Elvis Presley. Elton John. Amy Winehouse. Tina Turner. The list goes on and on. It seems that we are living in the golden film era of the musical biopics, and that no artist, living or dead, is safe from being depicted in this increasingly popular genre. And while filmgoers currently can’t get enough of them, the bothersome task of actually making the pictures seems to be a source of never-ending headaches for those that produce them. The untitled Madonna biopic project (tentatively titled Little Sparrow), for example, has been in preproduction for years amidst a minefield of time consuming back-and-forth decisions, as Madonna herself has grappled with who best to write her story with her and who best to portray her on screen. The hugely successful Bohemian Rhapsody had a famously difficult path to production, going through multiple directors and stars (including Sacha Baron Cohen) before settling on the Bryan Singer-Rami Malek combination. Even then, it was received with a certain amount of controversy, as a number of fans and critics alike blasted the script writing for watering down Freddie Mercury’s rather fluid sexuality and failing to fully capture Queen’s glorious outrageousness. And despite its success, the recent Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, has received its own share of criticism over to what extent it sacrificed factual accuracy for clean storytelling. It seems a fair assertion that it is incredibly difficult to get everyone to agree on exactly how to play the real life narrative of a real life person on the silver screen, even if they’re alive and part of the writing process themselves. These types of depictions seem destined to be forever fraught with controversies as producers and critics try to align themselves with how much one can actually suspend their belief with regards to a real life subject.
And now the latest film biopic controversy has already hit the headlines, even though the producers have yet to film a single minute of it and virtually nothing is known about the project yet! I’ll explain...
The as-yet-untitled George Michael biopic is said to be in the works, and although representatives of George’s estate and his family have denied having any official endorsement of it, famed White Lotus star
Theo James is already widely reported to be playing the lead role. It is his supposed casting in the role that is already causing some upset – most notably with the occasional Queen frontman Adam Lambert – because a recent thorny issue that already feels ancient has reared its ugly head once again...
Should straight actors be allowed to play gay characters?
Adam Lambert thinks not, and he has already publicly derided the rumoured casting of Theo James as George Michael, for the sole reason that Theo James is heterosexual.
And he’s not the only one to take this stance. Tom Hanks - who famously won his first ever Academy Award way back in 1993 for playing Andrew “Andy” Beckett, a gay man suffering from AIDS in the film widely popular film Philadelphia - has gone on in recent years to express his regret over playing a homosexual man, and spoke out against the “inauthenticity” of “a straight guy playing a gay guy”.
And the virtue signalling doesn’t end there. Actor Eddie Redmayne recently called his own Oscar-nominated performance in The Danish Girl, in which he played a male-to-female transgender person, a “mistake”, because he was only pretending to be a trans woman in the film and isn’t actually transgendered in real life.
The argument is said to be one of representation, but I find this unfathomable and somewhat distasteful. I see it as a sign of progression that we’re actually seeing a broader spectrum of character represented on film, regardless of who plays them, and that gay characters can lead shows or movies without it being labelled as some kind of stunt. It's refreshing to see esteemed A-listers portraying gay roles with little fear of homophobic reprisals. Hollywood shouldn’t be seeking to inhibit who can play these roles – it should be encouraging the wave of inclusivity whereby anybody can compete on a level playing field, regardless of what mould they fit into in society. However benevolent Tom Hanks, Adam Lambert and the rest might think they’re being in their philosophy, it is completely and dangerously misguided to insist on such a devision and separation. One’s sexual preferences should NEVER be a consideration when applying for a job. Theo James should not lose any potential roles for being straight any more than Adam Lambert should lose any gigs for being gay.
Where does one draw the line? Will actors be forced to share their sexual preferences with the Academy before being considered an award? Would a bisexual actor never be able to play a fully straight or fully gay person again? Would Sir Ian McKellen have to apologise for playing Macbeth?... Because Adam's well-meaning stance only serves to reinforce the dangerous ideas that there is something physically different between gay and straight men that can be detected on the screen - that gay actors are somehow 'different' from straight ones. Not only that, but it also invites an incredibly ugly and wrong idea; if only gay men can play gay roles, then how long will it be until we decide that only straight men can play straight roles?
It was only a few short years ago that playing a gay role was said to be a career-killer, especially for a male actor. There were very few actors who proved to be an exception to this unfortunate rule, and largely because of this, gay characters were often stuck languishing in the background as the jokey side character to be made fun of.
Whatever Adam Lambert et al think they’re trying to achieve, I fear it is not going to have anything to do with inclusivity, and is actually going to send storytelling backwards and send up-and-coming actors back into the closet.
- Jace T. Adams
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