Biopics

The desire to see every famous person portrayed in a formulaic biopic is one of the most frustrating things to me about modern media, third only to the entire comic book superhero bullshit and its related cancer, fan-service. The problem is not that you can’t have a good biographical movie. There are a few of them, including Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and Steve Rash’s The Buddy Holly Story. But most are just boring. They usually aren’t truly terrible, but are just boring. The idea of a biopic on Nat Turner or Harriet Tubman might seem like good ideas, but is anyone ever going to watch those movies again? Now every Boomer musician is getting there’s, first with Queen, then with Elton John. Now there is going to be a Linda Ronstadt biopic, starring Selena Gomez. I imagine it will be fine. It certainly ticks certain identity boxes that have commercial appeal and while I don’t overly care for any of Ronstadt’s albums, it’s not like they are bad. But like most of her music, the chances of this being any better than OK seems extremely slim.

My real question though is not about why Linda Ronstadt needs a biopic. I can think of far worse candidates (starting with the odious Queen). And my critique of Ronstadt is really a critique of the entire LA Laurel Canyon/soft rock/Americana scene of the early 70s. It’s like it set out to be boring and it succeeded. Rather, my question is what do people actually see in these films. Why is this something you would want to watch? Why does everyone not realize by now that these movies are rarely any good at all?