Search Results

This chapter looks closely at the various techniques by which the Jesus movies stake their claim to historicity. These techniques include introductory scrolled texts, voice-over narration, and, more subtly, details of setting, costuming, music, and the physical appearance of the characters. The chapter then outlines the ways in which the Jesus biopics undermine their own stated claims to historicity and studies in detail two movies that self-consciously negate the claim to historicity, The Last Temptation of Christ and Jesus of Montreal.

What characteristics of the screenplay provide the best predictors of greatness? The answer to this question is sought in the following script attributes: the genre, the runtime, MPAA ratings, sex and violence, sequels and remakes, true stories and biopics, and various kinds of adaptations. These script characteristics were examined with respect to financial performance, movie awards, and critical evaluations. One striking finding is that graphic sexual content neither sells tickets nor impresses critics. Because all of the script characteristics represent obvious features, discussion turns to the possibility of using content analysis to tease out the more subtle attributes of great screenplays. The chapter then switches gears by looking at the creators who actually write the film scripts.

This chapter surveys selective twenty-first century serial killer narratives and outlines their most significant recurrent themes and tropes. The most notable twenty-first century trend considered here are the depiction of the serial killer as a sympathetic anti-hero, as in Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter novels and the TV series of the same name, the TV series Bates Motel (2013–) and the YA novel/film I Am Not a Serial Killer (2009/2016), all of which depict disturbed teenagers struggling to repress their seemingly innate bloodlust, and the pre-eminent serial killer TV show of the past decade, Hannibal (2013–15). This chapter also defines the popularity of serial killer narratives as a truly global phenomenon by examining ‘Nordic Noir’, the Korean films Memories of Murder (2003) and I Saw the Devil (2010) and the Hong Kong film Dream Home (2010). Finally, the chapter concludes by considering the representation of serial killing in post-2000 biopics and true crime narratives.

One of the striking features of the new century is that three major British films as of June 2009 were identical in two ways. All three are biopics and all are debut features by visual artists who have come from outside cinema. They are Douglas Gordon's Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait (2006), Anton Corbijn's Control (2007), and Steve McQueen's Hunger (2008). Control and Hunger are less experimental, but more ambitious, than Zidane. In revisiting the divide and crossover between romanticism and modernism, this chapter looks at Hunger and Control and especially the way in which their contrasting nature shows the legacy of both romantic and modernist forms. They are biopics of the same period, the start of the 1980s when the modernist period of cinema in Britain was coming to a close. They have real-life protagonists who both killed themselves. Control reworks through Joy Division singer Ian Curtis the mythos of the doomed young artist, and Hunger through Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army hunger striker.

With the decline of the classical song and dance musical in the 1960s the genre's most persistant mode of survival has been the biopic. This survival is, however, embodied less in accounts of the lives of the performers or composers of the traditional mainstream popular music of the U.S. musical than of stars of alternative forms, such as rock, jazz and country music. Focusing on a range of country music films, from theatrically released productions such as Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), to the wave of made-for-television biopics that appeared in the 1980s and 1990s, this chapter explores the ways in which they all emphasise the discursive tropes of authenticity and sincerity in their narratives of stars' lives. It shows that the country music film works to negotiate the relationship between these concerns and the celebration of country's increasingly mainstream appeal by insisting on the ‘lived’ nature of country lyrics about heartbreak, divorce and loss.

The chapter considers some of the ways in which watching moving images is only one part of a wider cultural and creative participation in the construction of Spanish queer experience and identity. It considers the interconnectedness of different forms of accessing LGBTQ images and stories. It shows how some of the scriptwriters of the films discussed have parallel careers as novelists, journalists, or essayists, and have a queer following in their own right. It further maps the crossing from writing to film by exploring two queer Spanish biopics. The writers and exchanges between text and film discussed in this chapter contribute, it argues, to the production of a largely middlebrow queer culture in Spain and influence the ways that the films are conceived and consumed.

This chapter examines the ways in which narratives drawn from British history are represented across a range of films of the period. Paying particular attention to the films Cromwell and Winstanley (set during the English Interregnum), the chapter explores how far the past comes to inform the present in 1970s British films. It is also argued that these films allow for contemporary political tensions to be worked through in the British past. Attention is paid to the types of historical stories being told in these films, and to the ideological implications of these stories. Attention is also paid to the formal qualities of these films - the ways in which they choose to tell their stories.

This chapter offers a selective history of fictional films about Abraham Lincoln. Beginning with the Edison Film Company’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903) and concluding with Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), this chapter describes and analyzes dozens of films about America’s sixteenth president.

