Yesterday the director Nicolas Roeg died. I wrote about him a few weeks ago, upon the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. He was, among other distinctions, a man who could draw memorable acting performances from such rockers as Mick Jagger (Performance) and David Bowie (The Man Who Fell to Earth). It would have been interesting to see what he would have made of Freddie Mercury.
~Bohemian Rhapsody is not a Nic Roeg film. It's a biotuner, as they used to say. I only caught it because I was walking into the multiplex to see the new version of A Star Is Born, when I suddenly remembered that A Star Is Born has spent the last eighty years getting worse, from Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in 1937 to Judy Garland and James Mason in 1954 to Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in 1976 to Lady Gaga and whoever the other fellow is right now. So, seized by a panic attack, I detoured into the welcoming arms of Freddie Mercury. To be honest, my main reason for doing so is that, for the last seven months, litigious wankers Cary Katz and CRTV have been suing me over this essay, which they claim is defamatory and disparaging of them, on the following grounds:
We Are The Champions, my friend
And we'll keep on fighting till the end
We Are The Champions!
We Are The Champions!
No time for losers...
Obviously, it can't be defamatory, as Judge Gordon found and Judge Bransten upheld that we are the champions, we are the champions, and they are the losers, notwithstanding that these losers expect us to make time for them for another five years of meritless suits. But, aside from the fact that "We Are the Champions" is res judicata, I've developed a certain fondness for the number ever since our longtime California correspondent Dan Hollombe pointed out that Freddie Mercury's verse for the boffo anthem is a direct lift from "Send in the Clowns", since when I find myself slipping back and forth from one song to another, and indeed may do it as a medley on the forthcoming Dennis Miller/Steyn tour, and dedicate it to Katz and his legions of loser lawyers.
Anyway, that's why we made a sudden detour in the multiplex lobby - even though all biotuners are the same, and have been since the prototype Jolson Story in 1945. And even that was more or less a real-life remake of the fictional plot that made Al Jolson a movie star way back when in The Jazz Singer in 1927.
In the usual conflict between personal life and professional ambition, The Jolson Story ends in a nightclub with Al, ostensibly having forsworn showbiz for the little woman, being talked back on stage for a quick chorus of "April Showers" in the course of which a tearful Mrs Jolson realizes his first love will always be performance and pushes her way through the cheering throng and into the divorce courts. Mass adoration versus human intimacy: it's no contest. "In the end, she's only a shag," observes John Lennon (Ian Hart) in the equivalent scene in Backbeat, with "Twist And Shout" substituting for "April Showers". Mammy singers yield to crooners to big band swingers to rock'n'rollers, but the conventions of the biotuner remain unchanged. In The Glenn Miller Story, Glenn is obsessed with the need to play his music his way. So are Johann Strauss (The Great Waltz) and Buddy Holly: "I gotta play ma music ma way," he told a man in a suit (representing hidebound conventions soon to be overturned by rock'n'roll) eight times a week for ten years in the West End jukebox musical Buddy.
Because Freddie Mercury was a flamboyant gay Zorastrian Parsi from Zanzibar who liked ballet and Marlene Dietrich, one might have expected Bohemian Rhapsody at least to have offered a few exotic variations on the traditional narrative. But, in fact, Bryan Singer (X-Men et al) and a decade's worth of script rewrites have wound up with a very conventional biopic of a very unconventional man, in which all the rituals of the genre are lovingly observed: thus, Freddie's disapproving father is embarrassed by all the rock'n'roll and can't understand why his son wants to ditch his ethnic identity ("Farrokh Bulsara"); the girl next doorish (actually a sales assistant at trendy boutique Biba) inspires his early songs but is soon left behind for the more transient encounters that attend global success; the philistine exec at EMI (amusingly rendered by Mike Myers) thinks the eponymous "Bohemian Rhapsody" is far too long and a lot of pseudo-operatic bollocks.
So far, so predictable, if enjoyable enough. The original plan called for Sacha Baron Cohen to play Freddie, which would have been terrible. So the lesser known Rami Malek stepped in to the undershirt and black leather and, aided by lavish prosthetic choppers, looks the part, and sounds it: The singing is dubbed, but the affected drawl of the speaking voice approximates to my own memory of the man. I had a very slight acquaintance with him through Capital Radio's Kenny Everett, who turns up (played by the arrestingly named Dickie Beau) in a recreation of the famous scene when Freddie brought Kenny an advance pressing of the pseudo-operatic bollocks EMI wanted to eighty-six and Kenny made it a monster hit. "I had no idea Kenny and Freddie knew each other so well," says a mystified Mary (Lucy Boynton) on the other side of the glass. Hmm.
