The biopic is probably one of the greatest artistic scandals. An entire genre dedicated to turning deeply strange, often unmanageable, and probably obnoxious human beings into multiplex mascots sold with extra popcorn and an "inspiring" Spotify playlist. The modern biopic doesn't tell a life story. It sanitizes it. You take a genius riddled with neuroses, obsessions, contradictory urges, paranoia, and loneliness basically, everything that makes someone an artist and then you remove precisely that. It’s like making a movie about Keith Richards without drugs, Bowie without ambiguous sexuality, or Gainsbourg without alcohol. At that point, you might as well make a documentary about a Moulinex toaster.
Take Bohemian Rhapsody. A movie so sterilized it makes you feel like Freddie Mercury spent his evenings organic-knitting with regional crossword champions. Everything is polished, power-washed, and safe. Chaos becomes an "inspiring journey." The rough edges become storytelling for Instagram. The man was a volcano of desire, excess, loneliness, and sickly flamboyance. The movie turns him into a guy who could have worked at a suburban post office. What is fascinating about great artists is precisely their abnormality. Their constant derailment. Their inability to live peacefully in reality.
Music, cinema, and writing then become not just a creative hobby, but a way to avoid mental implosion. But Hollywood hates that. Hollywood loves outsiders… as long as they’re profitable, clean, and approved by the marketing department. So they rewrite. They simplify. They turn flaws into neat little life lessons. They remove the mental illness. They remove the sex. They remove the violence. They remove the obsession. In short: they remove everything that makes up the person and the artist. Of course, sometimes, a miracle happens. Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull doesn’t try to make Jake LaMotta likeable. It shows him as brutal, jealous, grotesque, and lost. And that is precisely why the film is a masterpiece.
Same thing with Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. This movie deeply loves its subject without ever transforming him into anything other than a complete weirdo driven by one thing: his love and obsession for making movies. Whatever the cost. As another crazy guy would say. A less likeable one. Because a real biopic shouldn’t be a posthumous PR stunt. It should be an affectionate, and above all, sincere autopsy. So listen to me carefully, Marty. Yes, you, Martin Scorsese. I know you read this newsletter. I have people, insiders in your circle. Guys who hang out in the hallways, near the coffee machines, between edits.
The day you make my biopic, do not make me an inspiring heroine. I beg of you. Show my obsessions. My absurd anxieties at 3 AM. The ideas that come too fast. The ridiculous hyper-fixations. The moments when I look at a model and wonder if they’re sublime or completely ugly. The nights spent looking for a leather color like Walter White in his RV, looking for the perfect formula.
Because the truth is, creating beautiful objects requires the exact same thing as creating great movies or great albums: a slight inner anomaly. A slightly crooked way of living in this world. And honestly, thank god for that. Because if artists were balanced, they’d all be working in humain resources, or campaigning for an elected official from any party. Because who actually wants to go into politics? Who wants power, besides the crazies? The real crazies?
