Interview: 'Weird: The Al Yankovic Story' Stars and Filmmakers
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’: Watch the Funny or Die Trailer That Inspired the Roku Movie Notorious B.I.G’s biopic inspired the Funny or Die trailer for ‘Weird’ the original Funny or Die video that inspired ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Directed by Eric Appel
Written by
"Weird Al" Yankovic
Eric Appel
Based on Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
by Funny or Die and Eric Appel
Produced by
"Weird Al" Yankovic
Eric Appel
Mike Farah
Joe Farrell
Whitney Hodack
Tim Headington
Lia Buman
Max Silva
Starring
Daniel Radcliffe
Evan Rachel Wood
Rainn Wilson
Toby Huss
Julianne Nicholson
Quinta Brunson
Cinematography Ross Riege
Edited by Jamie Kennedy
Music by
Leo Birenberg
Zach Robinson
Production
companies
Funny or Die
Tango
Distributed by The Roku Channel
Release dates
September 8, 2022 (TIFF)
November 4, 2022 (The Roku Channel)
Running time 108 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $8 million[1]
- roku channel
- trailer weird the al yankovic story
- weird: the al yankovic story release
- weird: the al yankovic story rating
- weird: the al yankovic story rotten tomatoes
- weird: the al yankovic story release date 2022
- weird al biopic release date
- weird al movie roku release date
Plot
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a fictional, highly exaggerated story of Alfred Matthew Yankovic. As a kid, Al had become interested in playing the accordion, but his father strongly discouraged this as not normal, leading to Al becoming estranged from his parents. Living with his roommates Steve, Jim, and Bermuda, Al tried to join a band as an accordion player but was turned away. A flash of inspiration leads him to replace the words from The Knack's "My Sharona", creating "My Bologna". He sends the song to a local radio DJ, which proves popular. Al attempts to secure a record contract with the Scotti Bros., but they tell him he needs to perform concerts first before they will consider a contract.
Cast
Daniel Radcliffe as "Weird Al" Yankovic
Diedrich Bader as narrator Al
David Bloom as teenage Al
Richard Aaron Anderson as young Al
Development
In 2010, Funny or Die released a fake trailer for a satirical biographical film titled Weird: The Al Yankovic Story directed by Eric Appel and starring Aaron Paul as musician "Weird Al" Yankovic.[11] Additional co-stars in the three-minute-long trailer included Yankovic himself, Olivia Wilde, Gary Cole, Mary Steenburgen, and Patton Oswalt.[12] At the time, the fake trailer was intended to parody prior biographical films on musicians, such as Ray (2004) and Walk the Line (2005).[9]
Yankovic would show the trailer during his concert tours leading some fans to think it was for a real film or encouraging him to make it one. Following the success of other musician biopics such as Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) and Rocketman (2019), Yankovic began to legitimately consider the idea of making a full-length film. He and Appel began to shop the idea around Hollywood, but the studios' initial impressions were that the film was going to be in the vein of a Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker full-on parody and passed on the idea. The two looked at common tropes in other musician biopics, finding that facts about the musician's life were often changed arbitrarily, and used a similar approach to writing Yankovic's biographical story with the same type of creative freedom.
Comments
Post a Comment