Better Man

Still love this b-side so much but still don't know a good story behind this song... RW Rewind also haven't helped me... Don't know how to find out the info about it without Robbie himself. Well, again, it was a great b-side from Sin Sin Sin single. Would be great to get this song in credits of any movies even. And what's your opinion about One Love? tPX6W-B9eLE Just Like We Told Ya Our Love Is Better Then Their Love We Can Make You Famous Why Don't You Come And Join Us You Don't Need Anyone To Know That You Exist You Don't Want Anyone To Know You Can't Resist All This Time All Those Breath All This Hanging Around All This Hopes All This Fears All This All This Our Love Is Better Then Their Love We Could Give You More Love Just Not Enough Of This Thing Called Love, Love Do You Believe Their Love Will Make Everything All Right? Do You Believe Stars Disappear When It Gets Light? All This Dreams All This Lies All That Sleeping Around More Receptions Empty Rooms All This All This Our Love Is Better Then Their Love We Can Make You Famous Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us Aren't We Cruel Isn't It All So Cruel The Things We Do With Love And The Things We Do Without Love You Don't Need Anyone To Know That You Exist You Don't Want Anyone To Know You Can't Resist Just Like We Told Ya Our Love Is Better Then Their Love We Can Make You Famous Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us Why Don't You Come And Join Us You Want Love You Got It You Got Love You Want It

Making Of the Better Man is the reason why we can wait for Blu-Ray release sooner but... better do not see its release for a while ;) @1877811722087510126 ---- ---- Rob's reaction on TIFF ovation OZrqsYUnJ5k

Well, waiting for first eight numbers in a few days =) ---

PfNMnIU5TcQ sa97aNZZURI + I translated the lyrics in Russian

So, US TV tells about BM since today. FOX Seattle gives 3 of 4 stars and suggest to watch. WsctPXxzueg CTV This Morning enjoys the movie and recommend to whom who like LaLaLand or Rocketman foICdtTSp5w Fox 4 Kanzas names the movie as interesting but still don't understand 'why ape': 2 of 5 - 3 of 5 stars 4ZvGjAMOA-Y KOLR10 & Fox49 will explain who is Robbie Williams but don't understand the movie. FSG6gdT8lZs WGN News names the movie really original. 9hR8aEzsr9E + Some US popular blogger (over 2M subs) reviewed the movie as perfect one - AWESOMETACULAR status GOjJ8gUpE-4 + Interview what was broadcasted on some US TV ENOFmOsG_90

