While I'm still nervous about this movie, it's a very good sign to see Better Man as a member of the series important festivals.

 

So exciting to look at the festival programme and see this name!

It will be part of Gala Presentations at Toroto Festival.

 

https://tiff.net/films

https://tiff.net/events/better-man

 

Duration of the movie - 131m (Bohemian Rhapsody was 135 min)

 

Already in 1 month, come on!!

 

 

It's getting positive vibes so far & grabbing some attention which is good ....

It seems to have taken such a long time to get here, but finally getting closer :cheer:

Robbie Williams biopic confirms UK release date

 

Better Man, the biopic based on the life and career of Robbie Williams, has finally landed its release date.

 

The film, which is being directed by The Greatest Showman's Michael Gracey, sees the singer play himself as his career is told with a "fantastical" approach, tracing his roots all the way through his time with boyband Take That as well as his own successful solo career.

 

After many years in the works, it seems that Better Man finally has a release date, with the musical being pencilled in for December 26 for both the UK and Ireland as well as Australia (via Tom Linay on X/Twitter).

 

In addition to Williams, the stacked cast for Better Man includes Inside No. 9's Steve Pemberton, Gavin & Stacey'1s Alison Steadman, Justified star Damon Herriman and Jonno Davies, who will play a younger version of the singer.

 

Gracey, who also directed a documentary on musician Pink, previously spoke about Better Man with Deadline back in 2021, sharing that the portrayal of its central character would differ from previous music biopics such as Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman.

"It's this fantastical story, and I want to represent it in its harsh reality all the way to these moments of pure fantasy," he said. "Unlike some people who were born prodigies or geniuses and you follow the narrative of the world catching up to their brilliance, this isn't that story.

 

"Robbie is that Everyman, who just dreamed big and followed those dreams and they took him to an incredible place. Because of that, his [story] is an incredibly relatable [one]. He's not the best singer, or dancer, and yet, he managed to sell 80 million records worldwide."

 

"You can relate to the guy who doesn't see himself as having any extraordinary talent, even though of course, he does. What he did have is the will, vision and confidence to say, 'I'm going to pursue my dream.'

 

"For us as an audience, it's a window into the world, of what if we just went for it and chased that impossible dream that so many of us put to one side,” he said, adding that Williams' songs would be "re-sung for the emotion of the moment."

 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/new...id=BingNewsVerp

Edited August 28, 2024Aug 28 by Sydney11

Thanks Tess - Boxing Day it is then :)

Thanks Tess - Boxing Day it is then :)

 

 

Yes, not sure I will get there that day though :unsure:

 

I'm surprised we haven't had a trailer yet!

Robbie Williams film Better Man could be the craziest music biopic ever

 

 

Better Man makes complete sense as a movie proposition. Music biopics are big business in the era of Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, and there aren't many British music icons bigger than Robbie Williams. All they had to do was find an actor to play Robbie, pen a script around his up-and-down career journey, and then watch the cash roll in when the movie debuts in UK cinemas on Boxing Day. But that's not what Better Man is, if early reports are to be believed. Better Man, directed by The Greatest Showman's musical specialist Michael Gracey, sounds like it's going to entirely up-end the biopic format, starting with the decision to portray Williams through the medium of a CGI monkey.

 

It should be said that we don't know for sure about the monkey. Deadline reported this idea way back in 2021 but, since then, it hasn't always been mentioned in stories about the production. In more recent articles, we've heard euphemistic descriptions of the film taking a "fantastical" approach and delivering "a very original exercise in storytelling". They're almost certainly talking about the monkey. Notably, Peter Jackson's company Wētā FX lists Better Man as an upcoming production on its website. Given their simian experience on Jackson's King Kong and the recent Planet of the Apes movies, they'd be a prime choice for a project like this. Gracey, too, has form given the fact he was a VFX artist before making the transition to directing. It's not like Williams is beyond this sort of stuff either. In his 2002 track Me and My Monkey, he used the idea of a monkey to represent the way he acted while at the worst of his drug addiction.

 

In an interview with Deadline way back in 2021, Gracey said: "As for how we represent Robbie in the film, that bit is top secret. I want to do this in a really original way. I remember going to the cinema as a kid and there were films that blew me away and made me say as I sat there in the cinema, ‘I’ve never seen this before’. I just want the audience to have that feeling."

 

A recent edition of the Popbitch gossip column claimed that American audiences were left "completely bemused" by a screening of an early cut in LA. They wrote: "It seems the cut of the film they were treated to contained no explanation whatsoever as to why Robbie is a monkey while the rest of the cast is entirely human." Of course, we don't know any of this for sure until the film's first official screening, which is scheduled to take place in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. We will almost certainly get a trailer for the movie around that time too, revealing the bizarre truth about Williams and the monkey ahead of the December 2024 release. In the meantime, there is plenty that we know. Williams is playing himself — monkey or otherwise — with Jonno Davies as his younger counterpart, while Inside No. 9's Steve Pemberton will play the star's father. Kate Mulvany is portraying Williams' mother, while Gavin and Stacey star Alison Steadman will be his beloved grandma Betty.

 

Williams will perform several of his most famous songs in the movie, including in concert scenes filmed during some of the star's 2022 gigs at the Royal Albert Hall. But if it's true that he will spend at least part of the film in the guise of a CGI monkey, this could be very bizarre indeed. The genius of Robbie Williams is in his status as a pure showman. He has confessed in the past that he is neither the best singer or the best dancer around, but he is a truly electric performer possessed with immense on-stage charisma. It's no surprise in that case that he wants to do something truly different with the movie version of his story.

