Weird Al Yankovic hopes Madonna is in on the joke in his new biopic
Weird Al Yankovic discusses his new Australian tour, how Iggy Azalea nearly ruined his album, and ‘fears’ about his new biopic.
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Weird Al Yankovic has no idea whether Madonna has seen his new biopic, but he hopes she’s not too ticked off if she has.
The Queen of Pop is portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood in Weird: the Al Yankovic Story as instigating a relationship with the singer to convince him to do a parody cover of her song Like A Version, in search of the so-called “Yankovic” bump.
Although Madonna did indeed supposedly suggest the idea that would eventually become Yankovic’s hit Like a Surgeon, like almost everything else in the over-the-top parody biopic, the romance is entirely and hilariously untrue.
The movie, with Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, also shows the famously straitlaced Al as a drug-fuelled wild man who has to rescue Madonna from notorious ’80s drug lord Pablo Escobar, among other ridiculous fictional exploits.
“I have heard not a word from the Madonna camp,” says Yankovic with a laugh from his Los Angeles office, with his five Grammy Awards glinting on a shelf behind him.
“I hope she’s OK with it. That’s one of those things that I worry about a little bit because, when I do parodies, I always get their permission. And I was told by the lawyers for this movie that we didn’t need anybody’s permission, because they were public figures and it’d be better not to raise any red flags, and I defer to them on that. But, obviously, I don’t want to offend Madonna. I hope that she realises it’s a joke and it’s all done in good fun.”
Weird, which won Best Movie Made For Television and Best Actor for Radcliffe at last month’s Critics’ Choice Awards, has been a long time in the making.
It began life as a fake Funny Or Die trailer in 2010, but after the huge success of biopics including Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocket Man – both of which took varying degrees of liberties with the truth – Yankovic and director Eric Appel “thought it’d be funny to do a biopic on somebody who really hasn’t had that much drama in their life”.
“They took a lot of liberties with the chronology, as do most Hollywood biopics,” says Yankovic, a churchgoing, vegan teetotaller who has been happily married for more than 20 years.
“They are not documentaries, they’re meant to be entertainment. And I said, ‘OK, let’s do the Weird Al biopic, but just completely throw all the facts out the window and just have it go completely off the rails’.”
Yankovic had been impressed by Radcliffe’s work since being thrust on to the global stage as boy wizard Harry Potter.
He knew that the 33-year-old Brit would be able to handle the comedy, the drama, the big hair and the trademark moustache of the ’80s Weird Al, who become a star through parodies including Another One Rides the Bus, My Bologna, Eat It and I Love Rocky Road.
“He (Radcliffe) just knocked it out of the park,” says Yankovic.
“I was so thrilled with the job that he did and he deserves all the awards.
“We made him look as close to me as we could but he’s not really doing an impression of me. He’s doing his take on the version of me as written in the script, so we gave him a lot of free rein, and let him take that character wherever he wanted to take it.”
Yankovic was on set every day to answer any questions and oversee proceedings, but rather than giving his star notes on how to play him, he was more there for “tech support”.
Radcliffe was determined to learn how to play Yankovic’s trademark instrument, the piano accordion, for real and the long-time polka and squeezebox enthusiast was more than happy to oblige.
“He wanted to learn enough that he looked like he was really playing on screen,” says Yankovic.
“And he did – he looks great and, for the handful of people that actually know how to play the accordion, he is in fact pushing the right buttons and playing the right notes. I told him he didn’t have to do it, we could shoot around it and make it look like he’s playing, but it was really a point of pride with him.”
It’s been nearly a decade since Yankovic released his last album featuring parody songs. Mandatory Fun topped the US charts in 2014 – it reached the top 10 here – and featured takes on Aussie Iggy Azalea’s Fancy (Handy), Lorde’s Royals (Foil) and Pharrell’s Happy (Tacky). But the singer says the fragmented modern music market has made it harder to pick what will be monster hits, and the rise of social media and YouTube has made it more difficult to stand out from the crowd.
“Because of YouTube, it’s harder to come up with an idea that 20 other people haven’t thought of already,” he says.
“Anytime there’s a hit song, there’s immediately 1000 parodies online and you have to really think outside the box to do something that a bunch of other people haven’t thought of already.”
Mandatory Fun, he says, almost didn’t happen because of Azalea. As a courtesy (and to help ward off potential litigation), Yankovic likes to get permission from the artists whose songs he reinvents and, while making the album, he was finding it near impossible to track down the then-ubiquitous Aussie rapper.
In desperation, and with a deadline looming, he found out where her next gig was and flew to Denver to accost her backstage.
“I grabbed her literally as she was walking off the stage and said ‘Iggy, it’s Weird Al Yankovic, I want to do a parody of your song’,” he says with a laugh.”
And she was rightfully like a deer in headlights because of this random encounter with Weird Al. And she was like, ‘I need to see the lyrics, I guess’. And I said ‘I happen to have them right here’ and pulled them out of my pocket and gave them to her.
“By this time a crowd had gathered around, I think TMZ was even there documenting the whole thing. And she was a little on the spot, I suppose. But she said ‘yeah, looks good to me’. And I said, ‘thank you very much’ and then flew home.”
Yankovic is heading to Australia next month with The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. It’s a show he’s already successfully toured twice in the US but warns that the set list for deep cuts and rarely performed originals is targeted more to the hard core devotees rather than the casual fans.
“If you’re going to this show just to hear parodies, like Eat It or Like a Surgeon, you may want to sit this one out because we’re not doing those,” he says.
“We’re doing almost exclusively original songs – which are funny, I should point out, it’s still a comedy show – we’re just not playing the full-on parody songs. We’re not doing the big hits, it’s the deep cuts. So this is a tour that’s geared more for the hard-core fan that’s been dying to hear some obscure tracks from my fourth album that I’ve never played live before. As opposed to somebody going, ‘Oh, I kind of know Eat It, maybe I should check this out’. You can still have a good time but I am just trying to manage people’s expectations.”
The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, March 10-11, Palais Theatre, Melbourne; Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide, March 13; Enmore Theatre, Sydney, March 14-15; Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane, March 20-21. Tickets: tegdainty.com
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story streams on Paramount+ from March 2
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