Semi-Autobiographical Films in Which Musicians Play Thinly-Veiled Versions of Themselves: A Poll

I've only seen Purple Rain, which sucks whenever a) there isn't a musical performance happening, or b) whenever Morris Day isn't on screen. I haven't even heard of Flame.

... it's Slade, I find it hard to believe any of the others would be as good as it.

... though I've only seen Purple Rain of the others.

Flame's the obvious legit interesting film

certainly flame is the only one with a tommy vance cameo

agree w cryptosicko about Purple Rain. The musical performances are incredible but it's really a pretty shitty movie.

Flame is okay, and tbf I haven't seen it in almost 20 years, but my memory is that it's a bit of a slog. To me the legit interesting film is actually One Trick Pony.

One Trick Pony nails a specific kind of exhausted American boomer late 70s ennui - the domestic scenes might as well be from Kramer vs. Kramer - and oddly the musical performances are often the least interesting thing about it. But the music biz stuff (and the cast that populates those scenes - Rip Torn, the B-52s, the Lovin Spoonful, Lou Reed, Tiny Tim) is eyepopping.

Willie Nelson wins in a rout.

I mean
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FUFNUskJTe85EY%2Fgiphy.gif&f=1

xp

I have never actually seen Honeysuckle Rose or Get Rich or Die Tryin. I suppose that's not v surprising re: the latter but the former has just never popped up anywhere I would see it.

OK, I didn't know Tiny Tim was in it. (xp)

What's the film where Lou Reed plays a sort of Lou Reed/Bob Dylan hybrid and plays the song "Little Sister" at the end?

... not really a semi-autobiographical film tho tbf

i remember one trick pony being a snooze

almost as bad as hearts of fire

better than give my regards to broad street

"Get Crazy" (1983)

that song is great, the film is awful

xxp

Tbf that Shane Ritchie vanity project that bankrupted him is probably better than Give My Regards to Broad Street

What about The Bodyguard, Glitter, Crossroads?

ooh Glitter for sure counts, probably the Bodyguard too

Crossroads does not, that doesn't star any prominent musicians playing a version of themselves iirc?

Are we voting for the film or the soundtrack?

Film!

yeah, the film

Bodyguard is weird cuz Houston is obviously "playing herself" and yet the suspense/killer storyline is completely ridiculous with no basis in reality afaik

Crossroads is about Britters roadtripping to LA for a record audition, close enough.

wait what? I thought you were referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_%281986_film%29

Man you're in for a treat.

haha oh dear

Another thinly veiled reality plot point is that she falls for a shifty dude who looks like a homicidal maniac.

Of the ones I've seen, 8 Mile, although I enjoy Purple Rain. I love the Flame soundtrack. Not really much interested in the 50 Cent movie, and everything I've heard about the Paul Simon movie suggests it's a pretty crap affair.

the Lou Reed scenes alone are worth the price of admission

I know tyler is at least w me on this one

Who do I need to bribe to get Deep Blue Sea included?

This thread really makes me wish David Lee Roth's Crazy From The Heat movie had gotten made.

Bob Dylan's done two of these - Renaldo and Clara and Masked and Anonymous - I don't know anybody who's seen either one.

Deep Blue Sea

I mean, ppl think “my hat is like a shark’s fin” is original to the movie, but it’s really the key that unlocks the secret of his character

I like to think that it's based on LL's experience doing odd jobs before is comeback.

Renaldo and Clara is more like a tour documentary and Masked and Anonymous is too fantastical/surreal to really be considered semi-autobiographical imo. I really kinda like Masked and Anonymous tbh, it's a deeply strange film, the live performances are fantastic, and at least a couple of the scenes are genuinely affecting. The overall plot/story/characters are paper-thin nonsense though.

xp

purple rain is enjoyable as a piece of camp, though i can't argue that it's a good film on its own merits. the performances are obviously spectacular.

I mean, Bob doesn't do shit in this scene but you know he wrote the story the kid tells and it is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV3bv0bY8h0

xp

so is the rule here that the lead character has to be named something different than the actual musician? like, "space is the place" doesn't count because sun ra portrays the fictional character "sun ra" in the film?

also, speaking of disasters, there's Cam'ron's Killa Season

so is the rule here that the lead character has to be named something different than the actual musician?

nah, the name doesn't matter, it's that the story is depicting the actor/musicians' actual life story (to varying degrees)

that being the case, I would say "Space is the Place" doesn't count - it isn't really about Sun Ra's life story (he would probably say it was about his mythstory)

xp

also, speaking of disasters, there's Cam'ron's Killa Season

never heard of this but yeah I excluded direct-to-video and TV stuff

This is less rare than you'd think, there's all those Elvis movies too, Jailhouse Rock for example.

