Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a new comedy stars Daniel Radcliffe as a fictionalized version of parody musician Weird Al.
Weird is Eric Appel’s feature film debut after directing television for two decades, and it will also be the first original film to broadcast on the Roku Channel, which adds to the movie’s peculiarity.
The biopic follows the world’s most renowned accordion player from boyhood, when he had to deal with his disapproving parents. Through his early encounter with Dr. Demento, and all the way up to his affair with Madonna. Everything has been fabricated for the sake of amusement.
Appel admits that neither Al nor him sought Madonna’s approval before releasing the feature version.
“No, he typically doesn’t ask for permission with these things. In the movie, even with Madonna. Madonna plays like an arch-villain in this movie, but we’re not punching down or being mean to her.”
He hopes that Madonna finds the movie funny, “It’s this heightened version of the idea of Madonna and who she is. We’re not really trying to be cruel to anyone, so I don’t think people would have a problem with anything. Hopefully, if and when Madonna sees this, she finds it funny.”
He also mentions how Al doesn’t know Madonna in reality, “When he parodied ‘Like a Virgin,’ he heard that Madonna said, ‘When’s Weird Al going to parody my song?’ That’s how that started, and that was kind of the jumping-off point for her character in the movie. It was like, ‘What if we take that to the extreme?’ Not only does she want him to parody the song, but she’ll stop at nothing to get him to do this.”
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is available on Roku.
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