Weird Al Yankovic Story director admits they didn’t do any research on his life
Topics: Film and TV
Lucy Devine
Featured Image Credit: The Roku Channel
Topics: Film and TV
The director of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story has revealed that the team didn't do any research into Al's life, to prep for the movie.
Discussing the film after a screening at the Newport Beach Film Festival, director Eric Appel explained that there was 'absolutely no research on Al’s actual life' conducted for the movie.
You can watch the trailer below:
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The film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al, while Yankovic himself plays record executive Tony Scotti.
Also starring in the movie is Rainn Wilson as Dr Demento, who helped Weird Al gain worldwide recognition, while Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson play Yankovic's parents.
"The biopic holds nothing back, exploring every facet of Yankovic’s life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like 'Eat It' and 'Like a Surgeon' to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle," the official synopsis explains.
You'd think all that would require some in-depth research into the life and times of Weird Al, but Appel said that wasn't the case.
He explained: “It was basically us taking like all of our favourite tropes from biopics and just — it’s really satirising the entire biopic genre.
"Not just rock biopics, like The Doors or Walk The Line or Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s also Boogie Nights and Forrest Gump, like fictional biopics as well.
“They all sort of follow the same storytelling template, and it was us kind of deconstructing that and then putting it back together in the most weird, surprising way.”
The idea for the movie first came about when Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul appeared in a fake trailer as part of a skit for Funny or Die.
Yankovic himself appeared in the trailer along with others such as Olivia Wilde and Patton Oswalt. Fans kept on asking when the fake trailer would actually be made into a real movie - until it was.
“After a decade of like people coming up to him after concerts and saying, ‘How can I see this biopic?’ It sort of started wearing on him," said Appel.
"And then, I think it was [when] Bohemian Rhapsody had just come out, and Rocket Man was about to come out, and they had announced the Elvis movie, the Aretha Franklin movie, and it was a whole slew of biopics. It was like, okay, I think that people are into biopics again, they’re like back in the zeitgeist.
"They sort of disappeared for a little while after Walk The Line and there was like a lapse for like a decade, and now they’re back in full force.”
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story will be released on 4 November on the Roku Channel.
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