Better Man

January 8Jan 8

Better Man’ review: Robbie Williams is…the basic showman

By Jon Winkler

January 8, 2025

The British pop superstar gets a flashy, but routine musical biopic from the director of The Greatest Showman with Better Man.

During a 2013 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, actor Matt Smith wanted to ask pop superstar Robbie Williams some questions about singing. His response?

“Right, well…I’m not the best for that.”

This man has sold over 75 million albums worldwide based on being “not the best” at singing. This man drew over 375,000 people to Knebworth over three days on the basis of being “not the best” at singing. And now this man has a $110-million dollar Hollywood musical about his life out and about while he is still “not the best” at singing. Pardon the language Mr. Williams but…you takin’ the piss?

I want it all.

An image from the movie "Better Man."

Well there is one key factor to the story of Robbie Williams: ego. Looking at one of his music videos or interviews or even a picture of the man, and you can tell he loves the spotlight. Whether he was a supporting singer in Take That or strutting through his solo career, Williams sucked-up every second of attention he got. He may not have hit the smoothest notes on a mic or had music that defied genres, but he knew how to be a star. He leaned into it, chin out, begging you to take a swing at him.

But now…he wants us to look deeper? Better Man, the musical biopic directed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) sees Williams start life as an energetic kid just trying to impress someone. That includes his father (Steve Pemberton), an absentee parent who’d rather charm a pub with hack jokes than nurture his son’s love of music and success. That love turns to drive as young Robbie charms his way into upstart boy band Take That, though he’s continuously stifled by stern management and substance abuse. Robbie soon goes solo with dreams of Sinatra-esque stardom. Yet he can’t shake a crippling sense of self-doubt (and therefore self-destruction) as he tries to find his own voice.

Oh yeah, and he’s also depicted as a CGI monkey for the whole movie.

To be fair, it is impressive how expressive and fluid said

REVIEW RATING

Better Man - 5/10

https://inbetweendrafts.com/better-man-robb...ms-film-review/

January 8Jan 8

Better Man: musical biopic of Robbie Williams as performing monkey will entertain you

Published: January 7, 2025 6.16pm CET

I can remember the mixed feelings I experienced as a teenager in 1997, buying Life Thru A Lens – my first Robbie Williams album – cautious it was too poppy to sit with my humble-but-growing CD collection of artists that would later be known as Britpop.

Yet, the album’s inherent cheekiness combined with moments of vulnerability made it something I was comfortable to include as part of the soundtrack to my adolescent life. I was reminded of these feelings watching Better Man (2024), director Michael Gracey’s new biopic musical that charts the story of the Williams’ journey to superstardom, along with his self-consciousness regarding where he fits as an artist and person.

The singer-songwriter is present throughout the film, albeit off-screen in the form of the narrator, guiding us through his history: growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, the son of divorced parents, his joining and dismissal from Take That, the reckless partying, his brief relationship with Nicole Appleton, and his own solo career. There is often a brutal honesty in these events, where no one (including Williams) comes off particularly well.

I can remember the mixed feelings I experienced as a teenager in 1997, buying Life Thru A Lens – my first Robbie Williams album – cautious it was too poppy to sit with my humble-but-growing CD collection of artists that would later be known as Britpop.

Yet, the album’s inherent cheekiness combined with moments of vulnerability made it something I was comfortable to include as part of the soundtrack to my adolescent life. I was reminded of these feelings watching Better Man (2024), director Michael Gracey’s new biopic musical that charts the story of the Williams’ journey to superstardom, along with his self-consciousness regarding where he fits as an artist and person.

The singer-songwriter is present throughout the film, albeit off-screen in the form of the narrator, guiding us through his history: growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, the son of divorced parents, his joining and dismissal from Take That, the reckless partying, his brief relationship with Nicole Appleton, and his own solo career. There is often a brutal honesty in these events, where no one (including Williams) comes off particularly well.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Insecurity, the search for self-authenticity and the desire for acceptance are the three elements that fuel the film. “Robbie became a character, something I could hide behind,” says Williams the narrator, offering some rationale for the CGI monkey used to portray the artist. In case you’ve missed the publicity, Williams is “played” by actor Jonno Davies, but in a computerised twist, special visual effects present the performer as a CGI walking-talking-singing-dancing simian.

Williams as chimpanzee is a stylisation choice which seemingly goes unnoticed by other human characters in Better Man. The film is not attempting a sci-fi tone like War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), but to my surprise makes much better use of CGI precisely for that reason.

These visual effects serve to remind the viewer of the pure artifice of the music industry and how fabricated identity – particularly that of performers who have no direct control over it – can take its toll. According to Hollywood industry magazine Variety, William’s description of himself as a performing monkey is what inspired Gracey’s aesthetic choice.

I can remember the mixed feelings I experienced as a teenager in 1997, buying Life Thru A Lens – my first Robbie Williams album – cautious it was too poppy to sit with my humble-but-growing CD collection of artists that would later be known as Britpop.