And let's face it, very few of us want to see a straightforward music biopic any more. In fact, the best example of the genre in recent years was 2022's Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, in which Daniel Radcliffe played the titular accordion enthusiast as a playboy badass who saved Madonna from the clutches of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

 

These music figures have lived their entire life in the spotlight, so it's refreshing to see them take a more inventive approach to telling their stories on the big screen. And if that means Robbie Williams is played by a CGI monkey in Better Man, sign me up for an opening day ticket. Merry Christmas to us all.

 

https://www.aol.co.uk/entertainment/robbie-...7zyadrDfO1IMue4

Edited August 29, 2024Aug 29 by Sydney11

Today!!!

 

It has also been announced that Better Man will premiere tonight (August 30) at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, with more showings over the weekend.

https://www.telluridefilmfestival.org/

 

There will be 3 screens for Better Man during this festival.

Pharrell Is a Lego and Robbie Williams Is a Monkey in Two Music Biopics Aiming for Oscar Attention

'Piece by Piece' and 'Better Man' had their world premieres at the Telluride Film Festival and hope to make a splash at the Oscars

 

Legendary musicians Pharrell Williams and Robbie Williams — unrelated despite their shared surname — are each choosing to tell their life stories through unconventional mediums.

 

Pharrell’s story is brought to life in Focus Features’ “Piece by Piece,” directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, known for his documentary “20 Feet from Stardom.” The film uses Lego bricks to depict Pharrell’s early life, focusing on his roots in Virginia Beach and his rise to fame as one half of the hip-hop and R&B production duo The Neptunes. Pharrell was on the ground in Colorado for the Patron’s Brunch on Friday morning, mingling with high-profile guests, including some AMPAS voters. “I’m so excited to be at a festival that doesn’t show many animated movies, but they chose mine,” he told Variety.

 

The film features interviews with many of Pharrell’s contemporaries — including Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Timbaland, Kendrick Lamar, Justin Timberlake and Busta Rhymes — each depicted in Lego form. Focus Features is marketing “Piece by Piece” as an animated music biopic, seeking awards recognition in the animated feature category. However, the film will also be submitted in the documentary feature category, despite the Documentary Branch’s historical reluctance to embrace films that use re-creation scenes or unconventional storytelling methods.

Pharrell narrates much of the film, recounting childhood memories brought to life through animation. The film’s innovative approach recalls the 2021 documentary “The Rescue,” which also used limited re-creation scenes but was ultimately snubbed by the Documentary Branch. “Piece by Piece” will also be vying for attention in other Oscar categories. While Lego movies have been snubbed in the past, the Academy allows members outside the Animation Branch to vote for the nominees. With its robust soundtrack featuring hits from the ’90s and 2000s, the film is expected to resonate with millennials and fans of the genre and has potential for commercial success. The movie includes five original songs, with the closing track — co-written by Pharrell and sharing the film’s title — poised as the likely submission for the best original song category.

 

Focus is also mounting a best picture campaign for the movie, and animation is a medium aching to be recognized in the Oscars’ top category. And it doesn’t have to be only one either.

 

Meanwhile, Paramount Pictures’ musical biopic “Better Man,” directed by Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”), tells the story of British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams, but with an unexpected twist — Robbie is depicted as a CGI monkey. The film bowed at the Chuck Jones Theater, with Robbie Williams and Michael Gracey introducing. He also appeared at the brunch, where he described his life to Variety as “f***ed-up,” but incredibly eager to share his story with the world.

 

Boy, does the film pack a wallop, following the singer’s humble beginnings as one part of the boy band Take That.

 

As expected with music biopics, Williams battles fame, adultery and addiction. However, Williams bares his soul, voicing the walking and talking ape as if it was pulled straight out of a “Planet of the Apes” movie. In terms of its awards prospects, the tearjerking crowdpleaser has the makings of previous Oscar embraced biopics such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Walk the Line.” The crafts, particularly visual effects, sound and production design are worthy of major consideration. In addition, if you thought cinephiles were passionate about banging the drum for Andy Serkis’ turn in “The Lord of the Rings” films, there’s a strong case to be made for Williams’ impeccable voice work, as he unapologetically lays it all out, injecting a raw and honest depiction of an artist who isn’t as well-known in the U.S. and can still be a discovery for the audience.

 

Artists are vulnerable this year, and we’re seeing a new, refreshing way to tell their stories.

 

 

 

https://variety.com/2024/film/awards/piece-...key-1236125749/

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Sydney11

In a Robbie Williams Biopic, the Star Is a C.G.I. Monkey. Take That.

 

The director Michael Gracey hopes Americans will finally get the British hitmaker, who’s depicted warts, fur and all in “Better Man,” debuting at the Telluride Film Festival.

 

Dance, monkey, dance. Sing, monkey, sing. The British pop star Robbie Williams has always felt like a performing monkey. He has described himself that way when remembering eras of his life: his days as a young boy, trying to prove to his father that he had the “It factor” required to become a star; when he was a teenager and landed his dream job as the fifth member of the boy band Take That; and finally as an adult trying to start a solo career.

 

Recent biopics of the band Queen and Elton John have proved that audiences are willing to taking a fantastical ride through pop-stars’ common trajectories of rise and fall and rise again. But will they be so amenable when the protagonist is played by a computer-generated monkey?

