sound exactly or enough like Johnny Cash.
Like, he just sort of sounds nauseous all the time, you know, and it's okay, it's okay as an impression, but I think I, watching Bohemian Rhapsody, like, in the end, I was grateful that they just did the lip-syncing, because I think it helps the performance when you don't have to worry about that aspect. Like, you think about Chadwick Boseman in Get On Up, like, he's not singing the James Brown parts, but, like, the way he's dancing, like, you absolutely do not care, you know, that he's not singing, you know, so I think just letting Rami focus entirely on the physical aspect, you know, and just the look of him, I think that was a good idea, and like, yeah, I mean, far and away, he's the best thing about the movie, down to being, you know, the only thing about the movie. Yeah, I agree with you completely. Last week on the show, Amanda Dobbins shared that you've got to sing rule as a reason to maybe hold this against Rami Malek, and I agree with you about Walk the Line, because I want to hear Johnny Cash sing, I don't want to hear Joaquin Phoenix sing, I don't care about how Joaquin Phoenix mimics him, it's just the same way that I want to hear somebody to love by Freddie Mercury, and I want to hear Killer Queen by Freddie Mercury, I don't want to hear, you know, Rami Malek's mediocre affectation of a Freddie Mercury performance, I want to see that, so I don't have that same logic as far as whether a performance is a success or not.
You know, one of the things the movie does is, and this is a tried and true tactic as well, it shows us a couple of different times, and you mentioned the other one, that's the example, of the band writing a song in real time, and obviously, quite famously, the titular song from the movie is recreated at length, there's also just a lot of, you know, Queen songs in general, there are live performances that are rendered, there's a lot of songs on the soundtrack, is there a Queen song that they didn't play here that you wish they would have focused on a little bit? I don't remember, it was in the movie, but Under Pressure, I don't think was in the movie enough, like, if there was a scene, if I wanted to see another scene of them recreating a song in the studio, it would have been that one, like, just to see who they got to play David Bowie, you know, I just think that that's sort of a top five Queen song in the popular imagination, and it's in there somewhere, but it's not given the same, you know, making of focus as, you know, We Will Rock You or Bohemian Rhapsody, and, like, I'm sort of, I don't think that those scenes, which are pretty corny, all things considered, like, affect my affection for those songs, but maybe it's better, you know, that they let Under Pressure sort of slip under the radar a little bit there, you know, so I think Under Pressure is the one that got short shrift, and that may have actually been for the best. Yeah, as I recall, Under Pressure was recorded in Germany, I think, with Bowie, while both Freddie and Bowie were going through some experimental health issues, and I suspect that's one of the reasons why it's not depicted, but that's actually the reason why it should be depicted, and, you know, Freddie Mercury's life is very interesting, he obviously has this complex representation of sexuality that I think the movie kind of struggles to accurately or sincerely adapt and focus on, and I think it actually might confuse audiences. Similarly, just his life, his identity as a man is confusing, you know, his parents are immigrants, he's from England, he's always trying to affect a new persona, he's a shapeshifter in many ways.
I guess, does it matter if those things are blurry or wrong? You mentioned sort of his diagnosis of HIV, and then when he told the band, and I think what's going to happen is this movie's already really popular, and this is going to be for an entire new generation, their entry point is a queen. It's canon. Yeah, it's canon.
And is there something kind of icky about that, that this is now the way that we know the queen story, even if a lot of that stuff is either wrong, we're sort of ill-told? Yeah, I mean, I think the piece Stephen Hyden wrote for us, wrote for The Ringer about Queen, and about this movie, and about Freddie Mercury in real life versus this movie, I think that was really good, and there's a really complicated relationship this movie has with the hedonism. Like, the standard arc of a biopic is, like, the band gets big, and gets really hedonists, and there are party scenes, and nudity, and drugs, and then there's a big comedown afterward. But in this movie, the hedonism is the comedown.
The hedonism is the dark part. It's never depicted as this joyful revelry. This is what a rock star does. This is what a rock star is supposed to be.
This is how they're supposed to behave. They're supposed to behave badly, and to behave flamboyantly. And it seems like, from the beginning, that's the part that he was ashamed of. That's the part that Freddie Mercury never actually enjoyed while he was going through it.
