Sound And Vision: Justin Timberlake as Elton John and Six Other Wish-List Music Biopics

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Every great screen biography of a music superstar needs three key ingredients to really sing: 1) An icon with the greatest story never told. 2) A talented lead actor or actress gunning for an Oscar nomination”singing talent and striking resemblance optional (Angela Bassett didn’t sing a word in What’s Love Got to Do with It, and she looks nothing like the film’s subject, yet she was Tina Turner). 3) Kick-ass songs.


Fantasia Barrino
as gospel great Mahalia Jackson is coming soon. The Elton John Story (aka Rocketman) is reportedly finally in the works (I’d cast Justin Timberlake over mentioned favorite James McAvoy and pray that he can nail a British accent), as is Aretha Franklin’s (with or without Halle Berry, the Queen of Soul’s No. 1 choice), Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland and Sacha Baron Cohen as Freddie Mercury.

Robert Pattinson was announced as a possible Kurt Cobain at one point last year, but it’s hard to imagine that we’d get the true story as long as Courtney Love is around to kill it or put her spin on it. Ryan Gosling has the chops to pull off Cobain, but he’s already in everything and he’s several years older than Cobain was when he committed suicide. Note to aspiring biopic producers: One doesn’t have to cast a “star” as the star. Some biopics (Amadeus, starring Tom Hulce as Mozart; La vie en rose, with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf) do just fine without huge names.

Now that she’s gone too soon, too, it’s probably only a matter of time before we get Amy Winehouse‘s “untold” story. Note to aspiring biopic producers: Tabloid-era stars are best left alone unless, as with Eminem’s 8 Mile, the focus is on life before they were famous. Otherwise, we’ve already seen the action play out in the pages of Us Weekly and People magazine.

But what about those biopics in various stages of development and non-development? Here are six that I’m dying to see.

1) David Bowie: The star. The spectacle. The songs… Iman. I can’t think of a rock icon whose story is more deserving of the screen treatment. It would be a shoo-in for the Best Costume Design Oscar, and with a star like Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who already played a Bowie-esque figure to perfection in the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine), an actor worthy of the material.

2) Stevie Nicks: Throw in her one-time paramour and then-and-now Fleetwood Mac partner, call it Buckingham Nicks (like Stevie and Lindsey’s 1973 cult-classic album), and you’ve got my undivided attention. Most of what we know about FM static, romantically speaking, we know through songs like “Go Your Own Way” and “Dreams.” Nothing will ever top Rumours as sexual confessional through song, but how cool would it be to see it all relived on the big screen? Nicks’ solo years”drug addiction, yo-yo-ing weight, Tom Petty, Don Henley and Prince”would be icing.

3) James Brown: The Godfather of Soul’s life was almost as exciting as his music, but I’d watch his story just to listen to the songs. Next year’s Oscar host Eddie Murphy already got a nomination for playing a Brown-inspired character in Dreamgirls. If he could nail the man himself in It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World (perfect title, right?), he’d probably walk away with the grand prize.

4) Marvin Gaye: He was shot to death by his own father. Need I say more? More than twenty-five years later, that this biopic still hasn’t been made (at one point, Terrence Howard was set to star, with Cameron Crowe directing) is one of Hollywood’s greatest mysteries. What’s going on?

5) Tammy Wynette: I once read an interview with Reese Witherspoon in which the woman who won an Oscar for playing June Carter Cash in Walk the Line said she’d jump at the chance to play the First Lady of Country Music. Featuring multiple marriages, multiple illnesses, a kidnapping and premature death, Wynette’s story, which was bought to TV in 1981 but deserves a big screen, is as meaty as that of June Carter Cash’s other half, Johnny Cash, or even that of the Coal Miner’s Daughter herself, Loretta Lynn, whose 1980 biopic won Sissy Spacek her Best Actress Oscar. Joaquin Phoenix could stand by his Walk the Line costar as Wynette’s legendary alcoholic third husband, George Jones, and set off screen sparks once again.

6) Marianne Faithfull: Not just because her autobiography, Faithfull, was one of my favorite reads of the ’90s. You’d get two great stories for the production cost of one: You can’t tell Faithfull’s tale without Mick Jagger as a major supporting player, and as much as I love Jagger (and moving like him, too!), I’ve always found him most interesting from the point of view of the women who’ve loved and lost him.

Whose story are you dying to see onscreen?


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