Xtina's Burlesque definitely counts.

Desperately Seeking Susan, although she doesn't sing there's clearly not meant to be any difference between her real life artist persona and the character.

Elvis is usually not playing himself, I'm hard pressed to think of an example where he is

I suppose it wouldn't be a poll thread w out someone constantly complaining about the voting options tho

ive seen 4 of these, will take Honeysuckle Rose over OTPony (both 1980 btw)

"Renaldo and Clara" was on Channel 4 once but fuck sitting thru 4 hours of the thing.

Burlesque is not about Xtina and DSS isn't really about Madonna iirc

xp

to be clear my criteria wasn't just "musician appears on-screen as themselves" it's that they actually *act out some version of their real lives on-screen*

https://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/145/MPW-72910

haha yeah that definitely qualifies

The singer from the German band Rheingold played a pasty-faced Gary Numan clone called R - so far so good - in a film called "The Fan" in 1982 but, as far as I am aware, he was never killed and dismembered by an obsessive fan.

Does The Harder They Come count?

ooh, yeah!

that's a serious omission on my part :(

Really? I didn’t think any of the stuff in that movie happened to Jimmy Cliff (besides recording a song)

the shitty parts of purple rain are so good tho

that's true - a lot of it is standard folk-hero stuff - but the struggling musician angle is p close, no?

Horsemouth Wallace in Rockers might qualify, in a similar (and less sensationalistic) vein

xp

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Cool_as_Ice_poster.jpg

Does The Jazz Singer count? The one with Neil Diamond. I never saw it, but I recall from the ads that it appeared to be a full-on Diamond experience.

of all the films included in the poll that I've seen none cleaves particularly closely to the actual biography of the musician

I like to think that it's based on LL's experience doing odd jobs before is comeback.

don’t call it that!! 👿

of all the films included in the poll that I've seen none cleaves particularly closely to the actual biography of the musician

yeah they all take liberties, which is one of the things I find fascinating about this sub-sub-genre. The idea that it might be fun (and profitable!) to re-create your life on-screen but, y'know, change some stuff to make it cooler or "less about you" or provide some plausible deniability that it isn't *really* a total vanity project...

cuz they also all definitely draw on readily identifiable details from their respective subjects' real lives - where Eminem grew up, Paul Simon going through a nasty divorce/being a holdover from the 60s folk scene, 50 Cent getting shot, Prince having a frustrated musician dad, etc.

Music superstar Bud Parks, along with his statuesque wife, Alice, and their approximately eight-year-old daughter, Terri Jo, return to his small hometown, fictional Doak City, Indiana, for his paternal grandfather's 80th birthday. Initially, the visit is light-hearted and Bud receives a hero's welcome from many of his relatives and fans. But what is supposed to be a three-day visit of fun quickly turns into much more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_from_Grace_(film)

http://www.impawards.com/1984/posters/hard_to_hold.jpg

I feel like George Strait(!) did one of these.

*heads to Wikipedia...*

Yep!

The film Pure Country featured George Strait in the lead role as Dusty Chandler, a famous country singer who strays too far from his country roots and traditional sound. It provided the opportunity for Strait to branch out from his own traditional country sound for a more rock-and-roll approach. The film saw little success at the box office, taking in only $15 million, but the soundtrack, also called Pure Country, produced several hit singles for Strait, and has become his best-selling album to date.

are Madness the only band to play flat-out undisguised versions of themselves in a straight-up biopic?

(notwithstanding 36-yo Rowetta cameoing as 26-yo Rowetta amongst the actor-played Happy Mondays in 24HPP)

(and the likes of A Hard Day’s Night or Head not being biopics)

Mark E Smith and Vini Reilly show up too

Smith doesn't play himself (though he can't act, per se), nor does Paul Ryder; Devoto is a meta joke of his real self, not playing his younger self, who is in the same shot. I'm pretty sure it's a younger, healthier person playing Reilly, but my DVD is on another continent.

Yeah 24hrPP does not apply, all those cameos are meta in-jokes

Not sure what Madness appearance you were ref’ing tho

I'm always amazed just how little-seen One Trick Pony is in the UK. For a long time it was unavailable on VHS, and as-good-as-never on tv. I mean even for a flop movie it was hard-to-find, and DVD copies seem scarce too. Must be some weird rights issue or somethin.