ta7sZnUZmuQ We sit down with one of the UK’s biggest ever pop stars to discuss his new biopic, Better Man. One of the coolest things to happen to me when I was covering TIFF back in the fall, was that Paramount invited me to interview the iconic singer Robbie Williams, who was at the fest for the premiere of his big-screen biopic, Better Man. If you’ve read my review or seen any of the ads, you’ll know this isn’t a conventional film. Directed by The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey, the film represents Williams in a highly unusual way – a CGI Chimpanzee plays him. That’s right, Williams is a monkey in the movie, while everyone else is human (although the character is meant to be human as well – it’s more metaphorical). While I’ll grant you that aspect might make people tune out, it works tremendously well. I was lucky enough to sit down with Williams for an extended chat, in which he explained to me why he was down for this crazy approach. One thing Williams noted (with good humour) is that he’s nowhere near as well-known in North America as he is in Europe, and he hopes that folks who don’t know his turbulent life story might see some of themselves in this CGI monkey. I also spoke to Jonno Davies, the actor who plays Wiliams in mo-cap, and director Michel Gracey, who was more than happy to explain why he wanted this famous pop star to be played by a CGI monkey. As I told Gracey, when I heard the premise, I thought he was crazy, but in the end, he turned out to be crazy like a fox because the movie is damn good. https://www.joblo.com/better-man-interview-...google_vignette ------ Same interviewer wrote the review. Better Man Review: Robbie Williams played by a CGI Chimp? The craziest thing about this movie isn’t that Robbie Williams is played by a CGI chimp – but that it works so well. By Chris Bumbray January 10th 2025, 10:17am PLOT: The life of international pop star Robbie Williams, from his early days as a member of Take That to his breakthrough as a solo artist and his struggles with addiction. REVIEW: There’s one way that Better Man is completely different from any music-based biopic you’ve ever seen. The director, Michael Gracey, depicts Robbie Williams as a CGI chimpanzee, with cutting-edge VFX from WETA, with actor Jonno Davies playing him in a mo-cap performance (although they use Williams’s distinctive eyes). The singer himself provides the narration. It’s risky and a big swing, but here’s the thing. The craziest thing about Better Man isn’t the fact that Robbie Williams is presented as a CGI chimpanzee but rather that this risky conceit works quite well. Here’s the thing – when an iconic person is impersonated in a biopic, we get caught up over various surface-level things, with the biggest being whether or not the actor looks like the person they’re playing. By having Williams represented as a monkey, you get over that aspect much quicker than you would otherwise. Strangely, it helps you invest more in the character. It’s an inspired choice for Gracey, who has a comprehensive background in VFX and directed one of the more popular recent musicals, The Greatest Showman. It also may help the movie attract a larger North American audience than it would otherwise. Despite being a European household name, Robbie Williams is still largely unknown in the United States. This all adds up to a highly unique musical biopic that tells a story many readers of this site may not be familiar with. The movie charts Williams’s rise to fame, with him initially the bad boy in a band called Take That, which was gigantic in the nineties all throughout Europe. He was a household name, but as the movie shows, he was kicked out due to his growing substance abuse issues and tensions with the rest of the group. He re-emerged as a solo artist, with his fame eventually dwarfing that of the group he left, but his demons did not let up on him as he continued to struggle mightily with addiction. The film depicts Williams’s life in a pretty unsparring way, with him often coming off as a brat burning bridges relentlessly. Yet, the film also has empathy for the fact that his greatest enemy was himself, visualizing his demons as other versions of himself mock him from the audience. Gracey depicts this all in a bold, energetic way. The movie climaxes with a major action sequence where Williams literally battles different versions of himself in a moment I didn’t see coming. Through it all, Gracey often dazzles the audience with set pieces, such as an amazing musical number where Williams and the rest of Take Take dance down Regent Street performing “Rock DJ.” Gracey throws in everything but the iamspamspamamisink to entertain his audience. While Williams may not be so well known in North America, the movie does feel like it has the potential to be a solid hit, even if the hard-R rating may keep it from the audience that made The Greatest Showman such a hit. Then again, given Williams’s struggles, could you do a watered-down PG-13 version? Who’d want to see that? While the visual spectacle aspect of the movie will probably be what sells this as a potential blockbuster, it also has a lot of heart, with a lot of it revolving around his fractured relationship with his father, played here by Steve Pemberton, who’s a frustrated, wannabe performer who imparts his love of showbiz on Robbie. While I went into Better Man with a raised eyebrow, wary of the chimpanzee aspect, to my delight, it worked wonderfully. As far as big-screen biopics go, this is a pretty deliriously entertaining one, and I had a blast watching it. It’s definitely one to keep an eye out for. 9/10 https://www.joblo.com/better-man-tiff-review/

