Pharrell as a Lego and Robbie Williams as a chimp? Music biopics get creative

TORONTO (AP) — Most of the anticipated conventions of music biopics are current in “Piece by Piece,” concerning the producer-turned-pop star Pharrell Williams, and “Higher Man,” concerning the British singer Robbie Williams. There’s the younger artist’s urge to interrupt by way of, fallow artistic durations and regrettable chapters of fame-addled extra.

However there are a couple of, little variations. In “Piece by Piece,” Pharrell is a Lego. And in “Higher Man,” Williams is performed by a CGI monkey.

If the music biopic can typically really feel slightly stale in format, these two films, each premiering this week on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant, try novel remixes. In every movie, every Williams recounts his life story as a narrator. However their on-screen selves aren’t film stars who studied to get an element excellent, however computer-generated animations residing out actual celebrity fantasies.

Whereas neither Williams has a lot in frequent as a musician, neither has had a really conventional profession. Their movies grew to become reflections of their individuality, and, possibly, a method to distinguish themselves within the crowded subject of music biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Rocketman.”

“That is about being who you might be, even when it’s not one thing that may be put in a field,” Pharrell mentioned in an interview Tuesday alongside director Morgan Neville.

Additionally subsequent to Pharrell: A two-foot-tall Lego sculpture of himself, which was later within the day delivered to the movie’s premiere and given its personal seat within the crowd.

The expertise watching the crowd-pleasing “Piece by Piece,” which Focus Options will launch Oct. 11, could be pleasantly discombobulating. A large spectrum of stuff you by no means anticipated to see in Lego kind are animated. Virginia Seashore (the place Pharrell grew up). An album of Stevie Marvel’s “Songs within the Key of Life.” Jay-Z.

“I’m simply so grateful that everyone mentioned sure,” says Pharrell. “Morgan mentioned sure. Lego mentioned sure. Focus mentioned sure. Common mentioned sure. Whenever you get to all these yeses, you understand how unattainable that is.”

Neville, the filmmaker of “20 Toes From Stardom,” “Gained’t You Be My Neighbor” and the current Steve Martin doc, made “Piece by Piece” like a documentary. When he interviewed folks for the movie — everybody from Missy Elliott to Kendrick Lamar — he spoke to them by Zoom and instructed them they’d be animated. However he didn’t share how.

Pharrell as a Lego is surprisingly profitable. It’s a method to characterize Pharrell as, at coronary heart, a playful builder of beats, a person hellbent on fame who assembled his personal future.

“I felt like every part we have been doing within the movie was completely reflective of the topic of the movie,” Neville says. “We’re not doing Lego as a result of it’s a gimmick. We’re doing it as a result of it’s the one method to inform this story proper.”

“Piece by Piece” would be the uncommon movie to probably vie in each the very best documentary and finest animated movie classes at the Academy Awards, together with the very best tune class. (Pharrell made a number of originals for it.)

The excessive idea of “Higher Man” started with a question by filmmaker Michael Gracey, who directed the hit musical “The Best Showman.” He approached Williams, the bad-boy balladeer, with a query.

“I mentioned: ‘What animal do you see your self as?’” Gracey instructed the group, introducing “Higher Man” on the movie’s Monday premiere. “And with an enormous grin he mentioned, ‘Lion.’”

After a second, Williams mirrored and acknowledged the more true reply — for an entertainer who began out in boy band Take That — was a monkey.

Within the movie, the actor enjoying Williams is Jonno Davies — solely we don’t see him, both. Not not like the method on the “Planet of the Apes” movies, Davies carried out in a motion-capture swimsuit. Later, digital results groups positioned the chimpanzee of the movie on prime of him. One half is Williams himself: the eyes of the monkey’s face. Each different character, in the meantime, is human.

Whereas “Piece by Piece” is a extra all-ages launch, “Higher Man” is R-rated and doesn’t skimp on the rock ‘n’ roll debauchery. It’s essentially the most cocaine you’ve ever seen a chimp ingest.

It additionally makes for a peculiar viewing expertise. Is Williams a extra sympathetic determine as a wounded animal than he’s as a human? Both manner, Williams is delighted by the consequence.

“For a narcissist, it’s a beautiful deal with,” he beamed on the screening. “I’ve seen it 3 times. It’s not sufficient.”

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