My mutual acquaintance was not as mutual on my part as theirs: Kenny and Freddie were both lovers of the same Russian bodybuilder (Nicolai) and his Spanish waiter chum (Pepe). In the Eighties "The Fab Four", as they styled themselves, shagged anything that moved, and Nicolai in particular was an industrial-scale HIV-distribution machine in the London of the 1980s. With the exception of that one brief scene in the Capital studio, all these relationships are absent from the movie, and replaced by a very demure friendship with a gay caterer whom Freddie takes to tea with his parents. Sacha Baron Cohen apparently withdrew from the project because he felt the script's downplaying of the conscious hedonistic excess was making Freddie too boring. And he has a point. The joke about Queen, well caught in the early scenes as his putative bandmates urge him to get his teeth fixed, is that it was one freaky misfit plus three near parodically dull factory-issue rock-band blokes. In this case, the dull rock blokes have wound up in charge of the movie, and have more or less confirmed the joke: The three of them turn up with their missuses for one of Freddie's orgiastic party nights and make polite chit-chat over the peanuts and cocaine for ten minutes before making their excuses and leaving early. But, more disastrously, the Queen survivors' control of the film has sanitized their frontman to an almost ludicrous degree. Bryan Singer, an A-list director semi-Weinsteined during last year's #MeToo fevers on the Kevin Spacey side of the ledger, if you get the cut of my jib, seems only too relieved to dial it down. The poster's tag line is "Fearless lives forever", but the film itself is oddly fearful and tentative, seeking the cachet of gay flamboyance without the actual flamboyance. This was a perennial problem of gay movies a while back - see Tom Hanks at the world's tamest gay party in Philadelphia - but it's strange to find it here.
Along the way, the particulars of a life get lost. As I noted in my allegedly defamatory essay, Freddie's dad was the cashier at the Zanzibar High Court ("where, frankly, Defendants would far rather be", as we put it in a recent legal filing in the second CRTV suit). Surely, with such rare trees, the forest has to be more than just the usual price-of-fame clichés, doesn't it? Yet Bohemian Rhapsody treats its subject's life like modular furniture, culminating in the film's dreariest re-shuffling of reality: the Wembley Live Aid concert recreated as Freddie's inspiring act of defiance against his Aids diagnosis. In fact, he did not discover his medical condition until some years later, and his actual non-stadium non-anthemic musical leave-taking is both more moving and subtler than the banalities offered here. That said, Rami Malek's performance - more child-like and unknowable than the real Mercury - is oddly mesmeric, and the sense of time and place is quite well done.
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23 Member Comments
For all its flaws, I found the film enjoyable. Maybe a non-stop gay orgy would not be.
Yeah ha ha
When I think about it, maybe I was wrong on Freddie Mercury and Queen's legacy being protected but rather exploited by progressiveness making it about Freddie's sexuality than about his carrier. I've never believed in liking someone's music just because they were straight or gay or transgender. Sing well and keep your politics to yourself is all I ask.
I did not know, back in the 70s, that Mercury was gay. I think the first time I had an inkling was from Private Eye's "The Gays" comic strip, where they all had Freddie mustaches and wore vests. But back then homosexuality was a minority sport.
One of the interesting things about homosexual culture over the past few decades is how boring - at least from the outside - it seems to have become.
When you think "Gay 1978", you think of The Village People parading around in native headresses and hardhats, Rob Halford in gay bondage gear fronting Judas Priest, Freddie Mercury wielding a mic stand as a phallus in front of 40,000 people, Elton John appearing in sparkle glasses and an ermine robe, and David Bowie in make-up talking about how he's a space alien.
But when you think "Gay 2018", you think of two guys sitting quietly on a suburban porch surrounded by a white picket fence, sipping tea, wearing matching LaCoste sweaters, talking about how they just got married and adopted two children. Gay culture was once proudly renegade. Now gay couples seem much more "Leave It To Beaver" than straight couples. (Obviously Milo Yiannopolous is an exception).
I haven't seen "Bohemian Rhapsody" yet, but from what you say, it's buried the "Gay Caligula"/"Farroukh Does London" story possibilities in favour of this new bourgeois sensibility. Funny how the world has changed.