 

Yes, you read that correctly. In the coming musical biopic “Better Man,” the character of Robbie Williams is a chimp, though everyone else around him is human. It’s a leap that the director Michael Gracey, best known for the smash “The Greatest Showman,” is betting moviegoers will take, even those in the United States where Williams is hardly a name despite his international stardom.

 

The monkey, said Gracey, “was the thing for me that clicked, and it was also the thing that made the film near impossible to finance.”

 

His plan was to rely on the magicians at Weta FX (“Avatar: The Way of Water”) in New Zealand to design a computer-generated monkey, something similar to the process that turned Andy Serkis into Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise. For “Better Man,” the stage actor Jonno Davies wore the gray motion-capture suit for the entire production and was then rendered into simian form. For the chimp’s face, the eyes of the actual pop star were used.

 

This approach not only doubled the budget of the movie, but also seemed just too far afield for most backers. Multiple times, Gracey said, “I would sit down with financiers. They would say, ‘Director of “The Greatest Showman,” Robbie Williams. I couldn’t be more excited about this. How much do you think?’ And I would say, ‘Well, there’s just one thing: Robbie in the film is being portrayed by a monkey.’ And they would say, ‘Oh, yes, in some dream sequence, or he looks at his reflection and he sees himself as a monkey.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, the entire film.’ Their faces would just drop and they would say, ‘OK, well, this is the end of the meeting.’”

 

Gracey spent six years and all his political capital from the massive success of “The Greatest Showman,” which earned $435 million worldwide, to cobble together the money to make this fantastical musical featuring Williams’s music catalogue.

The film premiered Friday night at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado to a standing ovation. It will next appear at the Toronto International Film Festival in September ahead of its nationwide release from Paramount Pictures on Christmas Day. :)

 

Williams, with his cheeky personality and self-described “punchable face,” was all aboard the monkey concept, Gracey said. “He grinned from ear to ear” when it was first presented to him. “He thought it was just so crazy that it was going to work,” he added.

 

And so from the first frame of the film to the last, Williams is portrayed by a monkey, first as a young childlike one with furry paws and outsized ears who doesn’t fit in at school and is desperate for the approval of his showman father; then as a rebellious boy-band monkey with dyed blond hair (just on his head) and a penchant for copious amounts of cocaine and alcohol; and finally as an adult monkey desperately trying to fight off his demons.

To Gracey, the gritty rendering of Williams’s life is made more heartbreaking with the monkey at the center, a helpless animal that he’s betting will elicit sympathy from the audience.

 

“I genuinely believe you actually feel more because he is a monkey,” he said. “When you watch a monkey doing drugs, it’s actually really hard to watch. We show it in a way that is messy — it makes you uncomfortable, and it’s meant to.”

 

Gracey explained that the character was self-medicating instead of dealing with anxiety and depression, trying to numb himself, and then fighting back. The film “doesn’t hold back the extreme condition that he was in mentally at that stage of his life,” the director added.

 

Paramount, which has been developing another original musical with Gracey since 2021, was given an early look at the film and took to it immediately.

 

“I had no idea what I was really going to watch,” said Brian Robbins, co-chief executive of Paramount Global, who watched an early, unfinished cut of the film last November with his film team, and ended up spending $25 million for the North American rights. “I think even before the lights came up you could feel this sort of energy,” he recalled. “When someone does the unimaginable, it’s the most exciting thing in this business. I think ultimately, that’s what audiences want to experience and we experienced that firsthand — which with a jaded group like ours, is kind of hard.”

Two years ago at the Cannes Film Festival, Gracey showed 20 minutes of the film to his loyal cadre of financiers, and he brought Williams with him for the introduction. Gracey spoke, but all eyes were locked on Williams. And it was in that moment that Gracey felt that he was onto something with this grand anthropoid experiment.

 

“That’s what the monkey does. It’s the truest depiction in a film of what it is to be a star, because we all just stare at the monkey,” he said, adding, “They walk into the room, they don’t open their mouth, and everyone is staring.”

As for Williams, he said at the premiere that the first time he watched the film, he was processing it. He continued, “The second time I felt sad for Nicole” Appleton, his ex-fiancée who was forced by a band manager to have an abortion. “And then I felt sad for me. I’ve been through a lot.”

 

The artist, now 50, has sold 77 million albums worldwide and won 18 Brit Awards, the English equivalent of the Grammys. Yet, in the United States he is virtually unknown. This movie may change that, at least when it comes to his music.

 

To Gracey, drawing moviegoers completely unfamiliar with Williams will be the clearest mark of success.

“The people I really want to see this film are the people who have no interest in Robbie Williams,” Gracey said. “That, to me, is the truest victory. That is where the monkey transcends the narrative.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/movies/r...man-monkey.html

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Sydney11

@1829760746374242726

@1829707857249419400

@1829706030772863027

Michael Gracey On Telling Singer Robbie Williams’ Life Story As Musical With A Most Unusual Twist

 

After today’s Telluride premiere of Better Man, the cat will be out of the bag. Or, more appropriately, the monkey will be out of the barrel.

