Monday, 21 February 2011
-
I Love Biopics
I don't know if I notice, but I tend to love watching the movies or the biopics of artists I don't regularly listen to.Some of my favorite biopics nowadays are Walk The Line, Velvet Goldmine, Control, Notorious,...and currently I am watching Bird, a movie about Charlie Parker, a jazz musician. There was a biopic about John Lennon pre-Beatles before Nowhere Boy. The unorthodox part is that I don't listen to either Johnny Cash, David Bowie or anything glam rock, Biggie Smalls, Joy Division, Charlie Parker, or John Lennon. (readers collectively gasp) I don't regularly listen to their music much. So, why watch?
The thing is that its about more than just the music for me. I like to be a fly on the wall of a musician before they became a musician, when they became a musician, to the turmoils and all. Biopics give me a proper look into the minds of musical legends everywhere. I want to know what motivates them to do what they do, and what inspires some of the things they do. Knowing an artist's backstory can give me more insight through a person's music and choice in music. Biopics surely let me know that no one just walks into music making music. Most of the time there is a past or a present influencing them. Maybe every now and then, it makes me more interested to listen to their songs or albums.
One day, a person showed me a documentary about musician Daniel Johnston. The movie is simply called The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
It's about how he grew up in a religious conservative household with a bipolar disorder and depression, and decided to handle it with the aid of musicmaking. He learned to play piano, learns to play guitar, and sings, despite anyone's thought of his voice. People took his music as heartfelt and genius, with a Beatles influence. From the looks of it, Daniel's imagination and his personality was somewhere near childlike, which added to his often prickly recordings. The more he did music, the more it helped him deal with personal demons through religious imagery and recording.
And while it didn't quite make me a fan of his music (like most biopics will do), it gave me a closer understanding of both it and why some people do music outside of any introduction to the masses: sometimes, music is there just to help you get through the day.
The things that biopics taught me about musicians is that none of the celebrated ones were without personal turmoils, successes, failures, discontentment with the media, etc. In fact, all of their experiences seem to not only influence their music, but make it stronger. Geniuses become genius long after they have dealt with some things before and after the music.
Best of all, biopics show me how intersting things get from behind the curtains.
What's your favorite musical biopic?
Related Posts
Post a Comment
- Back to mancouch's Mancouch Site!
- Note: your comment will appear in mancouch's local time zone: GMT -05:00 (Eastern Standard - US, Canada)
About the Author
-
- From: mynameisblueskye@xanga
- Name: Blue Skye
- Location: Boston, Massachusetts
- About Me: What should I reveal? I'm African-American, my astro signs are Scorpio and Dragon, I'm left-handed, and pretty candid with my opinions and thoughts. I love music, fruitful conversation, and a bunch of other things. Though, if you sign on here expecting the ilk of everyone's blogs,...well, you'll be a bit disappointed. Everything I post is me going raw with my subjects. So, if you dare addme, fasten your seatbelts. It is going to be quite a ride. Anything else you want to know, talk to me on AIM or Yahoo. Take a look at my profile to find out what my AIM and Yahoo! names are. I also have a policy for adding people. I check your profile, read your blogs, and maybe look at your photos, and then add you. IF you have friends lock, please send me a profile or a sample of your blog to be added.
-
True
Stats: This Week All Time Posts: 0 50 Views: 0 65989 Comments: 0 1424 View all posts by mynameisblueskye@xanga
Comments (6)
I liked Walk The Line a lot, too. I wasn't a fan before, but since then I can appreciate his music more because I found out who he was and what he went through to become who he did.
Just so most of you would comment on how the beginning doesn't make sense, I really didn't notice that as much as I love looking at biopics, I wasn't inclined to buy their music before and still don't know if I should because of it.
Ooo... that man has a guitar on his back *giggle*
For me, my number one favorite musical biopic would be none other than "Ray". It's the movie that wonderfully chronicled the important events of Ray Charles' life and how he came to be, from starting out as a poor boy who suffered from blindness, to a successful and legendary icon in the music industry, well renowned throughout the world. It's a very touching, inspirational movie.
There's still a few I wanna see. Ray was good, and I just recently saw Notorious, which was also good. I never really knew Biggie's background and who all he was connected to, just liked a few of his songs.
Also Music Of The Heart, which is actually about a Violin teacher (Roberta Guaspari) who established a music class in an east Harlem school back in the early 90's, is a great movie to check out.
@vajbff@xanga - i LOVE music of the heart <3
i loved walk the line too
i never saw notorious, ray, nowhere boy, or many others actually. mostly, i'm bothered by not having seen the runaways yet haha.