Wrote Heinrich Heine, in 1844, quoted in the Wikipedia article "Lisztomania," which I'm reading because I was looking for the movie with that title. "Lisztomania," the 1974 Ken Russell film, which Roger Ebert called "a berserk exercise of demented genius" that "Most people will probably despise it." According to WaPo's Gary Arnold:
A boudoir-farce approach to the life and legend of Liszt would have been trivial-minded, but harmlessly trivial-minded compared to the collection of obscene fantasies and gassy porofundities Russell resorts to after his muse runs out of comic ideas.No, "porofundities isn't a word." It's just supposed to be "profundities," even though it's hard to picture profundities being gassy. How do gassy things stay deep? Wouldn't they float upward?
Anyway... things said in 1974. Why am I reading that today? I saw a link at Facebook (from my son) to "Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody Is Now the Biggest Music Biopic Ever. It’s Also Total Bullshit/The classic rock band has always been savvy about its own branding and legacy, but their Oscar-nominated film takes things too far."
I realize that doesn't quite say "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the biggest bullshit. It's "biggest" in terms of gross worldwide ticket sales. And it's total bullshit — which is itself bullshit — but I don't believe you can multiply the dollar amount by 1.00 (to represent the assertion of 100% bullshit) and get to a number to compare to other music biopics and discover which one is the biggest bullshit.
I think the factual inaccuracies of "Bohemian Rhapsody" bother the people who are bothered because the movie is relatively conventional and sincere. I think it's unfair to the concept of bullshit to rank something like that first. I say go deeper — explore the porofundities! — before you make the final call. Consider the berserk obscene fantasies of the demented genius Ken Russell from back in the 70s when bullshit was bullshit!
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Bohemian Rhapsody was kind of like a string of vignettes to showcase the music. Watching it, I got the sense the band had a lot of control over what kind of movie about them they'd give the rights to their music.
The only thing that surprises me- or maybe it doesn't surprise me- is that Bryan Singer seems to not be paying any price for the expose on him. Are those days over?
Most people who "earn" a movie are more interesting than their biopics.
I don't know why that is, but it is so. Maybe there simply isn't scope in two hours to do them justice, but I rather doubt it.
One of the few to whom something like the whole measure was given was George Patton.
And even in that his depths were not plumbed, such as those in his letters to his wife, son, and fans.
Jason King is kind of worked up, isn't he?
Next: How Barbara Streisand took Funny Girl too far.
I saw Lisztomania because Roger Daltrey starred in it and I love him!!
Wait 'til they do Tiny Tim.
In Words and Music (1948) Mickey Rooney plays Lorenz Hart as something other than an alcoholic homosexual dwarf. Night and Day (1946) is a complete fantasy on the life of Cole Porter, with Cary Grant playing him straight.
OT. METV is screening The Monkees reruns. The visuals were intended to pop on 1960's vintage TV's, but when blown up on today's big-screen HDTVs they can be a bit...disturbing.
I finally watched it last night. As a fan of Queen, someone who knows their history, I found the factual inaccuracies too distracting to enjoy the movie. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a few inaccuracies in a biopic for the sake of story telling. But there were too many egregious ones in this movie.
That said I can totally see how this movie would be entertaining for someone who knows very little about the band and their history. For example, I love the movie Amadeus. I know damn well that it's hardly accurate, but since I'm not as familiar with the details of Motzart's life I can just enjoy it as a piece of entertainment.
Salieri was framed!
One of my favorite moments in that film is Salieri exclaiming:
"And do you know what happened? A miracle!"
And then his father chokes on a fishbone.
When someone uses "profundities" that way, they really mean "things that are trying and failing to be profundities". The gas actually improves the metaphor.
Queen was the Franz Liszt of rock bands.
They let you grab their pussies!
Liszt played a big part in In Harmony (En Équilibre, 2015), a vary nice film about two people helping each other out. Cecile de France
How do gassy things stay deep? Wouldn't they float upward?
Ever seen photos of low lying clouds/fog blanketing a valley? Atmospheric layers combine with gravity to keep the water/air vapor from dissipating.
Or consider planetary atmospheres. On Earth, hydrogen and helium escape gravity easily, whereas on Jupiter and the other gas giants, they are trapped, creating deep layers of profound complexity.
Thanks for taking my question seriously and giving a great answer, Lance!
Gary Arnold's 40-year-old metaphor needed that boost.
Nice go Lance, I was thinking more along the lines of gas, trapped deep in the bowel with no hope of escape.
This year. Elton John will be #1 next year. I predict an academy award nom, possibly the win for Taron.
Ah, for those long lost days when we had real bullshit instead of the bullshit bullshit we get now.
I loved the trailer and I’m not an EJ fan. I want to see the movie.
After Russell’s “The Music Lovers” was released, a London critic wrote, “Get me an elephant gun. This man must be stopped!”
