Biography at the Movies

I’ll soon be taking a bite of the Big Apple. The occasion is the annual conference of Biographers International Organization, a group that came into being to serve the needs of both active biographers and those interested in the field of biography. Since 2010 there have been (in addition to regular newsletters and Zoom events) annual BIO conferences, mostly in New York City but sometimes in outposts like Boston, DC, Richmond, and even Los Angeles. Some attendees merely want advice on telling family stories; others are experienced writers and even recipients of major awards. My BIO pal Amanda Vaill just won this year’s Pulitzer for Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution.

 I don’t know if there’s any hope of Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler showing up at the movies anytime soon. (The fact that they’re both major figures in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton might surely get producer-types interested.) But I do know there’s a long tradition of concocting films about famous historical figures. Decades ago, it was considered acceptable to wrestle the biographical facts about a celebrity —whether a composer, a scientist, or a politician—to conform to Hollywood’s idea of an inspiring life story. Now I’d like to think we’re trying harder to be true to actual reality. But in any case, actors love portraying great figures of the past. If you look at lists of Oscar-winning performances, you’ll note there’s a lot of Academy love for stars able to get under the skin of the real people who helped create our world. See, in this century alone, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour), Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything), Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln), Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote (Capote), and Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles (Ray).

 This enthusiasm for biographical films has paid major dividends for members of BIO. And several  I know personally have been thrilled by the care with which the motion picture industry has transmitted their work to the screen. BIO stalwart Kai Bird is probably still basking in the glow of Oppenheimer, the 2023 Oscar winner based on his and Martin J. Sherwin’s deeply researched American Prometheus. Jack El-Hai was pleased with last year’s Nuremberg, which developed out of his gripping historical study, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. When a BIO honoree, Candace Millard, published a 2011 historical work called Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, I  doubt she thought Hollywood would come calling. But someone at Netflix got involved, resulting in last year’s fascinating four-part miniseries, Death by Lightning, in which we follow the tragic trajectory of a nineteenth-century U.S. president, James A. Garfield, and his soon-to-be assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. This four-part series is too new to have come up for Emmy consideration, but many other awards-giving bodies have recognized the show’s excellence, with particular attention paid to lead actors Michael Shannon (as the appealingly idealistic Garfield) and Matthew Macfadyen (as the maddening and probably mad Guiteau).

 There is one honor that Death by Lightning has already won. Each spring, since 1988, the scholars behind the USC Scripter Awards have chosen the year’s best film adaptation of a work in print. Uniquely, at an awards ceremony held not long before Oscar night, both the screenwriter and the author of the original published work gain recognition  In 2016, USC added an award for episodic television series, and so Millard was in the winner’s circle when the TV Scripter went to her as well as to screenwriter Mike Makowsky. Bravo to them both.   

 

He to She: They Changed It At the Movies

Gender-bending seems to be the rule of the day. On cable television, there’s Pose, an exploration of what is called New York’s gender-nonconforming ballroom culture: it’s currently vying for six Emmy awards, including one for Billy Porter as lead actor in a dramatic series. In 2018, a Chilean film, Una mujer fantástica, won the Academy Award for best foreign language film. Its leading lady, Daniela Vega, made history that year as the first -ever transgender person to serve as a presenter on the Oscar stage.

Recently I caught up with two film productions that tackle, with very different stylistics, the life of a man who chooses to live as a woman. The Danish Girl, from 2015, is semi-fictitious in its details but is based on the real-life Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, a young painter who in 1920s Denmark evolved into a woman named Lili and underwent some of history’s first sex change operations. At the start of the film Einar (played by a totally engaging Eddie Redmayne) is married to a fellow artist named Gerda, a lively bohemian played by Alicia Vikander. As apparently happened for real, Einar first discovers the truth of his nature when asked by his wife to fill in for a missing model. Posing draped in a ballerina’s tights and tutu, he finds himself enthralled by the sensuous pleasures of female garb. This leads in the film to Gerda mischievously parading him at a posh art opening as Einar’s tall, shy cousin Lili. But the masquerade becomes all too real when another young man falls for Lili, and Einar becomes ever more convinced that he is meant to be female, even to the point of wanting to bear children.

There’s hardly a happy ending. But the actors are fully committed to their roles, managing to convince us that theirs is a beautiful love story, if a tragic one. The versatile Redmayne, who had previously persuaded Oscar voters that he was Stephen Hawking, remains credible and lovable whether dressed as a man or a woman. (His impishly secretive smile is essential in this regard). Alicia Vikander, as the woman who loves him too well to insist on keeping him, nabbed her own Oscar for her role. The music is lush; the muted but lovely scenery and costumes are to die for. I guess the film could be shrugged off as a weepie, but one beautifully executed in a Merchant-Ivory vein.

Then there’s Tangerine, which is a trans film of a different color. Indie filmmaker Sean Baker, who would go on to shoot The Florida Project two years later, got the film community’s attention when he shot this feature entirely on three iPhone 5s smartphones. No, the moviegoer isn’t required to watch this film on a tiny screen, though it will never be mistaken for Cinemascope. Tangerine tells a sordid but affecting slice-of-life story about a day in the life of an African-American transgender hooker named Sin-Dee Rella who plies her trade on the seedy streets of L.A. Just out of the slammer on Christmas Eve, she’s looking for the pimp who’s apparently cheating on her with a cisgender woman. Meanwhile her best buddy is trying to drum up business for a late-night singing gig, and a sad-sack immigrant Armenian cab driver is struggling to deal with his wife, his infant daughter, and his harridan of a mother-in-law. Somehow they all wind up in a late-night donut shop, where what happens is either very sad or very funny or both. In any case, it seems quite real: or about as real as L.A. on a sultry Christmas eve.