 

The film covers Robbie Williams’ larger-than-life ascension from the bad boy in the Brit boy band Take That to superstar solo artist – with all the drug and alcohol use, struggles with depression and anxiety – is captured in its decadent glory befitting a superstar who pushed every envelope. Directed by Michael Gracey, Better Man is as much a full-blown musical as his last hit, The Greatest Showman. Only here, all of the characters are depicted by humans, except for Williams. He appears throughout the film in the form of, as Williams says, “a cheeky chimpanzee.” In this interview, Gracey discusses this massive creative swing he, Williams and the film’s financiers and the distributor Paramount Pictures have taken. I met Williams at a Telluride brunch this morning. He’s slim and has the healthy look of one who has put the bad boy days behind him — “still naughty, just sober.” He felt not only has the movie accurately captured his crazy journey, but that it might succeed enough that a receptive US audience might propel the kind of same that has been his reality since teens, in places like the UK and Australia, where he still cannot go to a mall or walk down the street without being mobbed. The film covers his excesses, and his craving for approval from his father, who got Robbie bit by the showbiz bug, then left the family to pursue his own dreams. It left a whole Williams filled in all the wrong ways.

“To say I was blown away wouldn’t do it justice,” Williams told me about seeing the whole film for the first time. “But then I go into this existential, well do I think it’s amazing because I’m narcissist, or is it actually amazing? Because it feels pretty f***ing mind-blowing.” There is a lot depicted that a narcissist would not love, particularly the drug use and mental health woes that are somehow easier to watch when a chimp going through it.

“I’ve had this problem that has sometimes been a strength, where I don’t know when to stop oversharing,” the singer said. “And this is a movie full of classic oversharing, whether I look good or look bad. But it’s got a fantastic portrayal of what happened in my life. It’s honest.”

 

Williams hopes a new audience in the U.S. will want to hear more from him. He lived in L.A. for many years, and could walk down the street or go to the mall like a normal person. “I am completely anonymous, and I didn’t plan to change it until now,” he said. “And now I’m kind of desperate for that to change. I moved [to L.A.] so I could be Bruce Wayne in America and Batman everywhere else. It worked for me because there were periods in my life which were pretty risqué. I needed a place to retreat and not be known, and I got that. But now I’m old and wise enough to want the experience of incredible success again. And maybe that would be in America. I’d like to enjoy that kind of success as an adult now instead of a teenager that couldn’t experience any sort of joy because of what was happening mentally. I said to Michael yesterday, one-quarter joking, as we got off the chair lifts that took us over the mountain, and walked through the town here … I said, “Mate, I hope I can’t f*cking do this in 18 months time.” I know mentally what that invites into your life, but America’s a place that I’ve lived in for 24 years, and it’s a place that I’ve dreamed about all of my life. I’ve been happy being anonymous in America. But now I would like to show off for America, and I would like to be received with love. Maybe I can do that. But it all depends on the film.”

 

Gracey provided the song-and-dance and storytelling propulsion, with show-stopping musical numbers that included one on Regent Street with hundreds of dancers set against the backdrop of those magnificent white buildings. It seems as good a place as any to start because it’s part of the adversity that is part of this film’s backstory.

 

 

MICHAEL GRACEY: That was a year and a half in the planning. We had four nights to shoot it, and we couldn’t rehearse there. We had to literally just … go for it. The only way to rehearse it was tape out every curb, every rubbish bin, every bus stop in a huge studio space, on which 500 dancers practiced for a week and the whole camera crew rehearsed the entire musical number. Cut to the last day of rehearsal, just before we would shoot, and we got a phone call from the Crown of State, because even though Westminster Council is the council for Regent Street, the land is Crown Land. It’s owned by The Crown. And they called me and they said: “The Queen died last night. You’re not shooting.”

 

DEADLINE: How do you overcome something like that?

 

GRACEY: We’d planned a year and a half, bought out the shops, we paid for every bit of gear. Everything was booked, and then the Queen died. We lost that money after the 10 days of mourning, the funeral, the coronation. It was five months before we got back onto Regent Street to shoot that number. And we had to raise the money again to do it. We came this close to it not happening. Every time that number comes on, I just grin from ear to ear because we came so close, Mike, to that never, ever occurring. It was a miracle that we got that number.

 

DEADLINE: What did that setback cost the production?

 

GRACEY: As a result, we went over our allocated time with Weta, who had blocked out X amount of time to do this project. And some of the artists were getting moved off the project onto other projects, and there were artists at Weta who literally said, “I will leave this company if you make me go onto another project.” That’s how passionate they were about staying around to realize this film. I’m not sure I’m meant to say how much [the cancellation] cost, but it’s in the millions. It is an enormous musical number.

 

DEADLINE: This was a hard one to get made. What was the biggest challenge in finding backers for your vision, which included the most radical depiction of a famous music star?

 

GRACEY: Showman was a studio film, and this was independent. I felt like this would be a very hard pitch for any studio. And to be fair, the monkey of it all was almost a non-starter for so many of the financiers that we approached. At first, in their head, they’re like, “Oh yeah, of course — the director of The Greatest Showman and Robbie Williams. Fantastic.” And then I would’ve to say, just one thing: “Robbie’s going to be portrayed by a monkey.”

 

DEADLINE: Reaction?

 

GRACEY: For two weeks, it was, “Right, but in some sort of dream sequence or fantasy moment.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, no — the entire film” … and literally so many of the financing meetings came to an end right there.

DEADLINE: Why a monkey? What was that symbolic of in the way that Robbie looked at himself?

 

GRACEY: I developed a script through a series of interviews with Rob. So over the course of a year and a half, I interviewed Rob every time I came to L.A. and we would just sit in his recording studio and talk. And to be honest, when we first started, it wasn’t necessarily for a film. I just wanted to capture him in his own voice telling his story because I found it so compelling. The majority of the recordings in the film, the voiceover is from those recordings. Then I started taking those and chopping them together, almost like a radio play, just to see if I could form a narrative that spanned the length of a film that would keep me engaged, just purely if I shut my eyes and listened to it.

