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Elton John musical biopic helmed by ‘Rhapsody’ vet Dexter Fletcher

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ co-director felt ‘Rocketman’ should be ‘full-out musical’

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Dexter Fletcher, gay news, Washington Blade
Director Dexter Fletcher (right) on the set of ‘Rocketman’ with Matthew Illesley and Taron Egerton, who both play Elton John in the movie. (Photo courtesy Paramount)

“Rocketman” director Dexter Fletcher says his new movie is “a magical musical retelling of Elton John’s formative years.” This vision of the film guided Fletcher through many script revisions and long days on the set and resulted in an unusual cinematic experience that reimagines the Hollywood musical and the traditional biopic and that is both visually stunning and deeply moving.

Fletcher, whose work as actor and director stretches back to an appearance in Alan Parker’s kiddie gangster movie “Bugsy Malone” (1976), says that his involvement in “Rocketman” was a matter of “being in the right place at the right time.” 

If it does well — it opened in third place in the U.S. last weekend and got largely strong reviews — it could be an interesting comeuppance for Fletcher, whose name was taboo at award season earlier this year. He took over for a fired Bryan Singer on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but Singer’s name stayed in the credits as per Directors Guild guidelines. It won four Oscars. 

In 2015, Fletcher (who’s straight) directed “Eddie the Eagle,” which starred Taron Egerton and was produced by his old friend Matthew Vaughn. Fletcher also knew that Vaughn was working with Egerton and Elton John on “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (2017).

“Then,” Fletcher says, “I heard on the grapevine that Matthew was thinking about Taron playing Elton and I just thought it was a genius idea. I knew Taron, I knew the kind of person he was and I knew that he could sing. And having been around for 50 years, I knew something about Elton’s life. When Matthew said come talk about it, I was ready.”

When the director met with David Furnish, Elton John’s husband and a “Rocketman” producer, and screenwriter Lee Hall (“Billy Elliott”) to discuss the script, he had a revelation.

“The movie should be a full-out musical.” 

Fletcher realized he could “use the songs to keep the film and storytelling moving seamlessly and to create something that would genuinely explode off the screen.”

Instead of restricting the songs to onstage performances, Elton John’s music would be used to tell his life story from his lonely childhood as Reginald Dwight, a musical prodigy from a broken home in 1950’s London, through his rise to international stardom as superstar Elton John to his life-saving stint in rehab in 1990. 

“I took the musical element and upped it by 50, 60, 70 percent,” Fletcher says. “It was a very holistic journey. It was all inspired by the script that Lee wrote and the stories that Elton told him.”

Fletcher’s work on the script started by adding “The Bitch Is Back” as an opening number. Set in the London suburb where Reggie Dwight (Matthew Illesley plays Young Reggie) grew up, the brilliant choreography by Adam Murray and the stunning cinematography by George Richmond establish the blurring of reality and fantasy that will take place throughout the movie.

The scene is a traditional English suburb in the 1950s, but Fletcher notes, “everything is a bit too perfect. The neighbors are all very cheery and everybody’s waving to Reggie but he sings about being a bitch. Then you have the older Elton in his devil costume in the middle of it all trying to stop it, close it down.”

“I knew that dramatically, Elton considered himself to be a bitch and a bad person and he thought he’s always been that person,” Fletcher says. “It takes his journey through rehab to realize he was just a boy who wanted a hug.”

Then Fletcher added the song “I Want Love” as a quartet for Reggie and his troubled family. 

“I got to that moment in the story and I knew I needed to hear the inner voices of these characters,” Dexter says. “That’s what the music gives us. All of the artifice and all of the masks that we wear in day-to-day life fall away. The characters can sing what’s in their hearts. They all just sing about what they need, what they want. They’re family, but families don’t always work. They all want love, but they’re just all in the wrong place. There are no villains.”

Fletcher’s most audacious alteration to the script was perhaps the astounding “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.” The sequence starts with Older Reggie (Kit Connor) playing piano in a London pub. He sneaks out of the pub and into a fabulous “funfair”; in a time-honored theatrical trick, Older Reggie is transformed into Elton John (Egerton) in the middle of the number.

Fletcher says the number is really the centerpiece of the movie, “because it is really about Elton stepping out into a wider world.”

