Weird Al Yankovic says Bohemian Rhapsody inspired him to go for Weird
Weird Al says Bryan Singer's 2018 Queen biopic made him realize: "Okay, well, maybe I can do a biopic but just like, just throw facts out the window."
Aux News Al Yankovic
Weird Al Yankovic fans, Daniel Radcliffe devotees, and the executive board of Roku alike can all thank 2018's Bohemian Rhapsody for 2022's Weird. According to Weird Al himself, he was inspired by Bryan Singer’s 2018 film Queen biopic to go for one of his own in exactly the outlandish way he wanted.
“Biopics historically have always been pretty inaccurate, and that always kind of bugged me,” Yankovic tells Variety’s Michael Schneider in a new interview. “That’s one of the reasons why I decided to reach out to Eric Appel to write the screenplay.”
One of the main examples that comes to mind for Yankovic is Bohemian Rhapsody, which starred Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury and won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. Although the singer isn’t shy about his love for Queen and his enjoyment of the movie, Yankovic does admit that the number of liberties the movie took with Mercury’s story inspired him to craft a biopic—Weird—that rejected fact altogether.
“I’m a big Queen fan, and I liked the movie and it won awards and was very popular,” Yankovic says. “But it bothered me that there were so many artistic liberties taken, just flat out changing the facts, changing the chronology, just making it more quote unquote, cinematic, and I thought, ‘Okay, well, maybe I can do a biopic but just like, just throw facts out the window. Just go completely off the rails.’” For a movie that started out as a fake Funny Or Die trailer, Yankovic’s approach was certainly more than appropriate. What better way to chronicle the life of a spoof singer than with a spoof biopic, after all?
Revisit The A.V. Club’s November 2022 interview with Weird Al Yankovic here.
21 Comments
Wait a minute, Weird Al didn’t get into a shootout with a Mexican Cartel in tandem with Madonna?
Yup. Totally made up for the movie.In real life, Weird Al got into a shootout with a Columbian cartel in tandem with Madonna.
Of course not.They were actually Colombian, and it was Cyndi Lauper.
“You find out what we make in the factory when you work in the factory!”
Toby Huss is an American treasure.
I hope they find a place for him in the King of the Hill revival.Not that I’m really looking forward to that, but Toby Huss was so important to that show.
I’m still hoping the King of the Hill revival gets called off, but there’s no way they’re doing it without Kahn.
I assume they’ll just recast. The recast Cleopatra for the Clone High revival.
They just got rid of Gandhi, so who knows?
I guess Kahn / Huss escaped the Apu / Azaria treatment as the show wasn’t running eh? Wonder how they’ll approach that.
I’m so glad he keeps getting good roles. Right now we’re enjoying him on Dickinson, and if you haven’t seen him in Halt and Catch Fire he’s worth it all by himself (but that is legit one of the best shows of the 2010s).
He was a very very small part of Newsradio, but even there he was a delight.
He really is. One of the most underrated character actors alive. I’m actually rewatching Halt and Catch Fire right now. He gives the most beautiful performance in that show. I’m thinking of revisiting Carnivale afterward just to keep the Hussathon rolling.
This absolutely was the right move, and part of why I loved the movie so much. I’ve seen enough biopics to know the parts that the Weird Al movie makes fun of, only those moments are played completely seriously.
It’s also partly why I hate Bohemian Rhapsody so much in particular.
One, doing any straight biopic after Walk Hard is laughable.
Two, the stuff they made up for the film was so flagrantly wrong I was screaming at the screen “THAT. DIDN’T. HAPPEN.” It felt so unnecessary.
I dunno if you can even completely chalk that up to Singer. May and Taylor had a lot of say in the final product, and it felt like it was their perception of events a lot of the time.
Bohemian Rhapsody made way more money than Walk Hard, though.
May & Taylor may be getting long in tooth, but I doubt their perception now is that “Another One Bites the Dust” and “We Will Rock You” were from the same session/album.
I’m not even talking that, necessarily. It’s just the way Freddie was portrayed.
“Oh yes, Freddie was brilliant and wonderful. But he could be a bit of a diva. And if he had just listened to his bandmates more…” Gag me.
Everything involving Freddie “going solo” made me sick. Hot Space tanked in the States, yes, but he had no intentions of leaving the band. Roger had already released his own solo album!
What’s even weirder is when they cut really interesting true information which could have been a good scene, like the fact that he knew Davie Bowie before he was famous.
Damn, shade from Weird Al.
And I thought he was a nice man.
“Daniel Radcliffe devotees”This is actually a thing?