Big Empty: The Biopic! But first, a little (actually a lot of) context.

It's been a while and I've got some catching up to do. I'm sitting at a picnic table at my campsite on a cool sunny day. I've got nowhere to go and nothing to do except snack and day drink, so this is the best opportunity I'm going to get to pick this back up. In my last post, I said I was going to tackle comedy next, and I will some day, but I've been putting a lot more thought into biopics lately. Comedy is something that deserves my full attention to do it justice.

Before I just list the best, I really want to talk about what bothers me about this genre. It can be very formulaic and is oh so prone to making shit up to enhance a story that may not stand on its own two feet otherwise. The formula I think of goes like this:

Round 1

Is this a story that is special enough to make it worth telling?
Are people interested enough to know why it's special?
Why does this story need to be told?

Can you sincerely get through this first toll gate? If so, proceed to round 2.

Round 2

How should this story be told? Chronologically? Flash backs? Some other creative sequencing? Should I use a narrator?
Is the subject of the movie also the protagonist or will it be told from the perspective of someone in the subject's orbit?
Will the story paint the subject in a familiar light, or in a way that contradicts the conventional wisdom?

So hopefully this paints a picture of my thought process as I watch biopic movies. I'm skeptical that there are new and clever ways to work within this box AND that there are many writers with the work ethic to try to do so.

I'd really like to talk about what is wrong with the genre because I think it's not enough to just mention a few good ones and move on. An oldy from my high school days, Lean on Me, provides a good example of the kind of problems this genre is fraught with. It re-entered my conscience recently when I recalled how this movie was unique in the way that is was something my peers and I discussed as much with each other as we did with our parents. It was and still is inspiring, interesting, shocking, promising, uplifting, and supportive of unconventional approaches to conventional problems. It is that because that's what the writers wanted it to be. The real story of Joe Clark and Eastside High is some of those things, and sort of not really the rest of them. And that is why it is also what I would call a very good work of historical fiction.

Looking at it now, never has there been a movie that serves as a better example of taking the concept of "based on a true story" as a wholesale license to portray whatever the hell you want to because ya know, the premise is true. Let me lay out the premise, and then explain why this kind of story telling is such a problem for me.

Opening scene introduces you to Joe Clark and Eastside High School in its former glory.

Joe is an eccentric but enthusiastic teacher of a bunch of eager and bright-eyed white kids who appear to have promising futures

Joe is called out of class because some type of negotiation dispute is going on.

Joe is being sold out.
Joe makes a dramatic exit predicting that Eastside will suffer for what they've done: "This place deserves exactly what it gets."

Cut to 20 years later where Eastside has made a full on transformation into Hell.

Welcome to the Jungle provides the musical backdrop to a montage of fights in the hallways, girls being attacked and stripped in the bathroom, school administrators supplying drug dealers with their stash at a side entrance, and some poor random nameless bastard being beaten within an inch of his life in the cafeteria.
The point is, welcome to Eastside, where all of this stuff is just another typical day before afternoon gym class even starts.

Fast forward a little bit to Benson (forget the character's name but he's played by Robert Guillaume so he's "Benson") petitioning Joe to return to the place where he once lead a white suburban paradise to take out the trash.

Joe, armed with a Louisville Slugger and a bullhorn proceeds to whip the joint into such great shape over the course of one school year that his students start a full on social movement to get him freed from jail when he lands on the wrong side of the political forces aligned against him.

Let's analyze. Joe Clark did teach at Eastside in the 1960's and he was transferred to an elementary school around that time. Eastside was not a primarily white school at that time...far from it. Falsehood 1. Forgivable? Maybe, as long as this serves the story somehow. We go on to learn it does not serve the story at all. We keep watching and instead learn that disjointed events where we play fast and loose with the facts are not a bug, but a full-on feature in this film.

Let's continue. Whether or not there was a labor dispute that pushed Clark out is not something that I know or care about. Does it serve the story? Nope. Well no, not really, unless I am to believe that pushing out a radical teacher of bright eyed, bushy tailed white kids somehow led to a high school's transition from "among the finest in America" to "a terrible cauldron of violence." I don't think these two events are remotely related at all, but this movie would have me believe there is a direct tie. It then abandons anything more about this aspect of the story point forward. All that matters now is that Eastside needs cleaning up. In fact the place is so bad that even when the aftermath of a uhm, teacher or administrator (maybe?) -we never find out- having his brains beaten into the cafeteria floor, nobody ever mentions this poor guy again. We do get a shot of his sorry ass being carted out of the school with special emphasis on the grayness of his skin, indicating his brain is hemorrhaging. So he'll either die or be badly changed for life. But what's his name again and what happened to him? Who gives a shit! This is Eastside where this stuff happens all the time. This is the same Eastside where a haughty music teacher still shows up for work to whip the school choir into shape to perform Mozart for their annual concert at Lincoln Center in a few months. Yeah, I'm not buying it. This snooty woman who is portrayed as some Harvard elitist is someone who answers people who ask her what she does for a living saying "I teach Mozart to teenagers who routinely beat teachers to death." This movie screams to me of false narrative peddling from beginning to end. Even if there is truth to these two events, the movie failed to tie it together in a way that serves the larger purpose of the story. Methinks these are plot devices that are not well thought out in the overall story arc, the first being shock value, the second providing an antagonist to Joe Clark's unconventional but heroic methods. But to me, Eastside is either the war zone portrayed in the opening montage, or it is a place where some actual educating is taking place to the point that there is even a semi-competent choir; but it is not both of those things simultaneously, at least not as advertised in Lean On Me. Movie people, tie your plot devices together more cohesively or risk being called out in the hallowed halls of the Big Empty! The choice is yours.

A few additional fun facts:

The real Eastside showed incremental improvement under Joe Clark, but to this day always has been and continues to be one of the worst academic performers in the state of New Jersey. They really blew it with that labor dispute in 1968!!!
Violence was a real issue at Joe Clark's Eastside. But I've never discovered who is represented by the teacher shown being savagely beaten in the cafeteria. Events like this from the pre-internet era are still verifiable, and I don't believe that the local Paterson press would be indifferent about something this severe occurring in their community. Yet there is no evidence that I've been able to find anywhere that this occurred. The movie folks don't mention anything about what events led them to portray this in the movie. Perhaps that is why the character has no name that is ever mentioned, and none of his equally vulnerable colleagues ever mention him after he is carted out of there.

I'll stop with Lean On Me there. It's not a bad movie, but it also isn't nearly as good as it is given credit for being. By dissecting a little bit about why, I'm making a case for how the formula I laid out can be a trap. You either answer those questions sincerely, or you do what movies like Lean On Me did and invent or obtusely distort things to answer those questions.

I'll be back soon and I hope you'll enjoy what follows, which is my case for the best of the biopic genre.