And once I got that, I was like, I just don’t want to do another Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman musical biopic, at least from the point of view in which they were approached. I just felt there was a more creative way of entering into this particular story. So I went back to those recordings, and when I was listening to them, I found Rob saying often that he was just dragged up to perform, like a monkey, or it didn’t really matter. He was just up the back performing like a monkey. And he said it enough times that I was like, “Oh, that’s how he sees himself. He literally sees himself as a performing monkey.” And I thought, “That would be amazing; I would love to see that film.” That’s where the idea came from. And then of course, I had to pitch it to him.

 

DEADLINE: Tell me how that went.

 

GRACEY: I said, “If you were an animal, how do you see yourself?” And he immediately said, “A lion, definitely a lion.” In my head, I went, “No, that’s the wrong answer.” So I said, “Really?” And he sort of smiled. and he went, “Wow, if I’m being honest, I’m more of a monkey.”

 

DEADLINE: It’s one thing to banter that with somebody, quite another to anchor your musical biopic with it. He’s got a global following — it’s a lot to ask. How did you get him to wrap his arms around that?

 

GRACEY: The film’s pretty raw. I always think that when you go to those dark places, you feel the light so much more. And just from my experience when I watch films, Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, those moments of elation are so much brighter when you go to those depths of despair. I really didn’t want to shy away from that with Rob’s story. He has such moments of extreme highs and these extreme lows. I just pitched it back to him that we would tell this compelling, moving emotional rollercoaster of a story, but we would do it from the point of view of how he sees himself. So he would be portrayed as a monkey through the whole film, and he just grinned. And he was like, “Yeah.” I showed him two pencil sketches by Brian Sloan, an artist I worked with. That’s what sold him. They really captured Rob. You could still see Rob in the monkey. I think in the film, the monkey’s eyes are Rob’s eyes, like a hundred percent. We took high-res scans of Rob’s eyes. Weta had done three Planet of the Apes films at the time that I approached them. And I was so blown away with War for the Planet of the Apes because so much of that storytelling was unspoken. It came down to the performance of Andy Serkis, being portrayed through Caesar the monkey — or the ape. I should say

 

I was completely convinced that we could trade off three films worth of R&D and refine what it is to portray these performances in the most subtle way. I thought this would be sort of taking it to a new challenge because now not only is he going to give all of those performances, but he also has to be able to sing and dance. Fortunately, Weta were completely on board with it. They were so excited about the challenge of bringing Robbie to life as a monkey. But to Rob’s credit, he didn’t blink an eye. He really, from the moment I pitched it to him, he was on board and he didn’t waver. Sometimes you sort of pitch an idea everyone loves, and as time goes on, people start questioning it. He never once questioned it or the level of honesty that we were going to do this with. He didn’t question the monkey, which I think remarkable on both those fronts, for someone with so many voices in his head and anxiety and real depression and the sort of mental illness that he battles.

 

DEADLINE: What did you film that made you feel, “I’m all in. This is going to work”…

 

GRACEY: The way I work, and I did the same on Showman. I shoot the whole film out just on iPhones and cut it together, and we just did the process over and over again. And the moment we start casting actors, throwing them on their feet and workshop it almost like it’s a theater piece, I was getting goosebumps and thought, “This is going to work.” That pre-vis is actually what helped me finance the film. I could show the opening number, of him as a little kid, and I could show “My Way,” the final number. And even in the crust forms, people understood that the bookends of the film worked.

 

DEADLINE: Explain the magic trick. As we watch the Regent Street dance number or the one on the yacht, what are we looking at? Do you have somebody in a suit for the singing and dancing?

 

GRACEY: Jonno Davies plays Robbie for the majority of the film. He is an astonishing actor you’re going to be hearing a lot more about because the guy is crazy talented. So he was there in the motion-capture suit, just like Andy Serkis when he plays Gollum or Caesar. And it’s all the same tech that Weta built up over the years to really capture the most minute details of performance, facial performance along with body performance. And so that’s what Jonno is doing on a set.

 

DEADLINE: You put it all together and show it to Robbie. How nervous were you, and what did he say?

 

GRACEY: I’d shown Robbie rehearsals and previews, but I didn’t show him Jonno in the gray suit [before it was complete]. It’s too hard to wrap your head around, even for me, and I know exactly how we’re going to replace the guy in the gray suit, with the monkey. It wasn’t until afterwards that I really understood when the monkey is in a scene, it is the truest depiction of what it is to have a famous person in the room. Everyone just stares at the monkey.

 

It doesn’t matter who’s talking in frame, your eyes are so fixed on Robbie; even if he’s just standing in the background or sitting at a table, you are still staring at him. And that’s what you do with stars, with celebrities. You stare at them. Even if someone else is talking to you, they draw you in that way. And so I only ever showed Rob sequences that had the monkey in them. I never showed him gray-suit Jonno performing. And that was very intentional because I just felt it was too hard for him to wrap his head around. I mean, it’s hard enough for him to wrap his head around a singing-and-dancing monkey version of himself, let alone seeing a guy covered in dots and a gray wetsuit and a camera sticking out the front of their face. Rob watched 20 minutes of the film at a Cannes screening for international distributors. The next time he watched it was the finished film.

 

DEADLINE: What did he say?

 

GRACEY: First time, it was like watching someone who was shell-shocked. It was so much to take in that I think it was very hard for him to process. He was hugging me, and he just was like, “That is a lot to process.” I got it completely. It’s not just the fact that it’s a monkey depicting your life. There were such extreme experiences that he was reliving while watching it, and not all of them were good. It took till the third watching of the film before he really could take it in. So he’s watched it three times now, and I think he finds it more enjoyable each time. The first, that was just an assault on all fronts.