Yet, the album’s inherent cheekiness combined with moments of vulnerability made it something I was comfortable to include as part of the soundtrack to my adolescent life. I was reminded of these feelings watching Better Man (2024), director Michael Gracey’s new biopic musical that charts the story of the Williams’ journey to superstardom, along with his self-consciousness regarding where he fits as an artist and person.

The singer-songwriter is present throughout the film, albeit off-screen in the form of the narrator, guiding us through his history: growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, the son of divorced parents, his joining and dismissal from Take That, the reckless partying, his brief relationship with Nicole Appleton, and his own solo career. There is often a brutal honesty in these events, where no one (including Williams) comes off particularly well.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Insecurity, the search for self-authenticity and the desire for acceptance are the three elements that fuel the film. “Robbie became a character, something I could hide behind,” says Williams the narrator, offering some rationale for the CGI monkey used to portray the artist. In case you’ve missed the publicity, Williams is “played” by actor Jonno Davies, but in a computerised twist, special visual effects present the performer as a CGI walking-talking-singing-dancing simian.

Williams as chimpanzee is a stylisation choice which seemingly goes unnoticed by other human characters in Better Man. The film is not attempting a sci-fi tone like War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), but to my surprise makes much better use of CGI precisely for that reason.

These visual effects serve to remind the viewer of the pure artifice of the music industry and how fabricated identity – particularly that of performers who have no direct control over it – can take its toll. According to Hollywood industry magazine Variety, William’s description of himself as a performing monkey is what inspired Gracey’s aesthetic choice.

However, I wonder if there is also some nod to the 2008 media reports of Williams walking around Los Angeles disguised in a gorilla suit after a three-month period of isolation. Like the suit, or even Damon Albarn’s virtual band, Gorillaz, the chimpanzee avatar provides a liminal role that keeps the performer present and absent at the same time. This is a theme that the film attempts to deal with in both content and form, emphasised through the performer’s off-screen narration.

This fragmented, entertainment-led construction of identity is also a continuation of themes explored in The Greatest Showman (2017), also directed by Gracey. Better Man, unlike Gracey’s earlier film however, strives (in the script at least) for grittier realism, with expletive language from the beginning. This is not a film for young fans, who might anyway only be tangentially aware of Williams through a different animal in Robin Shaw’s adaptation of The Tiger Who Came to Tea (2019), in which the singer provided the central song.

What I found particularly engaging about the film is the ordinariness and honesty of Williams. He doesn’t claim to be overly talented, but is rather someone who owes his initial fame to his cheeky-chappy persona, often presented as a coping mechanism for dealing with rejection.

The film indicates how his desire for attention is presented as the result of the singer’s sometime-absent father, Pete Conway (Steve Pemberton), a struggling performer who lives for the stage but never quite made it. The young simian is left to contemplate his father’s mantra “You’re either a somebody or a nobody”, which cues some tender moments with his grandmother Betty (Alison Steadman), presented as one of the most positive relationships in his early life.

Imagery of Williams and Betty at home together on the sofa, embraced in the television glow of The Two Ronnies gives the film a sense of nostalgia. But the unhealthy and unrealistic reverence that goes with global stardom is also presented as a damaging experience that precedes the star’s drug addiction and isolation.

A poster for a film called Better Man showing a chimpanzee ina tux wearing sunglasses beneath the Rolling Stone banner.

These themes are something of a far cry from your average musical film. Characters spontaneously break into song (Take That or Robbie Williams tracks) in addition to scenes that focus on rehearsals and show performances, sharply reminding us of the constructed reality of pop-star life.

The film’s strength lies in portraying the veneer of stratospheric success that masks the human insecurity just below the surface, encapsulated by the CGI monkey modelled on the features of both Williams and actor Jonno Davies. For me, this was one of the best reasons to see it, but if you need more, there is a huge playlist of familiar tracks, including a spectacular high-octane montage of Rock DJ. Go see Better Man and let it entertain you.

https://theconversation.com/better-man-musi...tain-you-246793

January 8Jan 8

‘Better Man’ review: A fun and emotional take on the musical biopic

4/5 Take That songs

Rachel Leishman

The story of Robbie Williams’ life from Take That member to solo artist is fascinating enough. Add in a CGI monkey playing Williams and it becomes the talk of the town. For good reason. The Michael Gracey musical biopic really is masterful.

Robbie Williams provides a voiceover for the film, telling us the story of his life. The CGI version of Williams is portrayed beautifully be Jonno Davies, who plays the older version of Williams. It clarifies things, like what actually happened between him and Gary Barlow when he was forced out of Take That. The use of a CGI monkey might seem childish and weird but in reality, watching a monkey go through what Williams did allows you to feel for him in a way that you may not have otherwise.