This chapter focuses on Yankee Doodle Dandy, the Warner Bros. movie about George M. Cohan's life. It is but one of dozens of Hollywood biopics purporting to tell the story of the great American popular songwriters, from Stephen Foster to the tunesmiths of Tin Pan Alley and the Broadway musical show. Filmmakers, sometimes assisted by the composers themselves, could recast them into any desired shape and construct a weave of fact and fiction, sacrificing biographical detail to the glory of the music itself. From the 1930s to the late 1950s, these pictures came in a flood, boasting big budgets, glossy production values, lots of music, and major stars. If the prestige of the classical pantheon had been and continued to be a factor in its marketability, the allure of the Tin Pan Alley composers—success and money—was even more potent.

This chapter discusses the work of Tony Palmer, who, together with his friend and former colleague Ken Russell, has devoted so much of his career to this troublesome genre of biographical film—and aroused more praise than blame in the process. As Palmer acknowledged in an article he wrote in 1988, making biopics is not a practice for the faint of heart: “Making film profiles of creative artists is a dangerous business. First, you soon realize that more or less everyone knows/knew the subject better than you....Next, you discover that the world is full of ‘experts’ who are rapidly rewriting history to show themselves in the best possible light....Even more dangerous, assuming, of course, that it's the truth we are seeking, are those participants who seek to ‘interpret’ the subject's life (and intentions) based on little evidence and less knowledge, except that they happen to be brother/sister/daughter/wife/confidante, etc., and thus (one would assume) possessed of invaluable insight.”

This chapter makes a connection between the laudatiofunebris, the funeral oration of ancient Rome, and the modern biopic. The author shows how biopics have the ability, like these ancient funeral speeches, to communicate the values of a society. However in this process, they have the capability to create not only heroes, but also antiheroes. The chapter shows how modern biopics use the Roman funeral speech to create new onscreen antiheroes that are of more appeal to audiences than their heroic counterparts. The chapter invites us to make a direct connection to the ancient world, seeing a similarity in the death practices of an ancient society and the way celebrities are currently memorialized in the public eye.

This chapter considers three Goya biopics as an example of the contemporary Spanish Gothic and the extent to which it coincides with Jerrold Hogle’s notion of neo-Gothic as fakery. In such biopics the figure of Goya himself comes to encompass the concept of the biopic artist hypothesised by Griselda Pollock as both tragically feminised and exemplary of unfettered masculine sexuality. Yet he also becomes the ghost of the real, deterritorialised through a museum aesthetic. The films examined are: Carlos Saura’s Goya en Burdeos (Goya in Bordeaux), Bigas Luna’s Volavérunt and Miloš Forman’s Goya’s Ghosts.

This chapter assesses the meaning of the slippery term “memoir” and why it has become the preferred term for literary life writing. It locates memoir within the context of a media constellation that represents the lives of actual human beings: portraiture, both painted and photographic; documentary films and biopics; oral anecdotes and family lore; blogs and electronic diaries; social media like Facebook; the obituary and death notice; the scrapbook, and so on. Unlike the novel, memoir is the literary face of a very common and fundamental human activity: the narration of our lives in our own terms. It is rooted in deep human needs, desires, and habitual practices. Nearly everyone engages in some form of this. So while it is not well understood as a literary enterprise, it is found all around us, all the time.

The chapter looks at the art and craft of writing songs for films, plus the rewards (money and Oscars) and hazards (possible deletion). Harold Arlen and “Over the Rainbow,” nearly cut from The Wizard of Oz. The chapter then considers Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, with Hart and Hammerstein, and the Sherman brothers, with Mary Poppins. It describes Irving Berlin’s one-man celebrations, such as Easter Parade, and his writing the dazzling “Cheek to Cheek” in one day. The chapter also describes the forgotten Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, creators of “Thanks for the Memory.” The chapter examines Cole Porter’s difficulties with film. The chapter moves on to consider the Astaire-Rogers series, for which some of the finest popular songs were created. The chapter finally looks at ABBA and Mamma Mia! and the slovenly genre of “composer biopics.”

A 1950s fad for biographical films about jazz musicians is sparked by the box-office success of The Glenn Miller Story. Subsequent biopics depict the lives of Benny Goodman, W. C. Handy, Red Nichols, and Gene Krupa. Often, their subjects take on signature attributes of the actors who play them. Two fiction films focus on characters derived from existing sources: Young Man with a Horn, based on Dorothy Baker’s novel, and Pete Kelly’s Blues, based on Jack Webb’s radio series. The relationship between Benny Goodman’s memoir Kingdom of Swing and the script to The Benny Goodman Story is detailed. The life of W. C. Handy, as told in his autobiography, is compared to the movie version, 1958’s St. Louis Blues.