“There’s so much storytelling crammed into it,” the director says. “Elton is seeing the things that are the genesis of his musical influences. I wanted to make sure it became a journey into his youth and his emergence as a young man. I wanted to be very aware that there were other cultural influences coming into Britain at that time that he would have been aware of, as well as his own discoveries about himself. It seemed like a great adventure.”

Filming the sequence was definitely an adventure for Fletcher and his colleagues. It required 300 extras, 50 dancers, four cameras, three cranes, 10 dodgems and a Ferris wheel. The action also jumps from the 1950s to the 1960s, requiring a wide variety of costumes and dance moves. Finally, to capture the intensity of Elton’s experience, the sequence was shot in one single tracking shot.

“We rehearsed it for six weeks,” Fletcher says. “We shot it over three days — three nights, in fact. I just loved the diverse flavor I could pull into that one place. It was a place that was full of light and color and magic and all the things I wanted the film to have and all the things that inspired Elton as a young man. It’s about his discovery.” 

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Neo-noir ‘Femme’ offers sexy, intense revenge fantasy

A work of real and thrilling cinematic vision

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George MacKay and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett star in ‘Femme.’ (Photo courtesy of Utopia)

They say “revenge is sweet,” and it must be true. Why else would so many of our popular stories, dating all the way back to “Medea” and beyond, be focused on the idea of getting “even” with the people who have done us wrong?

It’s a concept with obvious appeal for anyone who has felt unjustly used by the world – or, more accurately, by the people in it – but that has particular resonance, perhaps, for modern queer audiences, long used to being relegated to the status of “victim” in the narratives we see on our screens. In “Femme” — the new UK indie thriller helmed by first-time feature directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, now in limited theatrical release and expanding wider over the next two weeks — it provides the irresistible hook for a gripping tale of calculated vengeance in the face of anti-queer violence. Like the best of such stories, however, it’s as much a cautionary tale as it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Set in London, it centers on Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), aka Aphrodite Banks, a popular drag performer in the city’s queer club scene who, after a performance one night, steps out in full costume to buy a pack of cigarettes and becomes the victim of a traumatic “gay bashing” incident at the hands of a young man goaded to violence by a thuggish gang of friends. Months later, though he’s recovered from his physical injuries, he is still deeply affected by the inner scars that linger. Robbed of the confidence that allowed him to perform, he’s withdrawn into a reclusive life, until concern from his friends and housemates prompts him to finally venture out into the world for a night of cruising at a gay sauna – where he encounters his bully doing the same thing. 

Unrecognizable and anonymously masculine out of his drag persona, Jules finds himself beginning a dangerous and duplicitous game in which he plans to “out” his former attacker – whose name, as he learns, is Preston (George MacKay) – in the most humiliating way possible. As his scheme begins to play out, however, he encounters an obstacle: in getting to know the closeted Preston, he is surprised to discover not only empathy for someone living their life in terrified camouflage, but a mutual attraction that develops despite the horrific history between them.

Framed as a self-described “neo-noir” story, a designation that implies a certain flavor of moral ambiguity as much as it does a tense and shadowy tale of intrigue or a psychologically complex tone, it’s a movie that relies heavily on style in order to sell its conceptual premise. Realistically, we might question the boldness that permits our protagonist to enact such a potentially hazardous scheme, but in the context of its genre trappings we are lulled into accepting it. And while most of us are likely “jaded” enough to question the possibility of tenderness between its two leading characters, the accepted conceits of the film noir form are enough to sell it to us – or at least allow us to grapple with it alongside Jules, whose righteously Machiavellian master plan is threatened by the feelings he “catches” in spite of himself.

That, of course, is part of the whole point. “Femme,” though it establishes itself by virtue of its very title as a testament to the struggle to “pass” for straight in a world that places a value judgment on perceived adherence to a strict norm for gender and sexuality, hinges on the idea that such things aren’t quite as clear-cut as we want to make them. Despite the black-and-white certainty we cling to when it comes to the subject of abusive or toxic relationships, there’s an emotional component that can only be ignored or dismissed at our peril, and even our most resolute intentions can be undermined by the shades of gray we discover in our hearts. 