Thanks Tess. Wow! TIME interview. I will read later, of course. --- One more interview at SPIN looks fresh and fine. Robbie Williams on His Touching Reception as a Pan Troglodyte A fabled entertainer appreciates being humanized in fur Written by Karen Bliss | January 10, 2025 Better Man, chronicling the warts-and-all rise-and-fall — and rise again — career of UK pop phenom and self-described self-loather Robbie Williams is unlike any other biopic. While Williams, now 50, narrates the story, he is portrayed by actor Jonno Davies as a chimpanzee. Better Man is directed by Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), and if it sounds odd that’s because it is, but somehow this CGI-primate with the singer’s facial expressions and mannerisms is both endearing and an ass. We accept him, root for him, laugh with his cockiness, gasp at his self-destruction. “I don’t want to be a nobody,” he says as the adorable kid chimpanzee, a desire that dominates his life — probably to this day. For the unfamiliar, Williams got his break at age 16 as a member of ’90s boy band Take That, before his quitting the group led to a phenomenal solo career in which he played to a record-setting 375,000 people over three nights at the Knebworth Festival in 2003, and sold over 75 million albums thanks to hits like “Angels,” “Old Before I Die,” “Let Me Entertain You,” “Come Undone,” “Rock DJ,” “Kids” and “Millennium.” His success was accompanied by a shitstorm of depression and mental illness intertwined with booze and drug habits. All this is told with a mix of grit and sensitivity in a multi-layered film that dazzles by its sheer technological achievement and storytelling that covers his complicated relationship with his entertainer dad, his loving encouraging nan, the ego-driven band rivalry, and tumultuous whirlwind romance with Nicole Appleton. Better Man opens January 10, and might spur a menagerie category at a future Oscars: Swift as a giraffe; Madonna as a Panther… SPIN spoke to Williams about the film. [Publicist on Zoom call] Please say your name and outlet and you can begin. SPIN: My name is Karen Bliss. My outlet is SPIN. Hi Robbie. How are you? Robbie Williams: Hi Karen. My outlet is self-sabotage and sugar. That’s a nice combo. I’ve seen the film twice. The first time was during TIFF [Toronto International Film Festival], so I went in cold and I was like, “What the f***? He’s a monkey?” And then like 10 minutes in, I’m like, “Sure, he’s a monkey.” You go with it. I even got a little teary in certain parts. You got very emotional after the screening. Why? I wasn’t expecting to get emotional after because I’d seen the scenes as they were being stitched together and I’d done my crying then. No spoilers, but it’s the greatest hits of my grief. And then I watched the movie for the first time, hoping and praying that it was good, and it was. And then I get to TIFF and I’m just incensed on soaking in the moment. And I sit with Jonno, who plays me, and Michael Gracey, who directed it, and I feel very proud that I’m sat in Canada; there’s 2000 people watching my story, and I get to soak it all in and be grateful of the moment. And then what happened was at the end of it, having me expose all of my demons and all the worst aspects of myself, 2000 strangers turned around and clapped me and Jono and Michael that were on a balcony. And in that moment, something unexpected happened, but I completely understood that I was being seen and heard and forgiven and loved, all in one, by a bunch of strangers that know nothing about me. And that touched me on such a profound level. Has that changed over the months since? Is it as healing, as cathartic or re-traumatizing or are you like, “Oh, there’s me as a monkey. Aren’t I cute?” What is great is I don’t have to worry about the film being good or touching people because I know the magic that I have felt is being felt by the people that actually see it too. So now I’m comfortable [with] the aspect that the movie is better than shit; it’s actually something that I can be really proud of. I mean, look at the Rotten Tomatoes; there is 91% journalists and 98% audience reaction. This is not lost on me, but there’s so many aspects that this movie in particular has wrapped up and what it means to me as a fat 11-year-old with no self-worth at all. It’s very easy to get wrapped up with the expectation train, get on that train and be led into oblivion yet again, and what that means for my psyche if I pull all the levers and the machine doesn’t work. It is extraordinary because the film could’ve been crap. The whole concept is wacky. It could have been Howard the Duck. I don’t cry watching Planet of the Apes but I did in this. I’m sure there’s people that go in to Better Man and they’re completely lost. I think you have to have a self-deprecating kind of humor to get it and not walk out going, “Why the f*** is he a monkey? I don’t get it.” Has there been a different response in US versus UK? The “what the f***, I don’t get it “ happens to the people that haven’t seen it. If I go with general reaction, it seems that 98% of people leave the movie not only getting it, but completely embracing it and being completely moved by it. Let me ask you about the language in the script. The C-word [c**t] is widely used over in the UK, but it can get you cancelled in America, I think. You use the work “twat” a lot too. Also, a great word for certain occasions. Was using it in the script ever questioned? No, if you’re going to take a huge swing and have your movie be R-rated, you better make it worth it. Otherwise, if we were going to cut that out, why wouldn’t we cut out lots of other things too? We could have made this a whole lot easier and more commercial for ourselves if we’d have made it PG. As it happens, to tell my story