 

DEADLINE: How was it for you, watching him watch himself as a monkey…

 

GRACEY: I’m watching some of those scenes and I’m holding my breath — and to be watching it as yourself must be incredibly daunting. But again, I am very grateful that Rob was willing to let us go to those places because I do think there is a tendency to water down stories, either because the person’s dead and they want to protect the legacy or the person’s alive, and they don’t want to go to those places that are sort of warts and all. Rob stood by his warts-and-all story, and he goes to some very dark places. It’s a credit to him and the trust that he put in me to allow me to tell that story. And in a very raw way; we were very purposely not glamorizing the rock-star lifestyle. We weren’t glamorizing the drug taking, we were showing it in a dirty, visceral way. Whether it’s alcohol or drugs, they can get portrayed in a very glamorous way. And we made a conscious choice to not do that.

 

DEADLINE: Closer to Sid and Nancy?

 

GRACEY: Yeah. My mom’s friends down at the supermarket are all, he would say to mom, “Oh, when’s Michael doing another film? We loved The Greatest Showman. We can’t wait to see his new film.” And my mom would smile and say, “Well, maybe you might not like it as much as you did The Greatest Showman.”

 

DEADLINE: Those songs could have been originals to me, like the ones in The Greatest Showman, because I didn’t grow up with his music. They’re standards in Europe, Australia and other places. Now, since he’s depicted as a monkey — or more accurately a chimpanzee — he can still maintain a bit of the anonymity over in the U.S. How much awareness of Robbie’s hit-song catalog be promoted to build awareness?

 

GRACEY: What you just said to me is everything. You just meet the film as if it is like The Greatest Showman, an original musical, right? American audiences don’t know these songs, but unlike Showman, he has had over 70 million worldwide album sales. Tell us exactly which songs are hit songs. Wow. So it’s like you’ve got the cheat code of going — we know these are hit songs, and you are meeting them as an audience for the first time, which is wonderful because in America, the thing that I love is that no one will ever hear this music and not think back to that moment in the film, and the context in which it exists in the film. It’s a very different experience for people overseas, who already know the songs, and you’re giving a new context to a song they already know.

 

But in America, it’s a more pure experience because they’re meeting a character they don’t know — music that they’re hearing for the first time, and that’s their level of investment. Their investment is in the monkey, and they are hearing these songs and these beautiful narrative moments, whether it’s she’s the one on the boat or rock DJ and dancers going down Regent Street or whatever the moment is within the context of the narrative. They will forever associate that song with this film. And I think that’s an amazing thing. No downside to either, but if you were to ask me which I think is the more exciting, it’s meeting it for the first time. It’s rare you go to the cinema, experience something and go, “I haven’t seen anything like this.”

 

https://deadline.com/2024/08/michael-gracey..._source=twitter

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Sydney11

The Robbie Williams Biopic Isn’t Monkeying Around

 

 

Just moments after the premiere, Williams and director Michael Gracey explain why the iconic English popstar is played by a CG monkey in Better Man.

 

Most people don’t know it, but Robbie Williams is a major reason why The Greatest Showman exists. Michael Gracey, who directed that 2017 movie, says English pop star Williams was Hugh Jackman’s main inspiration while playing the ringleader at the center of The Greatest Showman. “During all of production, his reference time and time again was Robbie Williams,” he says. But just before filming began, Jackman was so full of doubt about the movie’s songs that he nearly pulled out of the project. So Gracey, through his lawyer, found Williams’ number and called him up. He showed him the songs for the film and begged him to help convince Jackman it was worth sticking around for.

 

Even though Williams didn’t know Gracey, he did just that. “He literally said that he'd been working on an album and he would ditch that album to sing these songs – that's how good these songs were,” says Gracey. “And he then went on to say that if Hugh wasn't going to play the part, he would play the part.”

Jackman stayed on The Greatest Showman – which became a massive box office hit, earning $435 million worldwide and an Oscar nomination for best original song – and Gracey and Williams formed a friendship that would last years. Through their conversations about Williams’ path to fame, Gracey thought there might be a story worth telling in a film. So he asked Williams if he could record their conversations, and ended up with 18 hours of tape. “Rob has the art of storytelling in spades, and I also couldn't believe that he remembered so many details about a life that was so fueled on drugs and alcohol,” says Gracey.

Those tapes became the backbone of Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday. The Paramount Film is in some ways a traditional biopic that traces Williams’ childhood days, tough family life, rise to fame in the boy band Take That, massive solo career, and battles with drugs and alcohol. Gracey has interwoven some of Williams’ most iconic songs – including "Angels", "Feel," and "Rock DJ" – into the story for soaring musical numbers, and he also added one other major twist: Williams’ character is played by a CG monkey.

 

It sounds like a wild gamble, but Williams and Gracey say this was the best way to capture Williams’ deep self-loathing in the film. Gracey noticed in the interview tapes that Williams often described himself as a monkey when he’d be pushed to perform onstage, even when he was barely conscious because of the drugs and alcohol. In a sit-down interview with Vanity Fair just moments after the world premiere, the pair reveal why the singer had to be a monkey for the whole movie and how Williams is still chasing fame (in America, anyway).

 

Vanity Fair: It’s just 20 minutes after the world premiere of your movie. How are you feeling?