Is this as close as he got to a Steely Dan sound? Surely it must be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sFjElo4Aww

Nothing about this makes you want to see it, what an ugly looking thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwsM_27GgLU

Not sure what Madness appearance you were ref’ing tho

the only band to play flat-out undisguised versions of themselves in a straight-up biopic?

not called Flat-Out Straight-Up: The Madness Story though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwWvKnU9zCE

for zing types and future archaeologists: that's a legit youtube posting of Take It Or Leave It, a biopic about Madness' first 2-3 years, filmed during their 5th year, starring themselves

Does The Jazz Singer count? The one with Neil Diamond. I never saw it, but I recall from the ads that it appeared to be a full-on Diamond experience.

I believe the bit where he's in the studio with a bratty singer, played by Paul Nicholas(!), who is recording a punk version of "Love on the Rocks"(!!) is based on his experience working with Mike Nesmith in the Monkees. Other than that, don't think so - I don't know if this ever happened:

https://alchetron.com/cdn/The-Jazz-Singer-1980-film-images-647f42f0-a04e-4e4b-9126-eceb608df93.jpg

I'm always amazed just how little-seen One Trick Pony is in the UK.

I don't think the US is much different tbh. Never would have seen it at all if it hadn't gotten a cheapo MGM DVD reissue a few years ago.

It existed as a butt-ugly VHS copy at my Blockbuster for years.

was coming here to mention that Strait film but unperson beat me to it.

http://www.nashcountrydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/1446/2017/05/Pure-Country-Movie-DVD.jpg

Rockers is also great, a really exceptional film if only for capturing its specific place and time, but it's also pretty entertaining and the music is amazing.

Springfield entry looks hilariously terrible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE4gjWuRCGk

the girl in the band plays... hand puppet?

Gawd, I need to see more of these.

That Madness thing is pretty good. Judging by the first half anyway...

It is, yes.

Also, was dancing around the shop when I found the box version (CD plus DVD) of "Slade in Flame" in Fopp for £2 !

INCOMING!!! St. Vincent and Carrie Brownstein wrote a tour comedy about "heightened versions of themselves"

https://news.avclub.com/st-vincent-and-carrie-brownstein-wrote-a-tour-comedy-a-1834124293

Does 'Stardust' belong here? Haven't seen it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardust_(1974_film)

I hope it wasn't autobiographical for David Essex's sake. But, seriously, I don't think it belongs here. Adam Faith is really good in it iirc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

A piece in Mojo a few years back suggested that That'll Be The Day (the film before Stardust about the same band) referred to The Beatles story much more than people would assume; all sorts of little 'incidents' that occur are based on the Hamburg years and such like. I think Stardust itself was more a 'generic 70s band' story.

Hard to Hold is not a good movie but "Love Somebody" is a slammin song.

btw Honeysuckle & 1TP were made by actual good filmmakers

Oh, I should have posted in this thread about Jacques Demy's last film, the very weird 'Three Seats for the 26th'. It stars French singer Yves Montand as Yves Montand, a french singer who returns to Marseille to star in a musical based on the life of Yves Montand. The scenes from the play are quite biographical, but then it's mixed with a weird melodrama that ends with Yves Montand having sex with his own daughter. Very very weird last film from Demy, and his eighties music isn't quite as charming as it was in the sixties.

Credible showing by Slade, seeing as they were up against Prince!

Crossroads does not, that doesn't star any prominent musicians playing a version of themselves iirc?

Steve Vai plays a hired gun stunt guitarist (if the devil's), tbf.

Seriously, more than one currently teenaged boy who plays guitar has positively referenced this film ime, which is simultaneously O_O and reassuring.

(1986 Crossroads obv)

still can't figure out what Flame is
surely not this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_(1996_film)

the top result for Slade in Flame

Songwriter starring Willie Nelson (basically playing himself) and Kris Kristofferson m/l playing Waylon is definitely worth your time. also features an excellent Rip Torn as a grizzled seedy promoter. solid B+

i remember watching Hard to Hold on like Betamax at a friend's house when i was about 7. his older sisters (prob in jr high) were out of control. (i think?) it briefly shows Rick's ass and i thought they were going to pass out.

Pete Townshend's White City: The Music Movie might qualify. He plays a musician named "Pete," and is referred to by another character as "yer famous friend." It's basically videos/performances of the White City songs interspersed with dramatic sequences, but it works fairly well. Only released in 1985 on VHS and Laserdisc, never reissued.

https://youtu.be/7iFtg4JFgzE