authentically, I didn’t live a PG life. And I don’t have PG verbiage. This is how I speak. That is how I was. This is a representation of me. It may not have happened in that order, but everything was how it felt. How did you end up writing a new song for the film? There needed to be a hug at the end of this movie, a hug in the form of a musical hug. I’d sent a bunch of songs to Michael Gracey having not seen the movie and he kept sending them back saying, “No, this is not right.” And I’m sensitive. So, I was upset that he was telling me it wasn’t right. Then, I saw the movie and I completely understood that what was needed was not what I was sending. And the song that we wrote — me, Freddy [Wexler] and Sacha [skarbek] — was a musical hug to let you know that I know I’ve just put you through an awful lot, but we’re all okay. Let me ask you about fame. Now there’s kids that think they just want to be famous. There’s TikTok, Instagram and OnlyFans. In retrospect, do you think you can enjoy fame without the pitfalls of drug addiction, being an asshole, self-isolating, being arrogant, all those things? No, because you’re contracting mental illness. That’s what you’re doing. And how you act and behave towards it is how you act and behave towards it; you can’t contract fame and not be bemused, affected by it on such a profound unconscious level that you spend the life trying to figure out how to put it in its right box. Now, what I will say, for most people that I meet in the entertainment industry that are forward-facing, that are on camera, most people aren’t egoic and twats, but the people with the ego and the twats really stand out and give the entertainment industry a bad name. But I’ve also met people in the energy industry; I’ve met people in the clothing industry that are huge — forgive my language — c**ts. They just don’t get the attention that people in the entertainment industry do because people in the entertainment industry, their bread and butter is attention. And the worst aspects of every part of society will make the most noise. The world’s worst 2% make 98% of the noise. You say in the film that you thought the fame would solve everything. When did you come to the realization that it doesn’t? Was it in sobriety? Was it in advanced adulthood — you’re still young [50], but you know what I’m saying [laughs]? I’m good. I’m an old pop star now. It’s okay. It’s fine. It’s reality. When did it happen? When did it? So, I remember I had this house on a lake. It had its own lake. And I remember as this [enormous fame] was happening, there was these patio doors onto this giant veranda that overlooked this lake. And like a scene from a movie, I was on my knees sobbing, looking at what I’d acquired and feeling how f***ed up and how unhappy I was. And I could see it, like a camera from above coming in at this moment. It was very cinematic. But I suppose that you only realize, consciously, what you’re seeking consciously when it breaks you. And in that moment, I was broken. I realized that I’d got to the top of the mountain and it was desolate and I was lonely and my subconscious came to the front and went ‘Hahahahahaaaa, it didn’t do it.’ [laughs]. Well, we are all rooting for you. What are your plans for this year? We want new music. We want to see you in concert over here. What is happening? I want to come to North America. Hopefully, if the success makes an indent, I will do that. I will be touring. Tickets have gone on sale already in the rest of the world [uK, Europe]. They’re doing great, thank you. And, yeah, I’ve got so many things that exist outside of the entertainment industry that happened because I’m in the entertainment industry. I’ve got loads of aspects of business that I want to do. So I need to exist in the public’s attention for me to facilitate everything else that I want to do. You also have a solo art exhibit [Confessions of a Crowded Mind]. In Barcelona, Amsterdam, and one’s gonna happen in London, too. I also want to build a university of entertainment and create the syllabus. I want to build hotels with their entertainment venues in them. I have entertainment venues separate to that that I’m doing. I want to buy a soccer team. I also have drinks coming out and I have clothes coming out. I’m very busy. Wow, that is a lot. In the film, without giving too much away, there are the “nasty monkeys” in the audience, that negative inner voice, kind of imposter syndrome. Do you still get that? Yeah. For example, I did a live 30 minutes on TV in Australia on New Year’s Eve. And I got a cold that’s kicking my ass on top of jetlag, and then getting up in front of 11 million people that are watching, and then however many millions of people that could dissect a viral moment if I let my crazy out. So, while I’m on stage, I’m enjoying myself, while also at the same time thinking about Twitter, and the sewage that is on there, and how they must be responding to my performance, whilst also at the same time having a left nostril that is dripping because of the cold, whilst thinking that people will think that I’m on cocaine, whilst having a good time at the same time [laughs]. That’s a lot of inner voices. I do love your humor though; when you’re walking through Hyde Park in your pink suit, trying to see if anyone would recognize you [laughs]. And no one was recognizing me. It was scary. So, are you a big deal now, again? Yeah, yeah, I am. I am. I’m trying to put everything in the right box and have everything be the right size. And I can only guess at what my future is. And if Rod Stewart is anything to go by — I’ve had a Rod Stewart style career, and he still gets to be Rod Stewart. I hope that the general public allows me to be Robbie Williams when I’m Rod Stewart’s age. https://www.spin.com/2025/01/robbie-williams-on-better-man/