 

Michael Gracey: I loved it. I loved feeling people around me, the little things—laughter and gasps and all that. But actually the thing I really pick up on the most is the silence. There are certain moments in the film where you can hear a pin drop, and there's no crackling or moving or shifting of people in chairs. The moment of silence isn't happening just on screen. It's happening in the space, and I think that's really something unique and powerful.

 

Robbie Williams: Well, I've got a massive itch to scratch, because I really want to show off in North America. So this is all matter of joys for me, genuinely. Just to be here in North America, in front of Americans, starting my show and our process once again feels really good.

 

Why are Americans such a target to you?

 

Williams: Because I made a decision quite a long time ago that I would live anonymous here. I was promoting an album, and I had a bunch of money in the bank and sold a bunch of records, but I was deeply unhappy. And the adult driving the car decided, “we live here, we don't work here.” I can be Bruce Wayne here and then Batman everywhere else—but also the idiot in the back is egoic. That ego really has an itch to scratch here, and wants to prove to myself that I can do something meaningful here. I've lived in California for 24 years, and there is a certain privilege that membership gives you to the celebrity fraternity that I don't have in LA. They sort of know that I mean something somewhere. And with that, they sort of give me a pass, but it's ego and access. And it slightly annoys me – more than slightly. I need to walk into a room and then go, "Wow, okay."

 

When did you realize you’d want to film this in such a unique way?

 

Gracey: To see himself as a performing monkey wasn't just whilst he was famous – it was his whole life. He was always putting on a performance at [his hometown] Stoke for the other kids, at home for his parents. And it made it so powerful for me because I was like, “you're going to fall in love with this character, this little monkey. And you're going to invest emotionally in this little monkey.” As long as you set that contract at the start of the film, you're in, and you will go with that monkey through the entire journey.

 

What did you think when he brought up the monkey?

 

Williams: “Amazing.” Straight away, yes. Because I want everything that I do from here on in to be slightly unusual, so that fits that narrative.

 

There must have been people backing this movie that thought that was pretty risky.

 

Gracey: Yeah, those people didn't back the film [laughs].. It was some of the shortest meetings I've ever had in my life. They'd of course go, "Director of Greatest Showman, Robbie Williams – we're going to make a fortune." And I go, "Yeah, just one thing. Rob's going to be a monkey." And they go, "What?" And literally that was the end of the meeting. One person said, “But if this whole monkey thing doesn't work out, you can just go back to Robbie." And I go, "No. No. There's no going back. We're going to be shooting a guy in a gray suit with dots on his face. There's no going back.” So then that person stepped away. It was a lot of people who said no. And also the monkey concept meant that the budget of the film doubled.

 

The CG looks incredible. It’s easy to get emotionally attached to this monkey.

 

Gracey: We were so fortunate to be trading off three films that [visual effects house] Weta had already done for Planet of the Apes. So all of the knowledge that they'd learned, and if you watch those films, they really do progress, each one.

 

Williams: As humans, we care more for animals than we do for humans. So the audience is probably going to have more empathy for me as a monkey than they would've done for me as me.

 

Do you worry about fans expecting to see Robbie in the movie singing these songs?

 

Gracey: No, because I do think there's multiple groups of people. There's people who are Robbie fans, and they're going to the film anyway. And even if they go, "I want to see Robbie," you just go, there is so much of Robbie in that monkey. If people know Robbie, if they really know him, they'll know that they are Rob's eyes staring out at you. There are so many of Rob's expressions all the way through that film. There's so many mannerisms and the way that Rob moves—that has been a study by Jonno Davies, who did the performance for Rob. But also Rob did a whole bunch of motion capture. He did a full motion capture. And there's a million Easter eggs: the clothing, even in some of the flash frames, there's nods to the music videos that he did. There's so much stuff in there for the fans.

 

Paramount kept this film pretty secret. They didn’t release a trailer or even mention the monkey ahead of this debut. Were you onboard with that?

 

Gracey: Yeah, and I think, look, now it's out in the world—but I do love the fact that people are meeting it for the first time, and it becomes something special. We can't really talk about the film without bringing up Jonno Davies because Jonno, he did such a deep dive on Rob and Rob's movement.

 

Williams: He absolutely smashed it.

 

When it comes to the way your family is portrayed, especially your difficult relationship with your dad, how protective were you over that?

 

Williams: The most that I felt the most protective of was my dad, because it's a consolidated version of it. My dad's my hero, so it is very difficult to go, "Hey, Dad. You don't come over that great in the movie." So that was tough. And that was the biggest concession that I made to the movie that I didn't feel comfortable about was I’ve got to throw my dad under the bus to make it work. But after some negotiations with my dad, he signed the paper, and he's okay. But it's tough

 

A lot of this story is about your relationship with fame, and your struggle with that. Is your relationship different now?

 

Williams: Yeah. There's levels of fame, and there's levels that aren't as quite lucrative, but really manageable. And then there's really f***ing biggest artists in the world that is completely unmanageable. And you can be overwhelmed by it, of course. And you can not be able to deal with it in any way, shape, or form. And you could become ungrateful and cynical, which I did. And I think once my first child arrived and it wasn't about me anymore, and purpose set forth into my life, that's when my whole relationship with fame changed.