He only did it because he didn't want to be alone. I think the part of Freddie Mercury's life and art that this movie sort of screws up is sort of depicting his hedonistic phases as these terrible, soul-killing things that he didn't really enjoy. I have a feeling that's not quite accurate. Let me ask you something.
What do you think about what Mike Myers is doing in this movie? I saw Mike Myers' name in the credits, and I was all psyched to try and find him, and I watched that entire movie without realizing that that was him. What? I had no idea that was him.
So, hand of God, I was shocked. I was a little ashamed of myself, frankly, when I realized it later. But that entire scene, the scenes in the dude's office, I was focused on Freddie, on just the sunglasses, and just sort of the corniness and the staginess. And that's sort of a standard biopic cliche.
It's like the loser record executive who doesn't get it, and says really obviously, Bohemia Rhapsody will never be a hit song. You know, it's sort of that Mad Men-style, like, super revisionism. Like, you know, the whole trip of it is the way that we're looking back on it now, and we know how stupid these people were specifically. Like, I had no idea that that was Mike Myers.
Yeah, it's a very strange choice. And obviously, it circles us back to Wayne's work. world in a sweet way but the character he plays is named ray foster that's not a real person right he's loosely based on roy featherstone the real life record executive although roy featherstone was famously very supportive of queen though is on the record for having some doubts about bohemian rhapsody so it's kind of just like a meta joke that's really the only reason he's there or to create the sort of false sense of drama with it you know sort of us against the world dynamic the band thrives on in the movie um you know i wrote about mike myers earlier this year i just don't really understand what mike myers is doing with his life and career and i love mike myers and that's why i feel comfortable saying that i just between the gong show and he made a quite terrible film earlier this year called terminal so don't watch it uh i mean it's a really confusing thing happens to both mike myers and margot robbie um you know he wrote a book a couple years ago about canada um he's just i on the one hand appreciate his willingness to be free and to uh do whatever he wants creatively i think that's fantastic but every time i see him now i'm sort of sad i'm sort of a little frustrated with the gong show you weren't supposed to know it was him well yes and clearly he pulled a fasten on you again yes yeah that seems to be what he wants to do now he has to be in things without anyone realizing that he's in things right i guess if you're that famous for that long and that prominent for that long that idea is very attractive to you you know the rock the superstar actor in winter who just wants to sneak into things and have no one even realize it like that's that's how you get off at this point if you're mike myers i guess i kind of understand that because myers idolizes peter sellers right peter sellers one of the geniuses of peter sellers is every movie would be starring peter sellers and then he would transform you'd be like i don't know he does it he transformed again as opposed to mike myers who was literally in movies and you're like i don't know that's mike myers right that's a ludicrous thing i'm going too far there yes he may have uh rob just for context what is your all-time favorite movie that has this shape this sort of rock biopic um i don't know if spinal tap counts but it's spinal tap counts it's definitely absolutely spinal tap you know if it has to be a real life thing you know what movie i really love was the runaways oh yeah um chris and scurray dakota fanning uh yeah i mean it's you don't watch that movie for a second look at those people and think that those people are thinking like i'm going to win an oscar for this you know which you can tell walk the line was like that you know uh bohemian rhapsody to an extent it's like that like it's the runaways is pretty trashy and pretty sort of lurid and you know not concerned at all with accuracy you know a good taste or any of those things but i i do think that those are attractive qualities in a rock biopic especially in the bands like the runaways like i think you want a certain kind of ambition but not necessarily total accuracy ambition and not necessarily award show ambition you know i think that movie in particular just found a nice little middle path yeah i agree with you that's for those who haven't seen that florida six non-dee the satanic filmmaker woman made that movie it's really quite good there's also very good michael shannon performances kim fowley um the sort of angel devil of la rock in the 70s um which man deserves a movie like this what's it what's been that was the first thing that kind of crept into my mind when i went out you know i feel like they're too overexposed the number of movies already made about kirk obane but like nirvana somebody's going to take a shot at this at some point right i guess i was looking at last days the gus van sant film which is sort of lured in its own way it's like basically just michael pitt just staggering around his house like it's actually i think he's not actually kirk obane but he's obviously you know playing a kirk obane figure and it's literally you know the last days of his life like there's there's no biopic shape or there's no shape to it at all but you you figure at some point someone's going to take a shot at a pretty conventional you know childhood stardom uh nirvana thing you know i you too i think it worked for this like van halen has potential just a number of characters you know and just to try and cast you know david lee roth