Better Man: Inside Michael Gracey’s Apeshit Robbie Williams Musical The Greatest Showman director on the influence of Bob Fosse, Terry Gilliam, and the thrill of acting on a crazy gamble. by Prabhjot Bains Published on January 10, 2025 In a cinematic slate inundated with music biopics, precious few leave a mark as exhilarating and as purely insane as Michael Gracey’s Better Man. Visually ambitious, oozing with style, and boasting some of the most frenetically seamless editing in recent memory, the rise-and-fall tale of British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams tightly grips the tired biopic formula and makes it shine beyond our wildest dreams. Oh, and then there’s the matter of him being portrayed by a computer-generated ape. -- Better Man brims with such madcap decisions that in any other film would amass eye rolls, but like Williams himself, it keeps us hooked to the limelight. Like its subject, it’s a musical that exists on the edge of coming apart, and it’s only in embracing that precarious fine line that the real wonder, charm, and beauty of the experience wash over audiences. For Gracey, the thrill of acting on that gamble informs every facet of his bonkers vision. “A musical already has a heightened reality… you add a monkey on top of that and now you’re in a very heightened reality,” Gracey tells RANGE. “And the great thing about it is you can step between that and pure imagination pretty seamlessly. That is what I enjoy about the fact that it is a musical and the lead is a monkey: it allows you to step between the two worlds without being jarring for the audience.” It’s a feat that somehow makes the sight of a monkey doing lines and getting a hand job in a nightclub the least ludicrous of its many outrageous sequences. Better Man tracks Williams’ childhood in the shabby town of Stoke-on-Trent, to his stint in the boy band Take That, to his meteoric rise as a solo pop star—and all the drugs, infidelity, and crushing fame that came with it. But in doing so, Gracey maintains “a want to explore Rob’s internal and external life.” Each precisely crafted musical number is armed with a surreal timbre, plunking us into Williams’ amorphous, drug-addled mindscape with verve, vigour, and dizzying panache. Whether it be a record-breaking performance at Knebworth transforming into a medieval battle royale or Williams submerged in a frozen lake surrounded by a school of shark-like paparazzi, our overloaded senses are gloriously thrown into the gauntlet of pop superstardom. “In a number like ‘Come Undone’… as Williams is driving away into the fog, is it at that point he’s going into the fog of his mind? I don’t know.” Gracey continues. “At a certain point… we are 100% in this guy’s mind…but somewhere in between we transition from the external life and into the internal life.” The wonder of making sense of those shifts is where the true ecstasy of Better Man takes hold. To see it is the only way to believe it. These sonic dives into the psyche of its subject, including Better Man’s Broadway-styled titling, draw directly from the musicals of Bob Fosse. “I was very inspired by films like All That Jazz…for me, it’s like Fosse meets Terry Gilliam,” Gracey says. “I love the way Fosse choreographs the camera and his rhythmic editing, he’s such a masterful creative force and the same goes for Gilliam… the design work in something like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen [stands] as the most beautiful art-directed film of all time. These are the sort of films I grew in awe of and when you get older you lean into those points of inspiration.” When RANGE suggested a double feature of Better Man and Gilliam’s own simian-centric Twelve Monkeys, Gracey was all in on the idea: “Ha ha ha! That’s very funny.” While Better Man serves as a snapshot of the late 90s Britpop scene, full of MTV red carpets and run-ins with the (in)famous Liam Gallagher, its delirious lens remains firmly fixed on Williams’ personal journey. “The time plays a big part in the style, art direction, hairdos, and costuming because you are going through those distinct eras, but for as much that front-facing side is there, I favoured the personal story,” Gracey notes. “I don’t relate to standing in front of 150,000 people, but I do relate to the voices in my head, to looking in the mirror and finding faults in myself, the love of a nan, and the acceptance of a father—these parts of Rob are universal.” Williams’ significant involvement in the project renders Better Man a more intimate and, surprisingly, self-effacing experience. In a cinematic climate full of sanitized stories, as Gracey says, “Rob is fortunately an over-sharer and was adamant it be a warts-and-all experience.” He continues, “We did a year-and-a-half of interviews that formed the basis of the script, which is why you really do hear Rob’s voice in the film.” “When I tried to recreate them, they never sounded as good, they sounded like a performance… that’s why you feel the hand of Rob throughout, because it is him telling you the story from a spontaneous recording,” Gracey says. “I was sure when Rob watched it back he was going to take out some of the scenes, but he did not change one single shot of the film.” It all culminates in an experience that is as emotionally resonant and vulnerable as it is completely mad. While Robbie Williams’ fame didn’t quite translate across the pond, it’s time we all go bananas for his apeshit musical. https://readrange.com/better-man-michael-gracey-interview/

