Is there a more pretentious genre than the musician biopic? 

While there can be plenty of fun moments (after all who doesn’t want to be a rock star?) Overall, the genre tends to take itself WAY too seriously. Cue the disapproving father, the dark period where the drugs and groupies take over, the inevitable redemption comeback tour. 

We here at the podcast prefer the musician biopic that doesn’t take itself too seriously. That realizes how silly it is to try and neatly summarize a musician’s life in 2 hours. Jake Kasdan’s 2007 spoof of the genre Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story or the Kirsten Stewart-led film The Runaways (2010) is a perfect example of where the filmmakers are in on the joke.

Do you know about some great reading related to this topic? Let us know in the comments!

This episode was hosted by Jerry Gabriel and Stephanie Laughlin

The guest was Phil Shearing

The episode was edited by Jerry Gabriel

Blog posts and research done by Stephanie Laughlin