Freeman and Ng – who also wrote the screenplay, adapting their own BAFTA-nominated short film from 2021 (starring Harris Dickinson and Paapa Essiedu) into a feature-length expansion – seem bent on challenging our snap judgments, on forcing us to sympathize with our oppressors by showing us the ways in which they, too, are prevented from living a fully authentic life by the expectations of their cultural environment. Even more challenging for many modern audiences, perhaps, may be the unavoidable observation that, in enacting his plan of revenge, Jules crosses the line between being a victim and being a victimizer – a fine point that may trigger uncomfortable implications in a social environment that has become marked by divisive moral constructs and hardline ethical posturing.

Before we scare you off with discussion of high-concept themes and “culture war” rhetoric, however, it’s crucial to bring up the elements that lift “Femme” above and beyond the level of so many such narrative films and makes it a somewhat unexpectedly potent piece of cinematic storytelling – and all of them have to do with the skill and intention behind it.

As to the former, the movie’s first-time directors manage a remarkable debut, steeping their film in moody, genre-appropriate visuals and murky morality. They pave a path beyond the easy assessments proscribed for us by conventional thinking, and force us to follow our sympathies into a disquieting confrontation between what we “know” as right and what we feel as true; at the same time, they push back against any natural sentimentality we might have about the situation, stressing the toxicity of the relationship in the middle of their film, the ironically-reversed insincerity of its dynamic – and, perhaps most importantly, the reality of the defining circumstances around it. While we might find ourselves longing for a happier resolution than the one we expect, the film makes no pretense that these two men might overcome the deep denial and traumatic associations – not to mention the calculated lack of honesty on the side of its de facto protagonist, to achieve some kind of “happy ending” between themselves. Nevertheless, we hope for it, in spite of ourselves.

That delicate dynamic works largely because of the movie’s lead actors. Both Stewart-Jarrett (“Candyman”) and MacKay (“Pride”, “1917”) deliver fully invested, utterly relatable performances, finding the emotional truth behind their interactions with as much palpable authenticity as they bring to the chemistry between them. They force us to abandon our preconceived ideas about each character by finding the human presence behind them, and it makes the story’s final outcome feel as heartbreaking as it does inevitable.

As for intention, “Femme” – which premiered at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival and went on to gather acclaim across the international film fest circuit – might be a little hard to take for the easily triggered, we won’t deny it. Still, it’s a work of real and thrilling cinematic vision that goes beyond easy morality to highlight the tragedy that comes from being forced to live behind a mask for the sake of societal acceptance. It’s also exciting, smart, and unexpectedly sexy – all of which make it a highly- recommended addition to your watchlist.

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Tommy Dorfman makes directorial debut in ‘I Wish You All the Best’

Film premiered at SXSW

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(Courtesy photo)

Editor’s note: Jack Morningstar attended SXSW.

Based on Mason Deaver’s novel, “I Wish You All the Best” follows Ben DeBacker (Corey Fogelmanis), a nonbinary teen who is thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister and her husband.

The film premiered at SXSW last week and stars Corey Fogelmanis, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Alexandra Daddario and Cole Sprouse, Lena Dunham and was produced by Matt Kaplan and Tommy Dorfman. In addition to directing and producing, Dorfman also adapted the screenplay. 

“I had never read a book that centered on an experience that mirrored mine so vividly — just being a queer kid from the South — so I immediately was interested in adapting it and was putting myself up for that,” she said.

The heartwarming film brings awareness to the plight of LGBTQ kids who grow up in conservative families and communities, while also emphasizing that, as Dorfman noted, “safety can be found in many places.” In this case, the main protagonist, Ben, finds refuge in their friendship with Nathan. Fogelmanis, who plays Ben, explains that “together they have so many first-time experiences. Learning to let your walls down with someone that is a stranger, or that you don’t have a biological bond with is really scary. And then just to see all the stuff that comes up and have that person still accept you is just the greatest thing for Ben.”

Fogelmanis and Gutierrez-Riley were obvious choices for the roles of Ben and Nathan.

“It was really clear to me from a filmmaker perspective. There were a couple of people for each role that I was interested in and enjoyed working with, but Fogelmanis, from that first tape to the last chemistry read made it so clear who Ben was, who Ben is, and who Ben could be. Miles, who plays Nathan, is so amazing as well,” Fogelmanis added. “It was really effortless in a way. Reading Tommy’s words was super easy to find my way into.”

Dorfman found it particularly easy to work with Gutierrez-Riley as well since they attended the same acting program at Fordham University. 

“I remember when I was working with Miles in the audition process, I was like, oh, I know how to talk to you. That’s huge. It helped me as a first-time director,” she said.