I haven't seen Rhapsody, but methinks the Sacha Baron Cohen version would have been superior.
explore the porofundities!
Ahh, stick it in your fundament!
There's no better precis of our current moment in art and culture than “Belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics."
I’m a big Queen fan, but I don’t expect accuracy in movies, especially biopics. That’s not what movies are for… that isn’t even what documentaries do. I went to see the mimesis in the recording studio and got quite a bit more fun out the movie as a whole than I expected.
Speaking as someone who loves Queen and really enjoyed the movie, here's my big issue. The movie tells a bunch of stuff about music that I already know, combined with a bunch of stuff about Freddie's private life that I have no easy way of verifying. The thing is, for the stuff that I know, a whole lot of the movie was clearly bullshit designed to make a good story rather than present the truth.
The most obvious example is the "Freddie breaks up the band to go solo but then learns he has AIDS and brings the rust group out of retirement for Live Aid" plot which is the final arc of the movie. In real life, the band had just finished a year+ long tour two months before Live Aid. They were in no way broken up or rusty. Not to mention Live Aid was 1985, and most sources claim Freddie didn't learn he had AIDS until 1987.
If the movie gets something that fundamental and easily verifiable wrong, why should I treat anything it says about Freddie's private life as anything but a polite-ish fiction? A good story, sure, but is it in any way true?
BUT, the counterbalance here is they did a truly remarkable job of getting those actors to be the band. Great acting performances and lots of great music performances. Easily worth seeing the movie for these alone.
Lisztomania the song- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF3reVVUbio
I just think these sorts of movie biopics are pretty stupid. I'd rather watch a good documentary with the actual people (and related others) involved to tell us stuff and see the actual people perform. "Amadeus" was somewhat entertaining but it was still unwatchable BS if (a big "if" I know) you knew anything about Mozart's actual life. Same with "Immortal Beloved".
The song Bohemian Rhapsody was released in 1975. 44 years later it has become the most streamed song from the 20th century with over 1.6 billion streams so far world wide and is considered one of the greatest songs ever recorded. Queen endures not only because of shrewd marketing but because of the musical talents of four intelligent, and educated musicians. In addition to his legendary and iconic stage presence, Freddie Mercury had a near 5 octave range with impeccable technique and perfectly subtle phrasing.
The world wide gross for this film is now over $900 million on a production budget of $52 million.
The critics slammed it but the movie goers loved it. True that Queen factual history was treated with dramatic license but Queen fans world wide did not let that script writing deter them from attendance as the numbers reveal.
What is interesting is Queen and the movie is still being critically dissected while the gross box office receipts and multiple awards from a lengthy list of respected film art critic's groups keep piling up.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
In Queen's and the movie BR I think the answer is obvious.
See, I think Amadeus is pretty great. But it isn't a biography -- it is a fiction spun out of Mozart's life. It is an interesting story with great Mozart music.
I have no problem with the idea of having a fictional story spun out of Freddie Mercury's life, with great Queen music. But they're selling Bohemian Rhapsody like it's the true story of his life. That's where things get weird.
If only they had picked "Vice", real accurate history.
Cantharidin is Spanish fly. From the looks of the chemical structure at your link, I thought it surely went off like the strained little bridging epoxide that it is. Alas, it works in a completely different way.
I have little desire to see "Bohemian Rhapsody." I saw the real deal in Madison for $6, 43 years ago.
The most obvious example is the "Freddie breaks up the band to go solo but then learns he has AIDS and brings the rust group out of retirement for Live Aid" plot which is the final arc of the movie. In real life, the band had just finished a year+ long tour two months before Live Aid. They were in no way broken up or rusty. Not to mention Live Aid was 1985, and most sources claim Freddie didn't learn he had AIDS until 1987.
The "historical accuracy" nitpickers of Bohemian Rhapsody went too far.
The band really did go through friction and bust-ups around that time; in fact (I think) Roger Taylor put it, "each of us left the band at one point." I don't care that it simplified that messy conflict into Freddy leaving and doing his own thing for a while.
Likewise, I don't care that it shows him revealing AIDs and reconciling with his dad in the 24 hours before Live Aid. It's not like there's a single person sitting in the cinema thinking "What a coincidence that all those things happened on the same day." It's obvious that it's a simplification, and it really, really doesn't matter.
You know, probably most of the dialogue was written by scriptwriters, too. You going to dig around to find out if the script relied 100 percent on verified historical quotes?
It is a dramatised portrayal of a very interesting life, and it does the job.
I liked "Amadeus" a lot.
It was fun. Its not precisely correct, but generally so, in the best way these things can be, an accurate-ish portrait of the person in a few brush strokes. They may be a need to add a bit of caricature to make it work.
"Patton" is similar. It would seem off, probably, to someone who knew the real man and saw him daily.
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