Biopics are a hot topic around here. We've debated the pros and cons of their value. We've covered them as topical news stories - evidenced by Jared Leto's desire to jump from playing The Joker to Andy Warhol, to the long-gestating film about Tupac Shakur - thus making them one of the most viable genres in film because everyone is a sucker for a true story, and because executives see the monetary value in presenting material about subjects that already have a built-in audience.
But like anything else in Hollywood, studios and production houses will bleed source material dry in hopes of scoring a hit which often results in several misses for every film that ends up as a classic.
While good acting and direction ultimately elevate a true story from a bar-room tale to a blockbuster, the core of what make biopics great are how closely they stick to the story. Sure, add glitter or dirt for cosmetic effect, but don't change the core of what happened.
With hundreds of biopics floating out there, here are 10 that should be on your watch list.
Raging Bull
Robert De Niro deservedly won an Oscar for his portrayal of Middleweight Champion of the World, Jake LaMotta, by committing to the role by gaining 60 lbs in order to show the fighter as a man who had spiraled out of control after the bell had sounded.
Although it was a passion project for De Niro, would-be-director, Martin Scorsese, wasn't interested in helming the project despite a proven track record alongside him on films like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and New York, New York.
“I didn’t know anything about boxing,” Scorsese told Vanity Fair. “It was always one angle on TV or in the movie theaters, where they’d show the fights on the weekend. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. It was sports, which took me out of the picture.”
However, since De Niro was so gung-ho about the project, Scorsese did agree to help him produce it. But after a tumultuous period in the director's own career that saw him hospitalized and gravely ill because "he had no platelets in his blood, the result of an interaction between his asthma medicines, other prescription drugs, and the cocaine that he then regularly abused," Scorsese had second thoughts about revisiting the director's chair.
When De Niro visited Scorsese in the hospital, Raging Bull came up again. Suddenly, Scorsese understood Jake LaMotta's character after his own personal demons were on display for everyone to see. He couldn't not make the film with him as the architect for De Niro's passionate vision.
Malcolm X
In a sit-down interview with Pharrell Williams in August of this year, Director Spike Lee talked about Denzel Washington’s incredible transformation for his 1992 film, Malcolm X, which told an unflinching and historical account of the activist who was viewed as a much more polarizing figure than other civil rights activists of his era due to his "by any means necessary" stance in the face of institutional racism.
“The performance by Denzel — that’s one of the greatest performances ever,” Lee proclaimed. “All the speeches in the film are Malcolm’s speeches — we did the research. The stuff that [Denzel] said was better than Malcolm’s words … He was bringing it. People don’t understand. He prepared a year.”
While doing press for the film in 1992, he told The Los Angeles Times that he predicted that Washington would get an Academy Award for his performance as Malcolm X and, "If he doesn't, we'll burn the Academy down."
"What we really want to put out is what we feel is the true image of Malcolm because there have been so many misconceptions of what he stood for--Malcolm X hated white people, Malcolm X promoted violence, Malcolm X this, Malcolm X that. A lot of people's perceptions (about Malcolm X) came about by the media," Lee said, adding that "Malcolm X scared not only white people but many blacks of his generation as well."
Denzel Washington would be nominated for Best Actor at the 65th Academy Awards - losing to Al Pacino who took home the top prize for his role as Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman.
Schindler's List
In 1998, the American Film Institute invited more than 1,500 leaders from across the American film community – screenwriters, directors, actors, producers, cinematographers, editors, executives, film historians and critics among them – to compile the 100 greatest American movies.
In the committee's estimation, Schindler's List is the ninth greatest film ever made.
Based off the novel, Schindler's Ark, by Thomas Keneally - an Australian novelist - the author's knowledge of the story only occurred because he had stopped off at a leather goods store in Beverly Hills where the shop owner, Leopold Page, began telling him the story of how he and his family had survived the Holocaust.
Keneally recalled his encounter with Page with The Guardian, saying Page had said "I was saved, and my wife was saved by a Nazi. I was a Jew imprisoned with Jews. So a Nazi saves me, and more important, saves Mischa. So although he's a Nazi, to me he's Jesus Christ. Not that he was a saint. He was all-drinking, all-black-marketeering, all-screwing. OK? But he got Mischa out of Auschwitz, so to me he is God."
Director Steven Spielberg had just finished E.T. when MCA/Universal President, Sid Sheinberg, gave him Keneally's book. After scanning one review, he recalled saying to Sheinberg, ”It’ll make a helluva story. Is it true?”
Although Spielberg was enamored with the project, he didn't think he was the best fit for the project. First, he suggested that Roman Polanski should make it as he was a Holocaust survivor whose own mother was killed in Auschwitz. Polanski ultimately declined.
Spielberg then approached Martin Scorsese who accepted the director's chair. But months later, Spielberg had a change of heart and asked if he could take over for Scorsese. The filmmaker agreed. Spielberg made up for it by trading Scorsese the rights to a movie he’d been developing: the remake of Cape Fear.
American Splendor
While many biopics can feel stuffy and like mere extensions of hundreds of books written on the topic, in certain cases, they can also shine a much-needed spotlight on different sorts of "heroes."
Such is the case with American Splendor, a film which fuses biopic dramatization with documentary filmmaking to give greater exposure to underground comic writer, Harvey Pekar, who saw both the beauty and madness in every day existence while working in Cleveland, Ohio.
Due to the very nature of how the film is constructed, the funny elements are all the more hysterical, while the downtrodden beats like Pekar's cancer diagnosis plays that much more devastating.