and sammy hagar you know guns and roses someone's probably going to do at some point what's his elgort's that elgort guy is going to be axel rose are going to try and be axel rose it's going to be ansel elgort it's going to be great i swear i'd love to see the talking heads myself so that's probably you know a personal thing that's a really good idea uh you just you heard you really scrambled my brain with ansel elgort as axel rose that is my youth coming apart in real time you're gonna be you're gonna be talking yourself into it no i won't be i promise you um later this or i suppose next year taron egerton he of kingsman fame will be portraying elton john and that movie is actually directed by dexter fletcher who finished this queen movie oh wow and taron is singing he's singing the elton john song really yes and that looks quite poor so i'm not i mean who knows it could be wonderful actually um you know it's funny i'm thinking about this too because queen is this sort of um perfectly memorialized band in our minds you know the songs we will rocky was has woven itself into our dna and bohemian rhapsody too these songs become like i don't know um karaoke jams for life right and we haven't had a movie about like the rolling stones right or the beatles you know these bands that the members are still some of the members are still living they're protecting their legacies and they're not letting them be rendered in this way and i assume mostly that's because they don't want to know what bohemian rhapsody made about their lives but i mean the rolling stones particularly feel so perfect for any number of individuated stories you know just the recording of exile or brian jones's death or any number of things that they could be telling why do you think that some of the highest level classical stars you know michael jackson prince you know you talk about nirvana which was very unlikely in last days is told the way that it is because the estate wouldn't grant them access to the coping life story what do you think is keeping those people from letting stories like that happen i think the same thing you mentioned that for a new generation now bohemian rhapsody is going to be the queen story it's going to be verbatim it's going to be canon it's going to be assumed to be more or less true you know and it's obviously the surviving members have taken care of them still other projects and like this is the depiction of them and a freddie mercury that they wanted but i think if you're at a level of the rolling stones or the beatles like you don't want anybody else involved in this process like you don't want anyone else shaping your legacy or deciding for like a new generation of listeners of fans like what your band was what your band was like what your band means what your band stories were like you think back to the stories about the beatles the beatles rock band thing you know the video game when they made an entire game where you could play beatles songs that's the scene where yoko ono is sort of in the studio with the video game makers and she's sort of she's telling them exactly how things have to be and how john lennon has to be portrayed and it's like at that highest level the level of control that the surviving members have over their legacies is such that i don't think they're going to share that at all and so you literally are waiting for the rolling stones to die or there to be any chance of a movie like this and you know the rolling stones are never going to die and so that means it's never going to happen you know you're just you're going to have to settle for the real thing the only thing that's dying are the old ways uh speaking of i'm very interested in this thing that's happening right now so obviously we talked about stars born at the top of the show there's a movie coming out in december called vox luxe starring natalie portman which she portrays a rock star and there's this movie three makes a trend of course you and i came up in the media days of the early aughts and i'm trying to figure out why rock stars are a good vehicle for movie stars and why these movies have a little bit more resonance particularly in a time with savior great of an fleet's um right right there's just not a lot of rock stars what do you think is going on there why has this been transferred to the movie world yeah i mean it's you know rock is dead sean as we've been saying in various print you know various outlets for 20 years now there's that elizabeth moss movie too right her smell that's right yeah i mean i guess it's just a matter of you know there are no rock stars anymore and what rock stars we have are you know aping former rock stars to such a perverse degree you know that they don't register as their own people like yeah i mean i guess movie stars have decided that you know in the absence of any real life rock stars they have to create them you know themselves you know jackson main is going to be a more resonant you know a realer figure as a rock star than like any actual musicians in 2018 like just for some reason rock is actually now dead the notion of a rock star is actually dead like it's weird to think that you know the queen the four years of queen you know and queen had a big revival with the wayne's world movie which was in the 90s like the early 90s like this is this is such an old band and like young people today have pretty much no context for it you know other than maybe you know doing the greatest hits on spotify or whatever but it's just rocks rock stardom is such an outdated idea but still such an alluring idea that you know i guess you know actors hollywood has gotten in its head like they alone can keep that idea alive we have kept it alive with this podcast rob thank you so much for doing this and thank you may your bohemians always be that's very sweet