Sadly, we’ve seen these stories over and over again. A beautiful musician we know and love goes through addiction issues. That’s a biopic staple at this point. But where Better Man shines is in its use of the monkey to really show how upsetting it is to see someone harm themselves in the way that Williams did.

At no point during the over two hour run time did I think that it would be better suited with an actor simply playing the role of Williams. The “gimmick” never got old, as it were. Instead, I felt more connected to Williams this way and cared deeply about his well being.

Unfortunately, audiences do care more about animals. One of the reasons behind the choice was the idea that an audience cares more about animals than people. And Gracey and Williams’ are correct when it comes to Better Man. Williams’ more outrageous and colorful moments are somehow tamer coming from his monkey self. I found myself more invested than I might have been otherwise.

A colorful blast of musical magic

It isn’t easy to make a movie musical anymore. You either have a biopic or a stage musical adaptation to work with, more often than not, and often audiences aren’t interested in a musical at all. But Better Man really knows how to balance the musical explosions with the darker side of Williams’ rise to fame.

With bombastic performances of Take That songs leading to Williams performing his classics, like “Angels,” it really is beautiful to see this CGI monkey version of Williams tackling these songs with ease. It honestly is amazing how you find yourself forgetting that you’re watching a monkey and not a young man as he tries to figure out what being famous looks like to him.

I will admit that I did not know the most about Williams, my knowledge was limited to my One Direction fandom days. But to see his life put on display in this way, with all the dark parts laid bare for an audience to unpack, it made me appreciate him as an artist. You don’t have to have your life out there like this but Williams told us his story from his own perspective and it is dark, twisted, but also a story of hope. And who knew we’d all be obsessed with monkey Robbie Williams after it?

https://www.themarysue.com/better-man-review/

January 8Jan 8

Interview: Director Michael Gracey (‘Better Man’) on Taking Big Swings and Turning Robbie Williams Into a Monkey

Daniel Bayer

December 16, 2024

If it wasn’t for Robbie Williams, “there may not be any Greatest Showman,” says director Michael Gracey. The world-famous British pop star who got his start with a tumultuous time in the boy band Take That was constantly on Showman star Hugh Jackman’s mind and eventually he sent Jackman a video message about the film’s music that helped Gracey through a key moment in that film’s production. After that, the two became close, with Williams regaling Gracey with “really unique and incredibly engaging” stories that the director begged the musician to let him capture. These informal chats, held in Williams’s home recording studio in Los Angeles, eventually became the basis of Gracey’s new film Better Man, a biopic of Williams in which he’s portrayed as an anthropomorphic monkey that represents how Williams has always seen himself.

While everyone around him was concerned about whether this idea would work, Gracey himself was always “supremely confident.” “I knew that if we had the right person portraying Robbie, that realizing him as a digital character is something that we could 100% deliver on. And I guess that’s both my background in animation and visual effects, but it’s also the people we were working with,” he says, referring to the wizards at Wētā, who were on board right from the very start, creating a demo reel that Gracey used to shop the film around to potential backers, most of whom said no. When they found Jonno Davies, a British actor recommended by Australian cast member Kate Mulvany, Gracey knew he had the other most important piece of the puzzle. At the height of COVID lockdowns, he and co-writer Simon Gleeson conducted multiple Zoom calls auditioning Davies, but “we still couldn’t give him the role until we’d seen him in person. So he flew all the way to Australia, not knowing whether he was going to get it or not… and within 30 seconds, you go, ‘This guy, he’s amazing. He’s in.’”

Despite his embrace of digital technology for the film, Gracey remains wary of the advances in AI that are starting to permeate the film industry. “It’s going to change the industry. There’s no question,” he says. “For me, you talk to any director… the collaboration is the reason you do it, you know?” Gracey is passionate about working with other people, seeing the choices they make and how a performance can evolve through multiple takes. “I think there’s many things that AI can do, it can’t do that. It can replicate, it can take inspiration from, but that spark, that magic, that chemistry, you know, we’re never losing that. And I don’t want to, I have no interest…. The joy of being a director is interfacing with another human.” Read on to hear more of Gracey’s thoughts on AI, how he conceived of the film, and who the truly greatest showman is.

---

Daniel Bayer: Michael, you got your start as a director, working on music videos for some of my favorite pop artists, like Sugababes, Natasha Bedingfield, Alesha Dixon, all these incredible people. And now, you’re directing a musical biopic of Robbie Williams, one of the great pop artists of the 20th century. Did that feel, at the time, like the logical next step in your career?

Michael Gracey: Probably not. It’s funny, I mean, I haven’t shot those artists in forever. I mean, that’s like another lifetime ago. But it’s true, really early on, you get these breaks with artists… If it wasn’t for the Sugababes, I would’ve never had a career in commercials, because that was the music video that got me signed with Partizan. And, being someone from Australia, being flown over to Paris and London to shoot commercials was like, it’s something I couldn’t even dream about. It was amazing. So yeah, I mean, it’s not a logical step to go to Robbie Williams. It came about in a very odd way, mainly thanks to Hugh Jackman, who kept referencing Robbie Williams the whole time we were making The Greatest Showman.