Lincoln
Another oft-heard criticism about biopics is that they are just too expansive and thus very hard to digest and enjoy. After all, these people are notable enough to have millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars spent producing a film about them. In turn, writers and directors have a hard time eliminating areas of a person's life that are important, yet not necessarily a requisite as it relates to creating a film less than three hours long. It's also probably why a film hadn't been made about a U.S. President in 72 years when Lincoln debuted.
Steven Spielberg wisely chose to focus the story of Abraham Lincoln on the few months in 1865 when the President persuaded Congress to abolish slavery and effectively end the Civil War. This is a similar approach Aaron Sorkin took in writing Steve Jobs. Rather than tell a story from soup to nuts, Sorkin focused on critical Apple launches during his tenure which revealed Steve Jobs the man through action and interaction.
“I kept writing and I never got any further than January of 1864,” said screenwriter Tony Kushner. "I realized that this was simply not a story you could compress in a way that would be dramatically effective. I reached a point in 2007 where I said to Steven [Spielberg], ‘Maybe I should just give up. I don’t know what to do."
The fateful writer's strike of 2007-2008 gave Kushner and Spielberg ample time to formulate a new strategy: make it about four months instead of the 56 years that Lincoln had lived prior to the passing of the 13th Amendment.
“We both laughed about that—it seemed like an insane idea,” Kushner said. “It’s as much about the House of Representatives as it is about Lincoln, and the idea of making a movie about the House of Representatives seems completely insane—there is no organ of government in the history of the world less popular! The whole movie was just going to be a lot of guys talking.”
At the 85th Academy Awards, Lincoln was nominated for twelve Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director; it won for Best Production Design and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis.
Available on Netflix
Fruitvale Station
Ryan Coogler's debut feature film, Fruitvale Station, may be over three years old, but the topical relevance is just as timely and important as ever before given the political climate in the country which has pitted people against police for their perchance for violence instead of restraint.
Depicting Oscar Grant's final hours before he was killed in 2009 by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale district station of the BART system in Oakland, California, the film was something that Coogler knew was a better outlet for him than rioting or turning to violence.
"I saw the riots and the frustration [following the shooting], and they didn’t have an effect,” Coogler said. “If I can get two hours of people’s time, I can affect them more than if they threw a trash can through a window.”
Into the Wild
On September 6, 1992, the decomposed body of vagabond Christopher McCandless was discovered by moose hunters just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park in Interior Alaska. The driver's license on his persons indicated that he weighed 140 pounds. When he was examined, he weighed a meager 67 pounds.
And so illustrates one man's journey off the grid - a spiritual ancestor of Jack Kerouac and Huck Fin - who sought out adventure and a simpler way of life instead of conforming to cultural norms.
Most believe McCandless's death was the result of eating toxic seeds, while others believe he had merely succumbed to starvation. The simpler answer might be that one informed the other. Regardless, the events that led up to his untimely demise at only 24 years old was immortalized in Sean Penn's Into the Wild.
Penn shot at 36 locations in California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, South Dakota, Mexico and Alaska, often in the exact "footprint," where McCandless had stood and challenged Emile Hirsch - who played Christopher McCandless - to forgo any creature comforts normally associated with a Hollywood production. Instead, Hirsch lost 41 pounds from his 5-foot-6 frame.
"I've never seen anybody do it," Penn said. "I've never seen anybody asked to do it on this level. The weight loss. The cold. The heat. Everything."
Bronson
Born Michael Gordon Peterson, and also known as Charles Salvador, Charles Ali Ahmed and of course, Charles Bronson, director Nicolas Winding Refn's first major coup in Hollywood, Bronson, was sparked by Tom Hardy's brilliance in the titular role.
With only five weeks to prepare for his portrayal of one of the United Kingdom's most dangerous criminals, Hardy committed to reshaping his body so that he could take on Bronson's hefty - albeit powerful build - that was the antithesis of what Brad Pitt had attempted to achieve in Fight Club.
"To 'become' Charlie Bronson I had to quickly put a lot of weight quickly on my forearms, chest and neck," Hardy said in an interview with Ask Men. "By the time I’d finished, my legs looked like those of a stork in comparison to the top half of my body."
According to an entry in Bronson’s journals, he was pleased with Hardy’s results. “He has put on one and a half stone of muscles for the movie,” he wrote in an entry dated January 2008. “He looks awesome and I’m so fucking proud of him. You wouldn’t want to meet him down a dark alley at 3am. Tom looks more like me than I look like me.”
Che
Telling a two-part portrait of the Argentine doctor-turned-international revolutionary, Che is a labor of love between star, Benicia del Toro - who would win the prestigious Goya award in Spain for “best actor” - and director, Steven Soderbergh, who never felt he had enough time to perfect his vision due to budget constraints.
Regardless, the film succeeds at tackling the complicated existence of the man who was both adored and reviled.
"I think that is what we tried to do, to make him human," del Toro said. Steven [Soderbergh] tried to pick the details, and the vulnerability and aspects [of his life] that make him human. I think the movie did that. Some people say we just glorified him and made him into a super hero. But I think we made him human."
Alive
Based upon Piers Paul Read's 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, director Frank Marshall and narration by John Malkovich brought to life the incredible and perilous tale of the Uruguayan rugby team who crashed into the Andes Mountains in 1972 while aboard Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.
Forced to endure much more than the brutality of the crash, survivors encountered avalanches, hunger and two months of living in the wreckage of the plane in a quest to make it out alive.