Dorfman wanted to be careful “not fall into the trap of dramatizing Ben’s gender or coming out too much. It is important to remember that viewing people solely through the lens of their gender or sexuality diminishes their vast and complex humanity. For instance, my life extends beyond my trans identity. I’m an artist, a wife, a mother to two dogs, a sister to four siblings, an avid reader of classic literature, 10 years sober, have ADHD, enjoy arranging flowers and charming tableware, to name a few things.”

“Similarly, my film’s protagonist, Ben, doesn’t have an identity exclusive to being a queer teenager. Although their coming out experience is crucial and worth exploring, an obvious jumping-off point in my film, it’s what happens after they’re able to open up that inspired me to make ‘I Wish You All The Best,’ Dorfman added. “My film examines the discomfort of being seventeen, falling in love with a classmate, forming friendships, finding a voice through painting and self-expression, learning to love and be loved, navigating anxiety and depression, and coping with the pressures of growing up. These are universal and very human experiences that shape Ben beyond the limits of representation or perception.” 

Dorfman describes being one of the few openly transgender directors as “an honor and a disappointment.” She added, “I wish there were more of us, but there will be. It’s exciting, though, to be part of this next generation of creators and filmmakers entering this space and telling more human experiences.”

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Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells want to adopt baby in ‘I Don’t Understand You’

Film premiered at SXSW in Austin

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(Courtesy photo)

Editor’s note: Jack Morningstar attended SXSW in Austin, Texas.

“I Don’t Understand You” focuses on a couple whose romantic Italian getaway devolves into bloody chaos while they prepare to adopt their first child. 

The film, while veering into hilariously gruesome hijinks, tells the story of a gay couple who is willing to kill for a chance at fatherhood. It sheds light on the hurdles that same-sex couples often go through in the adoption process: Financial burdens, time constraints, fraud, and in this case, a rural Italian family.

The film premiered last weekend at SXSW in Austin and stars Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells along with Nunzia Schiano, Morgan Spector and Eleonora Romandini. It was written and directed by Brian Crano and David Craig, who are married. They sourced inspiration from their own adoption struggles and an Italian vacay gone wrong. 

“We were about to leave for Italy when we found out that we had matched with a birth mother and our son would be born in about six weeks,” said Crano. 

According to Craig, the trip was tense and it culminated in their car getting stuck in a ditch on their way to an anniversary dinner.

“We ended up at an old lady’s house after she rescued us in her Fiat. Her family cooked us a meal and we stayed up drinking with them until 3 a.m., not understanding a word they were saying,” he said.

Without spoiling anything, the couple in the movie go to absurd lengths to ensure that their adoption goes through. Craig explained that the theme of the movie was “what would you do for your kid.” 

“We were three years into our own journey at the time and realized we would literally do anything to make that dream a reality. It’s really a love letter to our son,” he said.

The film is hard to relegate to a single genre. 

“When conceiving the story, we saw it as different parts — romantic comedy, horror movie, murder play — but I think by bringing in Nick and Andrew that blend actually became much more of an organic mix where the comedy sustained throughout. They elevated it in a more elegant fashion,” said Craig. 

“I Don’t Understand You”was produced by Pinky Promise, a women-led production company with the mission to elevate diverse voices in their storytelling. Kara Durrett, Pinky Promise’s current president was a champion of this script from the beginning. Founder Jessamine Burgum recounts that when Durrett was onboarding, she said “If you don’t get [“I Don’t Understand You”] I don’t know if this is going to work.” 

It ultimately became one of the first projects Burgum and Durrett collaborated on. 

Kroll and Rannells’ chemistry carried the film. 

“There was a desire to work with each of them because they had both separately been in such amazing comedian teams — like Andrew with Josh Gad and Nick with John Mulaney. Nick and Andrew’s characters are in almost every scene of the movie together, so they needed to be adept to basically doing a shared performance. There was no one more well-positioned to do this as naturally as possible,” said Crano. 

Their characters are easy to root for, yet also deeply flawed. 

“A big thing we wanted to do with this movie, and with all of our work in telling stories, is avoid telling a cliched gay trauma film. We’ve never ascribed to the idea that there is a subcategory to film that is LGBTQ, rather — movies are for everyone. We want to make a movie where gay characters are flawed, not for being gay, but because of who they are. They can be villains, but they are our protagonists,” said Craig. 

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