DB: Oh, wow! Okay.

MG: Yeah, so that’s kind how the Robbie connection came, because Robbie did a video message for me, talking about the music for The Greatest Showman to Hugh Jackman. And it was a key moment in time… without that video message, there may not be any Greatest Showman, so he really helped me out. And then, from there, we started talking and catching up socially, and he would just tell these stories that I just thought were really unique and incredibly engaging. And at that point, I didn’t even want to make a film; I just wanted to capture the stories.

And so when I was in LA, because I don’t live in LA, but whenever I came here, I would just go over to his house, because he’s got a recording studio in his house, and we would just sit in his recording studio and just talk. And I just said, “Look, you know, these might be just for you to listen to in a nursing home one day, but we should capture, while you still remember all these details, these stories just as audio.” And so it was just that. It was just the two of us sitting there and chatting. And that is what formed the basis of the first draft of the script, was those conversations.

DB: Yeah, and when you started the process of writing it, was it always in your head that this would take the form of a traditional musical?

MG: It was always going to be a musical. Obviously, if you’re telling a narrative about someone’s life as a pop star, then it makes sense to be a musical. And I think the part that was more unique was that I wanted to frame it in a way that just allowed us to come at the story in a different way, to sort of lens it from the point of view of how Rob sees himself, rather than how we see Robbie Williams. And so I came up with this conceit that he would be portrayed by a performing monkey.

DB: Which I absolutely love, and I loved hearing you talk about this at the film’s TIFF premiere, about where this idea came from. And it’s something that’s completely never been done before, it feels completely new, but I am curious if it was always your idea for him to always be a monkey – even as a kid?

MG: Yeah, like when you talk to him and when you listen back to those recordings, you kind of realize that he’s always been performing. Like in Stoke-on-Trent, he wasn’t as tough as the other kids around him, and so he was always making out that he was tougher than he was. There’s this beautiful story that I wanted to begin the film I could never find… There’s so much story to get through that I couldn’t put this story, but his nan had an account at their newsagent, where basically the paper that got delivered to her house would go on her account. But when Rob figured this out, he would say to the other tough kids, “What do you want? I’m going to go and shoplift.” And they would all give him their orders of what they want, like a chocolate bar and whatever they wanted him to steal. Rob would then go in, and then just put it all on the counter, and charge it to his nan’s account, and then he would come out with it under his jacket, as if he’d stolen it.

DB: Wow!

MG: And the beautiful thing about that story is his nan never called him out on it. His nan, who did not have a lot of money, always paid his tab.

DB: Oh, my gosh.

MG: And never brought it up, never mentioned it to him. So he was always putting on a performance. And so it made sense – whether it’s to his dad, who he wants to impress, whether it’s to his other mates, who he wants them to believe that he’s as tough as they are – he’s always that performing little monkey, you know?

DB: Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking about this a lot since seeing it, because between the presentation of Robbie as a monkey throughout the whole movie and the depiction of an audience that is hungry for more, and more, and more of him, even as he rages against it – he battles audience members at the Knebworth concert – were you ever concerned throughout the process of like, “Maybe we’re going to alienate the audience”? And how did you mitigate that while writing and filming it?

MG: I think the truth is, for me, that I think we empathize with animals more than we do humans, particularly in cinema. Cinema, we’re so numb to seeing people in pain, and when you have an animal in pain, I don’t know, there’s something about your heart that really goes out to them. And so I always thought it would be more powerful. And I also thought, strangely, there’s something to depicting Rob as a monkey that feels more honest than him just being played by an actor, so I don’t know. It’s interesting.

Obviously, we owe a lot to Jonno Davies, who did such deep [work on the] mannerisms, and you really see Rob in that monkey, and that’s Jonno, who’s a beast of an actor. He is incredible. And you know, for a guy standing on set with dots on his face and a gray wetsuit with tracking markers, he just gave a performance like you would not believe. I mean, even Robbie was sitting there looking at Jonno’s performance, going, “Holy shit, mate.”

So yeah, a lot of credit goes to him, and obviously, the team at Wētā in New Zealand who just came over and set up in Melbourne, Australia, so that we could make this film, because we had to do it with the assistance of the Australian tax rebate. And so they set up a studio in Melbourne, Australia, and that studio is staying in Melbourne. So we were set up for the film, but they’ve now got a permanent studio in Australia, which to me, as a kid who grew up in Australia, working in visual effects, that is the coolest legacy of this film. Having one of the world’s greatest VFX companies in Melbourne now is just amazing.

DB: That’s incredible. The other thing that I remember from the TIFF premiere is that you said that you had worked with Wētā on a proof of concept, like a test reel of this. Were you ever worried that it wasn’t going to work, either in terms of just the execution, or in terms of showing it to people and getting the backing to make the full feature like this?