10.01.25 update Awards Nominations (39) for Better Man by far: Hollywood Music In Media Awards (HMMA) 2024 - 20.11 - Best Original Song - Feature Film (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road) - Best Music Themed Film, Biopic or Musical (Paul Currie, Michael Gracey, Craig McMahon, Coco Xiaolu, MaJules Daly) Rolling Stone UK Awards 2024 - 28.11 - The Film Award (Better Man) - Winner Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards (WAFCA) 2024 - 08.12 - Best Motion Capture (Jonno Davies) Indiana Film Journalists Association (IFJA) Awards 2024 - 16.12 - Best Vocal/Motion Capture Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies) - Best Stunt/Movement Choreography (Slavisa Ivanovic, Ashey Wallen, Nicholas Daines, Spencer Susser, Tim Wong) - Best Special Effects (Luke Millar, Scott MacIntyre) - Original Vision Award Critics Association of Central Florida Awards - 02.01 - Best Hybrid Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies) DiscussingFilm Global Critic Award (DFGFCA) 2024 - 04.01 - Best Visual Effects Golden Globes 2025 - 05.01 - Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road) Utah Film Critics Association (UFCA) Awards - 06.01 - Best Visual Effects Austin Film Critics Association (AFCA) Awards - 06.01 - Best Voice Acting/Animated/Digital Performance (Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies) Critics Choice Awards 2025 - 12.01 - Best Visual Effects (Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs) The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards 2025 - 07.02 - Best Film - Best Direction in Film (Michael Gracey) - Best Screenplay in Film (Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson) - Best Lead Actor in Film (Jonno Davies) - Best Supporting Actress in Film - Best Supporting Actor in Film - Best Cinematography in Film - Best Sound in Film - Best Original Score in Film - Best Soundtrack - Best Original Song (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road) - Best Visual Effects or Animation - Best Editing in Film presented by Spectrum Films - Best Production Design in Film - Best Costume Design in Film - Best Casting in Film The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) International Awards 2025 - 07.02 - Best Film - Best Lead Actor in Film (Jonno Davies) - Best Supporting Actress in Film (Alison Steadman) - Best Supporting Actor in Film (Damon Herriman) - Best Direction in Film (Michael Gracey) - Best Screenplay in Film (Michael Gracey, Oliver Cole, Simon Gleeson) Annie Awards 2025 - 08.02 - Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Live Action Production (Shaun Freeman, Luisma Lavin Peredo, Carlos Lin, Seoungseok Charlie Kim, Kaori Miyazawa) Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) Award 2025 - 12.02 - Outstanding Original Song for a Comedy or Musical Visual Media Production (Robbie Williams - Forbidden Road) Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) - 23.02 - Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing – Feature Motion Picture (Supervising Music Editor: Timothy Ryan; Music Editors: Craig Beckett, Lena Glikson, Cory Milano, Liam Moses, Joe E. Rand, Chris Scallan, Emily Rogers Swanson; Vocal Editors: Noah Hubbell, Anna Muehlichen)

