2008 Woodie Awards
Biopics and Hollywood's Quest for Dimishing Returns
Exploiting Johnny Cash for Money
Paul Adam
Issue date: 9/20/05 Section: Arts & Culture
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By now, it's too late too save network TV from the "reality show" juggernaut. Its cheap laughs and depressing predictability may trample Hollywood, too. In addition to a sudden surge in the public appetite for documentaries, directors and writers are moving steadily towards complete literalism, which may just be the grim prelude to "reality". So far, Hollywood seems to be endorsing the move without reservation. A quick glance at Oscar nominees from the last five years strongly confirms this claim. Million Dollar Baby, Sideways, Mystic River, A Beautiful Mind, Seabiscuit, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator and arguably the Lord of the Rings trilogy were all fairly linear, literal, unsymbolic and set on telling a "straight" story. In this environment, it's no surprise that musical biographies, a subgenre that tends to coddle audiences and critics alike, is flourishing.
Last year saw ambitious treatments of musical legends Ray Charles, Cole Porter, and Bobby Darin in Ray, De-Lovely, and Beyond the Sea, respectively. These three were notably different than the full-blown musicals of two years ago, Moulin Rouge and Chicago, even though the biopics were probably okay on the strength of Chicago's impressive haul of trophies and cash. Sure enough, Ray was box office boffo and critically praised. Unfortunately, De-Lovely and Beyond the Sea were both critical and financial failures. However, Ray seems to have been successful enough to secure a green light for at least a similar venture: a Johnny Cash biopic/musical, Walk the Line, which opens this fall. Further biopic musicals are surely in the pipeline, as Hollywood never misses a chance to replicate a film's success.
Whatever strengths Walk the Line will have, it will inevitably have shortcomings that must be recognized. There are far too many ways in which a script can go awry, especially when being compared to the lives it portrays. In most cases, these musical portraits are of well-known and documented personalities. When trying to wedge an entire life, hopefully a complex and engaging one, alongside several musical numbers, it is easy to be reductive. In Ray, the secondary characters were boiled down almost to nonexistence in an effort to give Jamie Foxx more space to flesh out his character. There is at least one particularly cloying moment in Walk the Line in which a figure in the shadows yells "good job" out to Cash, and is revealed to be a young Elvis Presley. While lesser movies are full of these narrative shortcuts, they are often necessary to bridge gaps between singing and dancing set-pieces in even the best of these musical bios.
Last year saw ambitious treatments of musical legends Ray Charles, Cole Porter, and Bobby Darin in Ray, De-Lovely, and Beyond the Sea, respectively. These three were notably different than the full-blown musicals of two years ago, Moulin Rouge and Chicago, even though the biopics were probably okay on the strength of Chicago's impressive haul of trophies and cash. Sure enough, Ray was box office boffo and critically praised. Unfortunately, De-Lovely and Beyond the Sea were both critical and financial failures. However, Ray seems to have been successful enough to secure a green light for at least a similar venture: a Johnny Cash biopic/musical, Walk the Line, which opens this fall. Further biopic musicals are surely in the pipeline, as Hollywood never misses a chance to replicate a film's success.
Whatever strengths Walk the Line will have, it will inevitably have shortcomings that must be recognized. There are far too many ways in which a script can go awry, especially when being compared to the lives it portrays. In most cases, these musical portraits are of well-known and documented personalities. When trying to wedge an entire life, hopefully a complex and engaging one, alongside several musical numbers, it is easy to be reductive. In Ray, the secondary characters were boiled down almost to nonexistence in an effort to give Jamie Foxx more space to flesh out his character. There is at least one particularly cloying moment in Walk the Line in which a figure in the shadows yells "good job" out to Cash, and is revealed to be a young Elvis Presley. While lesser movies are full of these narrative shortcuts, they are often necessary to bridge gaps between singing and dancing set-pieces in even the best of these musical bios.