MG: No, I think that was everyone else’s worry. [laughter] I was supremely confident. I mean, when it comes to performance capture, there’s no one better than Wētā. You’re trading off the R&D of what James Cameron has done with Avatar. You’re trading off the Planet of the Apes films, you’re trading off all the way back to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. There is such a history of translating amazing actors’ performances into digital characters. And so I knew if we had the right actor that Wētā 100% would deliver on that performance capture, and [would make] me feel something, make me feel engaged, and emotional, and connected.

So, I was never concerned. It was the concern of every single investor that we approached, which is why the majority of them said no. But it was never my concern. I knew that if we had the right person portraying Robbie, that realizing him as a digital character is something that we could 100% deliver on. And I guess that’s both my background in animation and visual effects, but it’s also the people we were working with. I mean, credit to Luke Miller, the visual effects supervisor, and Andy Taylor, the visual effects producer. This film wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for those two people. They dedicated like three years of their lives to this.

DB: Yeah, and like you said, Jonno Davies, is incredible in that role. What was the casting call for this part? How did you find him? Were you looking for dancers, actors who could move?

MG: Yeah, everything. We wanted it all, we wanted a triple threat! I mean, Jonno got cast really late. We had a really hard time finding the right person to play Robbie, and Kate Mulvany, who actually plays Robbie’s mum in the film, who’s an incredible actor in Australia, she’s just phenomenal, well, she had worked with Jonno, and she suggested that we look at him. She was like, “You really should check this guy out. He’s British, he’s amazing. He can do it all.” And we’re like, “All right, yeah.”

So we jumped on a Zoom, myself and Simon Gleeson, who was one of the co-writers of the script. And we met this guy, and we were like, “This guy’s really good.” And then, it’s during COVID time, so it’s really hard judging people over Zooms. And we’re obviously over the other side of the world, we’re in Australia, and he’s in London. So we did multiple Zooms, like long sessions, where we played scenes, and we really went through it all with him. And then, at that point, we still couldn’t give him the role until we’d seen him in person. So he flew all the way to Australia, not knowing whether he was going to get it or not.

DB: Oh, gosh.

MG: But we were like, “Can we just bring you out here?” and just all hoped like hell that it worked. And within 30 seconds, you go, “This guy, he’s amazing. He’s in.” It was that quick, he is just a remarkable performer.

DB: And it comes up seamlessly in the film, too. He’s incredible. And the monkey, frankly, looks great, looks real all the time. You began your career in film as a visual effects artist, like you said. After all the work that you’ve done with that, the work on this film, what is your feeling about the recent wave of AI technology and how it’s being used in art, specifically in cinema, but just even in general from your background?

MG: Yeah, I mean, it’s going to change the industry. There’s no question. It’s just, I think people are a little bit… Look, I never don’t want to be standing on set with actors. I think that the magic of cinema, as a director, is what the actors bring to it. It’s the spontaneity, it’s the choices. You think back to all the greatest films that you ever watched, they’re not derivative performances of something else you’ve seen. They are standout, they are unique, they are bold, and they are unexpected. And that can be the chemistry between two actors that you put together in a room. You know, how one actor plays a role is completely different to how another actor…

The ingredients that makes a great performance, and I look at this in Better Man and I go, “That scene would not be the same scene had we not had Steve Pemberton and Jonno Davies.” It just wouldn’t. And those performances, those moments, they’re unique, and they’re unique for a reason. I’ve had the privilege of watching multiple takes of what those choices made by those actors in that moment, what transpired. And I think there’s many things that AI can do, it can’t do that. It can replicate, it can take inspiration from, but that spark, that magic, that chemistry, you know, we’re never losing that. And I don’t want to, I have no interest.

For me, there’s something about the spontaneity of a performance, and to lose that and expect that that can just be generated by AI, I just think is… It’s not even a question of… But people like to say, “Oh, but one day, it’ll be able to do that. One day.” And you go, “Yeah, but I don’t want to interface with AI in that way.” The joy of being a director is interfacing with another human. It’s that human connection, and it is the creative minds that come together… that is what we call film. That’s what we call cinema. I look at the work… you can name 20 other directors, and they all have a singular vision, and they all go about their craft in a unique way, but what they’re doing is a result of the people they choose to collaborate with. And that collaboration, that’s the magic. For me, you talk to any director, the collaboration is the reason you do it, you know?

DB: Absolutely. So, we have one last question, and I have to know who is the true greater showman: P. T. Barnum or Robbie Williams?

MG: (laughs) I mean, if you ask Robbie, he’ll say Robbie Williams.

DB: (laughs) Of course he will.

MG: That’s really funny. I thought you were going to say, “Hugh Jackman or Robbie Williams?” and that would’ve been a much harder answer. (laughs) No, no. I think Robbie Williams, and… yeah, definitely Robbie. Because I’m not going to get a phone call from P. T. Barnum, am I? (laughs)

DB: He is no longer with us, so there is that. (laughs)

MG: But yeah, I’ll stick with my answer.

