Shameless Self Expression

I’d seen snippets of the infamous Chris Holmes interview but this was my first time watching this 1988 documentary (or is it a mockumentary?) from filmmaker Penelope Spheeris. I wasn’t impressed with the pathetic display from Holmes, and I’m even less impressed having learned that a lot of what we see here in this film is either fake or elements are staged by Spheeris. A documentary on the 80s glam metal scene in L.A., Spheeris has confirmed some of the moments depicted here were staged, the artists involved have claimed some of it was staged too. For instance, Holmes mostly had pool water in that vodka bottle. However, if you think all this means I’m going to put Spheeris on blast for making a fake documentary that mocks the mid-80s L.A. glam metal scene unfairly you’ve stumbled onto the wrong review, my friend. These posers (some high profile posers, I might add) still agreed to be presented in this way and deserve a lot of the blame. Staging/editing and substance abuse can only tak...

The mostly untrue story of music parody specialist Weird Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe), his rise to fame, his struggles to gain the approval of his father (Toby Huss), and his supposedly torrid love affair with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood).   I think my fandom of comedian and musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic is probably reflective of some of you out there: I was a big fan until I stopped recognising the music he was parodying. For me that was around the time of the Running With Scissors album where I really only recognised three of the parodies and didn’t much like any of them. For you, it might’ve been an earlier or later album. I still listen to the earlier albums regularly and I think Al seems like a heck of a nice guy, but I stopped listening to new music (outside of some legacy artists) by and large around 1999 so his parodies were often a bit lost on me by that point. I was excited when I heard that someone was doing a biopic on Al, and although I naturally assumed th...