Any self-respecting cinemagoer will know the phrase by heart: “The characters and events portrayed in this film are fictitious.” It’s cinema’s ritual boilerplate disclaimer. “Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental and unintentional.”
Lately, however, film-makers have been treating the fine print like a challenge. A clutch of recent releases has taken up a curious middle ground: not quite biography, not quite fiction, but something more slippery in between. Marty Supreme, for instance, spins 1950s table tennis wildcard Marty Reisman into Marty Mauser, borrowing Reisman’s forename and forehand while rewriting the rest. Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? mines the early career of standup comic John Bishop, only to rebrand him as New Yorker Alex Novak. And later this year The Prince, directed by Cameron Van Hoy and written by David Mamet, will refract aspects of Hunter Biden’s life through proxy Parker Scott.
So what’s with this rise in “pseudo-biopics? Is it a defensive response to legal risk and/or online backlash? Could it just be a creative strategy, allowing film-makers to bend the truth without the burden of accuracy? Or is it something more cynical, a way of exploring the cultural cachet of real people while maintaining ironic distance? In 2023, Brit McAdams wrote and directed a film called Paint, starring Owen Wilson as a ginger-permed painter with a soothing manner and a popular television show. At first glance, it might seem to be a biopic of cult art instructor Bob Ross – but it isn’t. McAdams’ protagonist is called Carl Narglewho just shares Ross’s hair, brushes and mannerisms.
“The truth is,” says McAdams, “that movies are very hard to make. You need to find a script, star and millions of dollars in a world where a lot of films don’t make money. Playing off of a character or world that people know makes things a bit easier. Primary Colors isn’t about Bill Clinton, The Devil Wears Prada isn’t about Anna Wintour. But evoking them is a wink to the audience and makes people feel like they’re in on the joke from the jump.”
In the literary world, there’s a term for such stories: roman à clef, or “novel with a key”, in which true-to-life tales are retold behind a veneer of fiction. In film-making, McAdams says, this sense of familiarity can give a project a leg-up in the pitch session. And from a legal perspective, even a single altered name or detail can open up a world of possibilities. Take the 1981 Broadway musical (and 2006 film) Dreamgirls: the characters wouldn’t exist without the Supremes, yet once fictionalised, they can be taken anywhere and do anything. The same logic applies to a standup comic, a ping-pong player, or a political wild child.
“Breaking away from the actual person affords you opportunities to explore themes that may not have existed in a specific person’s life,” says McAdams. “Or elements of that person’s life that no one wants to talk about. Or, frankly, things that are just more interesting. The hope is that with any additional – and sometimes salacious – elements comes a deeper understanding of the human condition as opposed to a hatchet job. But every film is different.”
During the most recent flurry of “films à clef”, some have blurred those lines even further, with actors ostensibly playing themselves. Jay Kelly offered a thinly veiled George Clooney, who watches a montage of the ’s actual films within the semi-fictionalised world. It’s all very meta. So too is The Moment, starring British singer-songwriter Charli xcx as a once-removed version of herself. But, as The Moment’s co-writer Bertie Brandes explains, the film is far from squeamish about its satire and send-ups.
“I’d be happy if someone watched this and thought it was a genuine documentary,” Brandes says. “We blend footage from different platforms and formats, our cameos play themselves, it all adds to this very intentional, smudgy kind of verisimilitude. It’s a cautionary tale but it’s not a fairytale. While some of the specifics are obviously fictional, all of this could – and does – happen.”
The Moment is essentially a mockumentary about Charli xcx’s preparations for a new tour. Joaquin Phoenix attempted something similar in 2010, when I’m Still Here purportedly followed the actor’s bid to become a hip-hop artist, and only after its release was it revealed to have been scripted. But writing dialogue for a real person can be tricky, says Brandes. “I’ve written so much with Aidan [Zamiri, The Moment co-writer], and he knows Charli so well, we developed a pretty good grip on how she speaks. It’s definitely more complicated, but ultimately brilliant because you can send your character a line and be like: ‘Would you say it like that?’”
There are levels to this. Given the recent box-office flops of several straight biopics – The Smashing Machine, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Christy – perhaps these more experimental projects are a way to counter genre fatigue. After all, the pseudo-biopic has the best of both worlds: a ready-made audience, but one that doesn’t know the full story, and there’s more to come. Just last week, Chicken Shop Date creator Amelia Dimoldenberg announced that she will produce and star in a romantic comedy about – surprise, surprise – a celebrity interviewer looking for love. Whether she uses her own name or not remains to be seen.
The Guardian
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