DB: Michael, thank you again so much for talking with us today. It’s been a delight.

MG: It’s been great, Daniel. Thanks, mate.

https://awardswatch.com/interview-director-...-into-a-monkey/

January 8Jan 8

Middleburg Interview: Michael Gracey of “Better Man”

Written by: Christopher Llewellyn Reed | November 5th, 2024

Director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) has a background in visual effects, and it shows in his latest project, the musical biopic Better Man, which tells the rags-to-riches, success-to-crisis-to-success-again tale of British pop star Robbie Williams, who got his start in the British boy band Take That. In it, he imagines Williams as a chimpanzee (everyone else is human)—Williams sees himself as something of a performing monkey—showcasing how his subject’s simultaneous towering ego and low self-esteem have affected his life and career. Though the movie traffics in many of the well-worn tropes of the genre, it still proves engaging through and through. I had a chance to interview Gracey at the recent 2024 Middleburg Film Festival (where I also reviewed the film), and what follows is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: Before we talk about the chimpanzee thing, how did this project first get started? Whose idea was it to do a biopic about Robbie Williams? Yours? One of your co-writers? Robbie’s?

Michael Gracey: It started back when we were doing The Greatest Showman. Hugh Jackman kept referencing Robbie Williams whenever I’d talk about P.T. Barnum. At the time, I thought it was a really odd reference. You could choose any entertainer in the world, and he would say, “Yeah, like Robbie Williams!” And I’d be like, “What?” But Hugh grew up in Australia and Robbie was very big in Australia.

And there was a moment when Hugh had a lot of people in his ear about the music not being good enough and he started to question whether we should start again on the music. And this was just before we were meant to start filming, so that would have been a very big decision to rewrite all of the music for a musical.

And I had met Robbie once before, at my lawyer’s house, because my lawyer’s daughter is best friends with Robbie Williams’ wife.

CLR: I think I followed that. (laughs)

MG: So I knew that I could get to Robbie if I asked my lawyer to ask his daughter to ask Ayda—Robbie’s wife—if I could meet with Robbie. And it was sort of one of those “Hail Mary” phone calls where if I could get in touch with Robbie, play him the music, and get him to convince Hugh that the music was great, I could get everything back on track for The Greatest Showman.

So I called my lawyer on a Saturday and said, “I’ve got to meet with Robbie Williams,” and he said, “I’m not sure I can do that.” (laughs) But he asked his daughter, who asked Ayda, who then agreed that I could go around on a Sunday and meet with Robbie. That day, Robbie answered the door, sort of bleary-eyed, like he had just gotten out of bed, and was like, “Sorry, what do you want?” So I thanked him for agreeing to see me and said, “I’m doing this original musical and it’s quite theatrical and quite pop, which is very much your style, and I would love it if I could just tell you the story and play you the songs.”

And he was like, “Look, the kids are up. Why don’t we go downstairs? I’ve got a recording studio. We can listen there, uninterrupted.” And I said, “Great!” So that’s what we did. I sat in the recording studio in his house and told him the story of The Greatest Showman and I played him the music. And I could see he was getting into it: he was clapping along, tapping his foot. So at the end I said, “The only thing more bizarre than me showing up at your house on a Sunday is what I’m about to ask you to do now. It’s one thing for me to tell Hugh what Robbie Williams thinks of the music. It’s another thing for you to tell him, yourself.” And I grabbed my iPhone and asked him to talk into the camera as if he were talking to Hugh Jackman. And he said, “Sure.”

So that video that I sent Hugh is kind of the reason that I got to do The Greatest Showman. And it’s how I started a relationship with Robbie. And when I would then later catch up with him, he would tell stories. It’s the same whenever you are getting to know someone for the first time: you tell them stories about your life and they tell you stories about their life. And as time went on, not only did I love these stories but I loved the way he told them. He’s a great raconteur and a great entertainer. The way he narrates his own story was just really compelling.

At that time, I had no interest in making a film. I just wanted to record those stories with Rob telling them. And since he had a recording studio at his place, I said, “When I’m in L.A., why don’t I come over and record you telling your story?” That’s what we did for a year-and-a-half before I ever thought of turning those stories into a film.

CLR: So, you get Robbie to tell his story. At what point did you—or Robbie, or one of your collaborators—decide that in the film, he should be portrayed as a chimpanzee?

MG: So I was taking those clips of his recordings that I would chop up, almost like a radio play, as I tried to figure out if there was a way to arrange these stories into something like a narrative. And then I thought that if I was going to do a film, it would be great to maintain his actual voice, narrating. Because he was very off-the-cuff, very conversational, and I really enjoyed that. And in the final film, it is those actual voiceovers, although we did change them some of them, even though it was really difficult to get him to re-record and have that same casual, conversational nature. Because it’s very different to say to someone, “This is the voiceover for a film and this is what we want you to say.” It’s not the same laid-back delivery.