No doubt about it, Tal, but understandable, I suppose. I was at college in New York in the late 70s, and saw a lot the "renegade" in my time. But those renegades who survived the HIV holocaust and the other ravages of time are now in their 60s at least. They've earned their porches and fences and LaCoste sweaters that mark their arrival at Cleavertown. Anyway, what need hath gay culture for renegades anymore? Outrage has been done; a pair of assless chaps may get no more of a second look than bell-bottomed disco pants--with the advantage that they don't make one's ass look any fatter than it actually is. Today's renegades are those who, while accepting of gay couples as people, decline to participate in ceremonies that, in their hearts and minds, mock the sacrament of marriage. We will bake any cake, arrange any flowers, they declare, just not for a wedding ceremony between something other than a man and a woman. For that outrage they face ruin and scorn. Figuratively if not literally, the quiet gay couple is squatting in the lovely portico-ed house seized by marshals from bankrupt bakers and sold at auction for a song ("I Will Survive").
What? You think that 2 men with male hormones have gotten tamed with their version of marriage? Mission accomplished, American culture. Nope, it's just gone on the down low.
Funniest thing (of many) that Mark ever said, in a Mailbox video (paraphrasing):
"If you're going to be that boring, you may as well be straight."
When asked about the pros-and-cons of same-sex marriage, Jordan Peterson responded in his scrupulously scientific manner to the effect that if it reduced promiscuity in that cohort it would be desirable, which is not an argument that's put forward by the lobbyists and ideologues who want it both ways (so to speak). An incontrovertible fact is that, based on all available data, there was a huge increase in rates of HIV (and associated infections) from the time it became "treatable" (now essentially preventable), despite societal acceptance of same-sex partnerships. The "chemsex" scene in London and elsewhere is now on the rise, despite same-sex marriage legalisation. The BBC has no hesitation in broadcasting detailed radio transcripts (including interviews with participants) during general-audience times, which is probably the idea: teach the kids about all this wonderfully diverse stuff while they're still young and impressionable!
PS. Wasn't it the Judas Priest guy who hit on Mark?
Mark replies:
Indeed, Kate. I still had my boyish charm in those days.
"Boyish" as in beardless? In any case, Mark, you've still got it, as many here in the comments (of both genders, if it's ok to be binary about it) have observed. Where's Laura Rosen Cohen, amongst others, at a time like this?
"Outrage has been done; a pair of assless chaps may get no more of a second look than bell-bottomed disco pants--with the advantage that they don't make one's ass look any fatter than it actually is."
Can't. Stop. Laughing.
Oddly enough, you're a bit dated on Milo as well. Milo is in a gay "marriage", and at least as of his recent interview on the Patrick Coffin show, is not ready to become celibate but feels if his current partner died he would then likely be able to remain celibate. He also has developed a strong interest in the Roman Catholic Faith, admits he is living a sinful lifestyle, and expresses a desire to further improve but is struggling with the sin he currently lives in. It's honestly fascinating to watch and quite the turnaround from the man he used to be if he is genuine in this. Check out the interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC7OS9Ks-fM
Yes, Milo has been saying since he first appeared that he's a Catholic who believes in God and believes his lifestyle is sinful.
That entire time, he's *also* flamboyantly ponced about the globe wearing furs and sparkles trumpeting his promiscuity, making oral sex jokes, referencing his taste for "dark meat", etc. The bipolarity - that conflict - is a huge part of his schtick.
Yes, he now says he's married. We'll see what exactly marriage means to Milo I suppose over the next year or two.
At any rate, all I was saying was that Milo's whole persona has been that of a conflicted, Byronic, flamboyantly gay powerhouse - not one of the "matching LaCoste sweater" types.
Point taken, though at least judging by the interview it seems he is taking his Faith more seriously than in the past, though I certainly don't count on Milo sticking to the newer persona given how easy it is to relapse into old habits. Still, I find it interesting that even someone who could be thought of as the epitome of that flamboyantly gay lifestyle appears to be trying out a more sedate lifestyle.
Very entertaining read - and thoughtful at the same - real lives and fantasy. Looking back over decades, sobered at how much we were led to believe was true and wasn't.
As an aside, the movie was probs much better than the current CRTV adverts... idle-ly figuring they've tasked some low-paid minion (hint to minion, Trump's economy means you can get a better paid job with better hours elsewhere now - and go for it 'cause that's the only way to force stingy employers to start paying better wages: competition) to lurk here, but to no one in particular in the grand cosmos, lads/lassies/its, just sayin' that the ads went from boring to cringy pathetic.
Mark replies:
You're right on that, P.
Since it's about music legends... Première Gao is a veurrrry pops song in W. Africa.