 

And it changed even more just recently. We were walking back from a restaurant in Hyde Park, in London, and nobody f***ing recognized me! And it f***ing terrified me—absolutely terrified me. Because everything that I want to do, which is whole heaps of things – build universities, build hotels, have my own cruise liner – all is facilitated because I'm famous, and this is my purpose. This is what I want to do. These are the things that I want to create. And in that moment, I realized what it felt like to not be famous and to not have those possibilities. And I have been even more grateful after that moment.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/...-awards-insider

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Sydney11

@1829894135870075251

@1829706030772863027

“BETTER MAN” - REVIEW

 

THE STORY – Based on the true story of the meteoric rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable resurgence of British pop superstar Robbie Williams, one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Uniquely told from Robbie’s perspective, capturing his signature wit and indomitable spirit. It follows Robbie’s journey from childhood, to being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist — all the while confronting the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring.

 

THE CAST – Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton & Alison Steadman

 

THE TEAM – Michael Gracey (Director/Writer), Oliver Cole & Simon Gleeson

​

THE RUNNING TIME – 134 Minutes

 

“Better Man” is probably (and hopefully) the closest we’ll ever get to a “Deadpool” musical. The Robbie Williams biopic is crass, meta, and self-aware, full of F-bombs, dick jokes, winking asides to the audience via narration, copious amounts of CGI, and even its share of graphic violence. And, just like Deadpool, it’s not nearly as groundbreaking as it thinks it is. Because, at the heart of “Better Man,” for all the tools it uses to earn its R-rating, it’s still yet another musician biopic following the rise/fall/redemption arc, complete with failed marriages, substance abuse, and daddy issues. This is one that just so happens to feature a CGI chimpanzee instead of Williams.

 

Yes, you heard that correctly. Former Visual Effects Supervisor-turned-Director Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman“) collaborated with the visual effects team at Weta – who brought you Gollum and the “Avatar” aliens – to render Williams as a photorealistic CGI chimpanzee in every single scene. The chimpanzee progresses through the classic beats of a musician biopic otherwise. Williams grows up with a neglectful father, hustles his way into show business in large part to try and find the love and acceptance he was denied as a child, joins a band, finds success (and drugs), sets out on his own, has a rocky marriage, sees his substance abuse worsen and almost derail his career, confront his inner demons, and then perform a redemption performance.

 

What makes “Better Man” stand out is, well, aside from the fact that there is a CGI chimpanzee in every scene, is that, whereas most musician biopics sanitize their subjects, Williams is depicted unrelentingly as an asshole – even from the very beginning. This film does not want to make you particularly like or even root for its subject. Williams’ narration feels like a cross between Deadpool and Ewan McGregor in “Trainspotting” and further hammers this home with constant jokes. An example is when Williams is getting a handjob and makes eye contact with his manager, quipping, “For once, Nigel wasn’t the biggest w*** in the room,” and says things like, “For legal reasons, I am required to tell you that X is a super nice person.” The quips are often low-hanging frat-type humor, but they sometimes land. However, they do little to endear Williams, who spends the majority of the movie brash and arrogant to the extreme, abusing every substance under the sun, cheating on his wife, and berating his friends.

 

Of course, most musician biopics have a period in the second act where the musician declines; in this case, the film’s two-hour-and-15-minute runtime, at least an hour and 40 minutes, is dedicated slowly to Williams’ debauchery and destructive lifestyle. The honesty is admirable, truly, especially when compared to sterile PG-13 biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody.” And yet, the result is that much of the film drags; it’s repetitive seeing Williams behave like an ass and continue to destroy his life over and over again, especially when the film spends little to no time trying to make him likable from the start. Moreover, while emotional, the final 15 minutes don’t feel entirely earned, especially because Williams’ friends and lovers are so thinly scripted and barely fleshed out that the time spent repairing his relationships with them lacks much weight. Also, the conclusion of Williams’ storyline with his father feels unearned.

 

The film undoubtedly has style. Tracey’s VFX background shows as he drenches the film in CGI spectacle, including drug-induced hallucinations and literal manifestations of Robbie battling his (also CGI) demons. The CGI monkey is remarkable. Weta nailed the hard-to-manage lifelike eyes, and the work on Williams is only slightly less impressive than that in the recent “Planet of the Apes” movies. At the same time, the extensive CGI detracts from the spectacle of the musical numbers on display. The camera often leaps about too effortlessly, and both the music and the aesthetics of these numbers feel too slick, with an autotuned feel similar to how it often felt in “The Greatest Showman.” That being said, the choreography is frequently creative. One musical number feels right out of a hyper-choreographed “OK Go” music video.

 

“Better Man” is all competently put together but just drags. And, despite all the crass, self-aware humor and visual flourishes, it doesn’t do much to shake up the structure of a biopic. Whereas a “Walk the Line” or “Ray” – even if cliched – reminds you why the musician at its center was a beloved musician, “Better Man” is so focused on the spectacle and on showcasing the unsavory parts of Williams’ life that it doesn’t really demonstrate to an audience why his music was so beloved.

 

 

THE RECAP

 

THE RECAP

THE GOOD - Impressive CGI trickery rendering Robbie Williams as a lifelike CGI monkey and a refreshing willingness to show the warts and all glimpse at Williams' personal flaws – a rarity in music biopics.

 

THE BAD - Despite the CGI monkey gimmick and the crass, meta narration, it's still a standard biopic. The slick, overly CGI look is often unappealing. Supporting characters are not fleshed out, so the emotion doesn't land as hard as it could. It's far too long.

 

THE OSCAR PROSPECTS - Best Visual Effects

 

THE FINAL SCORE - 5/10

 

 

https://nextbestpicture.com/better-man/#google_vignette

Edited August 31, 2024Aug 31 by Sydney11

The ‘wife’ references in that review have me puzzled!