CLR: I’ve made a number of documentaries, and any time you say to someone, “That was great! Can you say it again?” it ends up very differently the second time.

MG: It was exactly that! So, after I had done those recordings, I was then thinking about existing musical biopics and I didn’t want to just come at it from the same point of view as Elvis or Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocket Man. There had to be an interesting lens to put on this. And the difference between this film and those other films was that we would have Robbie narrating. So I started thinking that it would be interesting to tell the story from his point of view, and rather than how we see Robbie Williams, show how he sees himself.

And so, to solve how to come at this in a different way, I went back to those recordings, and as I listened to them, I clocked how many times he referred to himself as a “performing monkey.” He said it enough times where I was like, “That’s how he sees himself.” And it’s not just a performance on stage, but it was performing for the kids where he grew up, who were much tougher than he was; it was performing for his dad, who was just obsessed with Sinatra and the Rat Pack. And I thought, “That would be an amazing conceit to see him in the whole film as a performing monkey.”

CLR: And you have a background in visual effects, so it wasn’t as big a technological leap as it might be for someone else.

MG: Yeah. I started in animation and then moved into visual effects. I was very fortunate: I know this film would never exist if WETA in New Zealand hadn’t come on board, set up a studio in Melbourne, Australia, and supported the film 100%, from the pitch stage. We did a whole bunch of pre-viz, where we would block out, in really crude animation, the musical numbers. But that’s how I saw the film, and I would show people the feel and style of the film and I would show that to investors to try and sell them on the idea.

CLR: Speaking of the blocking, what is the ratio of live action to digital effects in your amazing dance sequences. I particularly loved the Piccadilly Square “Rock DJ” number. How much of that was choreographed with live action and how much did you assemble in post-production?

MG: So that was literally going down to Regent Street, in London, and just blocking it out in the middle of the night with people yelling at you, “Is this for TikTok?” And we would go there with a handful of dancers and just work out, with Ashley Wallen, the choreographer, and Jenny Griffin, the assistant choreographer, how to block it. To me, it’s about sketching; you can’t conceive these things in one hit. So, you sketch it out, you dance down the street, you work out what actions they might be doing, like dancing on top of gumballs or on Pogo Sticks. You start working out where these moments would occur as you come down the street.

And narratively, what’s going on is that they’ve just signed their record deal. They are nobodies, so they come out onto the street and everyone’s ignoring them; they’re just a bunch of rowdy lads, which is not uncommon on Regent Street. And they make their way down the street and by the end, the whole world knows about them. People are chasing them down the street, grabbing at their clothes. Over the course of the song, you basically watch Take That’s rise to fame, but you’re watching it inside Rob’s head, which of course has him at the center, even though Gary Barlow is the lead singer of Take That, not Robbie. And “Rock DJ” didn’t even exist at that time. So it’s all in Rob’s head, how he sees the signing of that record deal playing out.

And so we’d sketch it out, we took it into 3D and did an animated version of it, which helped us work out numbers. Because you needed to ask, “How many people will we need at the end, for the closing shot, to see a sea of people down Regent Street?” And the answer is 500. (laughs) And how many buses and taxis will we need, to stop and start, in terms of interacting moments with Rob? And so it’s all very much planned out in 3D after those sketches.

And then we go back into the studio and we start choreographing to the moments and the timing that exist in the pre-viz. And then once you’ve got it all on lock, you get a huge studio space and you tape out Regent Street, because you obviously can’t rehearse on the street. But you need to rehearse not just with the cast, but also with the camera crew because it’s all so highly choreographed. And so that’s what we did. The shoot was over 4 nights. Each section of Regent Street, we’d tape out in the studio space—every bus stop, every curb, every shop front, every entrance, every exit—and we would run it over the course of a week before we then went out to the street and started filming.

The only problem was that we got to the end of that week of rehearsal—with all the crew, all the cast, the 500 dancers, the double-decker bus, the taxis, everything—and I was told that the night before, the queen had died and we wouldn’t be filming. So we got shut down, because there are 10 days of mourning after the death of the queen. We then had to wait for the funeral and the coronation. And there’s no insurance for the death of the queen, so we lost all of the money for that musical number, which we had already outlaid.

CLR: Oh, my God!

MG: We had bought out those shops, we had paid for the street, for the dancers, the crew, the gear, everything. So it was an unbelievably expensive moment. And of course you have producers who go, “Let’s just cut the number!” And as a filmmaker you’re just like, “No, no, no! You don’t understand how important this is!” And they go, “We understand how important this is but we also understand how expensive it is, and we’re not doing that. We don’t have the money!” And it was an independent film, so it’s not like we had a studio that would just write the check. So not only did we then have to go out and raise that money, but because it took us so long to get back onto Regent Street, it delayed our entire post-production process, because it’s such an enormous number. It delayed the delivery of the film. It’s one of those numbers that when I watch it now, I am so grateful that we all fought for it, but it was such a fight.