;D
Saw the previews of Bohemian Rhapsody and feared the worst and it came true with the reviews. True fans were never impressed with this watered down view of Freddie Mercury or of the rest of Queen. Amazing how certain groups get to have their history "socially appropriated" to continue one's legacy when quite frankly, never needed it.
A little off subject, I hope to hear a discussion on the recent unrest in France over gas taxes no less and the calls for Macron to resign.
How disappointing. This idea that Queen was Freddie Mercury and three dull, standard issue rock band blokes is absurd. Brain May is perhaps the most interesting guitarist in rockdom. Or should I say Dr. Brian May, the man with the Ph.D. in astrophysics. Also the man who designed and built his own guitar as a teenager and used it instead of the obligatory Gibsons and Fenders. Yeah right, just your typical rock guitarist.
John Deacon is interesting as one of the very few rock stars who seriously retired from the limelight and isn't interested in being back in it. Very different from your average, once famous rock star who keels over in his 80s while playing a county fair.
While Mark didn't claim the "joke" he quotes, he didn't disavow it either. For shame, Mr. Steyn.
Totally agree, Steven. May was just as much Queen as Freddie. No one who listens to Queen 1 can deny what a great guitarist he was. Mark is just not that into guitar rock.
Just to elaborate on your point, Steven:
Queen was much more than a genius with three tag-alongs.
Every other guy in that band wrote huge songs - either smash hits (no mean feat in itself) or songs which managed the even rarer achievement of becoming well known around the world *despite never having been released as singles*.
Just for starters, Brian May wrote "Fat-Bottomed Girls", "We Will Rock You", "Keep Yourself Alive", "Who Wants to Live Forever", "Now I'm Here", "Tie Your Mother Down", and the Flash Gordon theme.
John Deacon wrote "You're My Best Friend", "Another One Bites the Dust", "I Want to Break Free", and "Spread Your Wings".
Roger Taylor wrote "Radio Ga-Ga", "A Kind of Magic", and "These Are the Days of Our Lives".
These are all huge, huge songs.
In addition, each guy was a legitimate virtuoso on his instrument - but even more importantly in my books, developed completely unique styles of playing.
Merely hear a single guitar note, and you can tell it's Brian May. The tone and style are entirely unique to him.
Hear a couple of tom hits, or the unique way he hits the hit-hat with the snare - you know it's Roger Taylor (listen to his tom rolls on "Somebody to Love" or "You're My Best Friend"). We might add that in any other band, Roger would have been the lead singer. He has a great rock and roll voice.
John Deacon's bass parts also managed the feat of being completely song-appropriate while being surprising and unique.
So...not tag-alongs by any stretch.
Brian May scores extra points for having designed and built with his dad a guitar which didn't sound like any other in the world, and which featured their own inventions. They designed a vibrato arm (anchored by a salvaged motorcycle spring) that gave May a full octave sweep *years* before anyone else came up with the idea (which you can hear on songs like "Brighton Rock"). They designed a wiring system that gave May all sorts of pickup (tonal) options that no one else had.
I guess this isn't all that relevant to the point, but in my personal dealings with Brian and Roger over the years (never met the other two guys), they've always been great. Funny, smart, polite, down to earth, etc. They're great guys as well as brilliant songwriters, players and performers.
Just my two cents.
Mark replies:
I don't disagree with that, Tal. I've only ever met Brian May. Lovely chap, and I like the way he still has the same hairdo he had in the Sixties. I'm simply reiterating the point all Freddie's chums made at the time - that it's like Liza Minnelli fronting Status Quo.
Sure, I hear that, Mark.
Hope all's going well.
Best wishes
That's another thing. May is a right proper Kipling man. He's kept his hair while all about him are losing theirs.
Steyn: "The joke about Queen, well caught in the early scenes as his putative bandmates urge him to get his teeth fixed, is that it was one freaky misfit plus three near parodically dull factory-issue rock-band blokes. In this case, the dull rock blokes have wound up in charge of the movie, and have more or less confirmed the joke..."
Steven: "How disappointing. This idea that Queen was Freddie Mercury and three dull, standard issue rock band blokes is absurd... While Mark didn't claim the "joke" he quotes, he didn't disavow it either. For shame, Mr. Steyn."
Knowing virtually nothing about Queen, it's nonetheless amazing to me that people can read the same thing yet infer completely different meanings. I took Mark's words here (particularly in the context of the rest of the column) as a criticism of the film- ie the film "confirming the joke". In fact, the entire film review seems to be a disavowal of the joke.