Trending in Hollywood: A new pack of music biopics

The stars are aligned. Music stars, that is.

In one of those weird what's-going-on-here? Hollywood convergences, a quartet of biopics about jazz, pop, and country-and-western luminaries is playing on theater screens right now, or is about to be. And a spate of other song-driven bios is heading this way, with even more in development.

Of course, music and movies have been intrinsically intertwined all the way back to 1927's pioneering talkie, The Jazz Singer, and music bios have been a staple of studio fare down through the decades (James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story, Cary Grant as Cole Porter in Night and Day, Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett in The Runaways).

But in these times, when celebrity culture embraces movie stars and music stars with the same obsessive fervor (Kenneth Lonergan's new Off-Broadway play, Hold on to Me Darling, with Timothy Olyphant as a narcissistic country star/movie star, gets it just right), when everyone's got a Spotify account, a personalized Pandora station, an iTunes playlist, when music and movies can be channeled onto every platform and portable device, the interest in music and music-makers seems especially keen.

There is the thrill of discovery, too, of stumbling on a Chet Baker, a Nick Drake, a Django Reinhardt, and wanting to know more about the person behind the trumpet, the mopey song, the guitar. Producers and actors are just like us - they read the Wikipedia bios, the books, maybe even the liner notes on the LPs they've started buying again, and think, "This is a cool story, this could make a cool movie."

Hollywood right now especially wants to know what drives the songwriter, the musician, the often tragically short-lived troubadour. At least, it thinks it does, until no one shows up to buy tickets.

In I Saw the Light, set to open this weekend, Brit Tom Hiddleston dons a cowboy hat and an Alabama drawl to play country-music singer/songwriter Hank Williams. It's a familiar live hard/die young tale, not altogether successfully realized (Hank Williams III himself expressed dismay at Hiddleston's portrayal), but it does honor the accomplishments and amazing catalog of one of the great American songwriters.

The genius in a honky-tonk couplet such as "My hair's still curly and my eyes are still blue / Why don't you love me like you used to do?" is not to be denied.

A more evocative, less linear portrait of a star-crossed legend comes by way of Ethan Hawke, who brings jazz trumpeter Chet Baker to life in Robert Budreau's cool, compelling Born to Be Blue.

The film, opening Friday, takes liberties with the Baker biography but still feels authentic in its tribute to a hugely talented musician who falls into a love affair with an actress (Selma's Carmen Ejogo) and into an equally complicated relationship with heroin. Ultimately, Baker has to decide which is more important - the woman he loves or the drug he craves.

Another jazz trumpet god, Miles Davis, shows up in Born to Be Blue, in scenes at New York's fabled Birdland. Played by actor Kedar Brown, Davis eyes the glamour boy from the West Coast with suspicion and derision. It's a small role on the perimeter of the story, but it shows how Baker was both in awe of and in competition with his East Coast counterpart.

Davis certainly deserves his own movie, and he gets it in Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead, opening April 15. The actor makes his directing debut on the moody, mercurial piece, which he also cowrote and which plays like snapshots from a dream. The movie zooms in, oddly enough, on a period in the musician and composer's life - the late 1970s - when Davis wasn't performing. But have no fear, Miles Ahead is steeped in music: "So What," "Black Satin," and "Nefertiti" to name a few, plus an end-credit closer from hip-hop's Pharoahe Monch.

Another volatile musical presence, the classically trained pianist-turned-jazz-singer Nina Simone, is biopic-ed in Nina, coming April 22. Zoe Saldana, who is Latina (with an African heritage she has held fast to), caught some flak when news broke that she had been cast as Simone, an African American. The Avatar actress reportedly had her skin darkened and her features altered to play the singer and musician, whose career began in Atlantic City in the mid-1950s (after she had been rejected by the Curtis Institute). David Oyelowo stars as Clifton Henderson, Simone's manager.

Members of Simone's family have dismissed writer/director Cynthia Mort's take on the artist as wildly inaccurate, but that, too, can be par for the course when it comes to music bios. After a screening of Yankee Doodle Dandy, the 1942 Oscar-winner in which James Cagney sings and dances his way through the story of Broadway composer and showman George M. Cohan's life, the real-life subject of the film had this to say: "It was a good movie. Who was it about?"

Maybe Elton John will share a similar sentiment if Rocketman, with Tom Hardy signed on to star, gets made. Then again, Sir Elton is closely involved in the production, so he'll probably prove more receptive. John has already announced plans to rerecord a grab bag of his greatest hits for the movie. (Martin Freeman as John's songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, anyone?)

Some other high-profile music bio projects in the works:

All Eyez on Me

Tupac Shakur's life and times, and his intersections with the likes of Biggie Smalls and Dr. Dre, are chronicled in this slated-for-November release, with Tupac doppelganger Demetrious Shipp Jr. cast in the lead.

Amy Winehouse

The documentary Amy just won an Academy Award, and now Noomi Rapace is said to be attached to a feature about the late, lamented singer and songwriter.

Deconstructing Sammy

That's the title of Matt Birkbeck's Sammy Davis Jr. biography, the movie rights to which have been acquired by comedian and producer Byron Allen. Miles Ahead's Cheadle won a Golden Globe for playing Davis in the 1998 mini-series The Rat Pack - maybe he's up for a reprise?

Get It While You Can and/or Janis

There have been dueling Janis Joplin biopics for years now, and each has met with delays, disputes, false starts, and failed casting efforts. Renée Zellweger was long ago announced as the actress to portray the hard-drinking, blues rockin' star. More recently, Amy Adams was reported to have the job. Pink and Zooey Deschanel's names have also been batted around. In the meantime, fans can catch Amy Berg's 2015 doc, Janis: Little Girl Blue, narrated by Cat Power, when it premieres on PBS American Masters May 3.

Lust for Life

This one's a time-capsule tribute to the 1970s West Berlin collaboration between sinewy punk rocker Iggy Pop and a dude by the name of David Bowie. Gabriel Range (Death of a President) has been pegged to direct, but no news has surfaced about who might be playing the young Mr. Pop or the young Mr. Bowie since this project was announced three years ago.

Sinatra

Martin Scorsese has been talking about bringing the epic story of the Hoboken crooner and Hollywood star to the big screen for more than a decade, but how do you cast Ol' Blue Eyes? Maybe you take a page from Todd Haynes' 2007 Bob Dylan music bio, I'm Not There, putting a whole mess of people in various iterations of the role.

Scorsese is one of the creators (along with Mick Jagger) of the new HBO series Vinyl, about the music biz in the 1970s, when everybody, apparently, was doing cocaine and wearing wide lapels and platform shoes. The sound track rocks - Edgar Winter, Mott the Hoople, the New York Dolls, Otis Redding.

The celebrated director, who has used music brilliantly in every one of his films, is also reported to be developing a biopic of a different sort of music star: Leonard Bernstein, the conductor, composer and New York society icon. Can Scorsese's go-to-star, Leonardo DiCaprio, wave a baton?

srea@phillynews.com
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