Let's hope they will catch some additional vibe from next 2-3 days (it should be!) and go to the cinema. -- Well, I'm not sure Australian figures have been calculated correctly before. At least based on this message about box office for BM there. -- Well, still 7.7 at IMDB but interesting point that within this week an average mark in USA shifted from 6.3 to 7.0 right now. Looking for more! :P https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14260836/ratin...?ref_=tt_ov_rat --- Robbie's feelings on the movie reaction at TIFF in Canada since weeks OZrqsYUnJ5k

Let's give our credits to these great singers in the movie! She's The One. Very very beautiful singing. https://www.tiktok.com/@ohhkaeli/video/7456721489048456481 Angels https://www.tiktok.com/@_adamtucker/video/7...899739909459233 --- Norfolk singer the ‘Better Man’ in biopic A Norfolk singer has a starring role in a new biopic – but you might not see him. Adam Tucker from King’s Lynn provides the voice of Robbie Williams in the film Better Man. He tells Chris Goreham about the role of a lifetime. Listen here (4-minutes interview): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0khc2gw

Thanks, Laura. Please keep it going with that data! ---- The latest videos for tomorow - too late! 7EV8n1DMvW8 FnQg6fF-ujU Qh_rr_PUXZg

A lovely message about bad situation in LA HmrCaQIRvbY

According to this video it looks like all the Team of BM must be at the premiere in LA. Very pity it wasn't... RxxGY8Cp7XA LOL - very funny first answer from Rob here :) m9NvSe626_0

Better Man Soundtrack Guide: Every Song & When They Play 6EkLpnnPPnY

Well, one day before US release there were out a new tons of the interviews... Not easy to catch them all but let us try :) Well, I already put it in US topic but do it again, because it's a good interview with some new details about. YTrS5SERNfk And then the same interviewer did his job with Jonno and Ms Banno too. What a lovely couple they are... Well, and yes, Jonno could play Justin T too - he has a chance to do it because nobody recongised him in CGI image.. :) 9QubjyZKOk4

Well, it has been a very good interview with US fan/interviewer and what's even more important Rob teased him about the concert in New York. So let me put this video here because of it: mOwsj01YNgk

No this video before. Oh! Good meeting with Kate Winslet on 1:05 :) 9MfjIICkOuI

Well, just let you know (I understood not many of you seen his Roundtable speech :) ). He told there the new album is coming this April. Let's hope.

Really beautiful family! Not sure we will get something new between Rob and Guy this year, at least not with a new album. I still think they will be back together with the theater musical next year or so (I could remember some news about it last summer or spring). I think it's good they take some break - it needs from time to time and we see Robbie is still very interesting to make different music. He must find new waves everytime - it's all about him.

How terrible this is... Yes, hope everyone is safe...

@ nirvanamusic, thanks for this text and the link. Got some new facts about Take That and their story about that period. And defo will re-watch Karaoke Carpoll after all these years... Very pity James Corden isn't there now. He would help Better Man movie too, no doubts.

So fingers crossed anyway! --- Some more details about BM releases in exUSSR countries: Russia - Since today we finally have the screenings in original language too, so I will try to catch one of them to hear Robbie's voice during weeking. - Still confident 7.8 average mark here. - My colleagues told me they watched this during winter holidays and told me they liked it a lot and name this movie as 'very healing'. Wow! Same words like Rob uses during this promo. Belarus - It was a big surpise for me when my friend informed me that they had their premiere (pre-screening) even earlier than we are! It was December 19 (Minsk) vs December 21 (Moscow). Ukraine - There was a premiere (pre-screening) in Kyev on January 7 and wide release is starting today. I do know they had a very beautiful tickets, not standard e-tickets :) Kazakhstan - Starting the wide release now Moldova - Already in the theaters since New Year in two versions: original + Russian

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