CLR: Well, I’m grateful, too, because it’s a moment of great energy in the film. I mean, you have many of them, but I really like it.

MG: It’s what propels you into the story.

CLR: Absolutely. Well, Michael, I want to thank you so much for talking to me and I wish you all great things with the film.

MG: Thank you very much!

---

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.

https://filmfestivaltoday.com/interviews/mi...y-of-better-man

January 8Jan 8

:lol:

The movie worked for him. Converted 😂. He recognised some of the songs at the beginning. Loved the choreography for Rock DJ. Emphasized with the perils of fame. He said he will be checking out the video of Robbie taunting Liam for a boxing match.

Unexpectedly, I left out a tear during My way. They almost got me at Angels, but couldn't hold it in at the end. I wish the movie all the best for North America wide release. What a brave movie.

January 9Jan 9

Going up ;)

January 9Jan 9

The movie worked for him. Converted 😂. He recognised some of the songs at the beginning. Loved the choreography for Rock DJ. Emphasized with the perils of fame. He said he will be checking out the video of Robbie taunting Liam for a boxing match.

Unexpectedly, I left out a tear during My way. They almost got me at Angels, but couldn't hold it in at the end. I wish the movie all the best for North America wide release. What a brave movie.

Haha - love this -converting them one at a time :lol:

January 9Jan 9

Nice interview . my favourite so far ..

https://www.popcultureconfidential.com/442-...ams-better-man/

@1877166215350644952

Edited January 9Jan 9 by Sydney11

January 9Jan 9

Better Man Review

The Robbie-Williams-as-a-CGI-chimp biopic is better than expected – amazing, even!

Love the comments & arguments at the bottom of this review

I like this comment :P

ForceStream

11 hours ago

He is world famous, just not 100% of the world, artists don't need to be big in America to be world famous anymore, that ship sailed 20 years ago.

https://www.ign.com/articles/better-man-rev...robbie-williams

Edited January 9Jan 9 by Sydney11

January 9Jan 9

I think this is interesting:

Yahoo. uk

Has Better Man been a success for Robbie Williams?

The musician tells his life story in the movie, but are people tuning in?

Roxy Simons·Entertainment Editor

Updated Thu, 9 January 2025 at 12:57 pm CET·5-min read

Robbie Williams biopic Better Man landed in cinemas not with a bang but with a bit of a whimper, or at least without the uproarious fanfare the singer might have hoped for.

The British musician tells his life story in the movie, from his start with Take That to his stratospheric rise to fame as a solo singer, and the inner demons he battled amidst his struggle with drink and drug abuse. But despite Williams being a huge star in his own right the box office numbers for the biopic tell a very different story.

In the UK the film had a strong showing, earning $1.9m since it was released on Boxing Day, according to Box Office Mojo the second biggest territory for the movie was Australia where it has earned $724k.

Where the movie has struggled to make landfall so far is the US, with the movie earning just $96k since it was given a limited release on Christmas Day. However it is important to note the film will receive a wider release on 10 January, 2025 so its box office numbers may well increase significantly, though whether it will or not is uncertain.

The musician tells his life story in the movie, and what it has been able to do well is bring Williams back to the forefront of people's minds. (Getty Images)

What the film has been able to do well is bring Williams back to the forefront of people's minds, the public are talking about the singer more now than they have done in years. In the US, for example, the film has sparked passionate debate online about why American people should even care about the singer when they don't know anything about him (he was unable to break America at the height of his career).

The singer has reflected on how making a biopic was the only way to "remind people you're here" and prolong his career, and while it might have seen odd for him to be depicted as a CGI monkey in the movie it was also an incredibly smart decision because people can't stop talking about it. The public have been asking themselves why Williams is a monkey ever since it was first revealed, and that is a clever way to drum up interest in the film and differentiate it from other biopics out there.

That being said, has Better Man been a huge success for the singer? Currently it has done okay numbers in the UK box office but nothing extraordinary to write home about. According to World of Reel the film has a budget of $110m, largely because of its use of CGI to depict Williams as a monkey, so is it likely to make back that money? So far it doesn't seem that way, but that doesn't mean it won't.

The film has sparked passionate debate online, for example in America people have questioned why they should even care about the singer let alone watch the biopic when they don't know anything about him. (Paramount)

This isn't the first time that Better Man director Michael Gracey has seen a film be a slow burn success as that's exactly what happened with The Greatest Showman. The musical starring Hugh Jackman became a huge hit but not right away, the film had tough competition with Star Wars: The Last Jedi and earned a disappointing $8.8m in its opening weekend right before Christmas, but then people went to see it — and then they went again, and again.

Sign In

Better Man • Robbie Williams Biopic (2024)

Featured Replies

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Most Popular Posts

Sydney11

Better Man

Posted Images

Recently Browsing 0

Robbie Williams and Take That

Account

Navigation

Search