{"id":7717,"date":"2022-09-08T09:51:44","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T13:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/?p=7717"},"modified":"2022-09-08T09:51:44","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T13:51:44","slug":"weird-the-al-yankovic-story-wants-viewers-to-be-as-weird-as-they-want-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2022\/09\/weird-the-al-yankovic-story-wants-viewers-to-be-as-weird-as-they-want-to-be.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Weird: The Al Yankovic Story&#8221; Wants Viewers to Be As Weird As They Want to Be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Daniel Radcliffe is getting weird in the new official trailer for the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/05\/03\/entertainment\/daniel-radcliffe-weird-al-biopic-trailer-cec\/index.html\">upcoming &#8220;Weird Al&#8221; Yankovic biopic.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The new trailer for &#8220;Weird: The Al Yankovic Story&#8221; dropped on Monday, featuring Radcliffe as the famed quippy singer. With his curly brown mop of hair, wire-rim glasses, and bushy mustache, Radcliffe is almost unrecognizable.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My whole life, all I wanted was to make up new words to a song that already exists,&#8221; Radcliffe, as Yankovic, says in the trailer. From there, the trailer takes off &#8212; chronicling the bizarre rise of Weird Al, including a hook-up scene with Madonna (played by Evan Rachel Wood).<\/p>\n<p>The trailer ends with Yankovic giving a speech, saying that he wants everyone watching him to be as weird as they want to be and not to let anyone stop them from being who they are. The film is based on a short\u00a0Al Yankovic\u00a0made for Funny or Die in 2010, and the star-studded video poked fun at dramatic rock star biopics, exaggerating the comic&#8217;s life with sex, drugs, and emotional breakdowns.<\/p>\n<p>Radcliffe is a big fan of the\u00a0Grammy Award winner. Still, the\u00a0<em>Lost City<\/em>\u00a0star revealed in a March 2022\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Gv2sAuc03ls\">appearance<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<em>The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon<\/em>\u00a0that he was surprised when Yankovic\u00a0chose him for the role, despite having never met. The <em>Harry Potter<\/em> actor recalled, &#8220;When I talked to Al for the first time, I was like, &#8216;I&#8217;m immensely flattered by the idea that you would pick me to play you, but like, why me? I&#8217;m mystified but excited.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oCPMK8FUVCk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The first teaser trailer, released in May 2022, reveals that the movie is set to have a similar tone, with Roku advertising it as &#8220;the untold true story&#8221; of the &#8220;Eat It&#8221; singer \u2014 as well as his &#8220;torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yankovic, who wrote the film with its director Eric Appel, noted that the intention is to be satirical and nonfactual. &#8220;I hope this confuses a lot of people,&#8221; Yankovic said in the interview. &#8220;We want to lead them down a path and think, Is this a real\u00a0biopic? Is this the real story? The movie starts out pretty normal. Then it progressively goes way off the rails.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The musician explained that he became interested in the idea of a feature-length biopic after the success of films like\u00a0<em>Rocketman<\/em>, about\u00a0Elton John, and\u00a0<em>Bohemian Rhapsody<\/em>, about\u00a0Queen. He recalled being annoyed by unnecessary changes to real-life history in some of the movies, like in\u00a0<em>Rocketman<\/em>\u00a0when the fictional John chooses a new name after glimpsing a portrait of the Beatles that features John Lennon.<\/p>\n<p>The film, featuring Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, was first\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/01\/18\/entertainment\/daniel-radcliff\/index.html\">announced in January<\/a> and will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It will then be available to stream for free on The Roku Channel on November 4.<\/p>\n<p>From the trailer, the film&#8217;s central message is for everyone to be themselves and be as weird as they want to be. That&#8217;s how Al Yankovic became the person he is today: by being his quirky self. His parents wanted him to tone down his behavior, but he decided to ramp it up, and that&#8217;s how he was discovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Daniel Radcliffe is getting weird in the new official trailer for the\u00a0upcoming &#8220;Weird Al&#8221; Yankovic biopic. The new trailer for &#8220;Weird: The Al Yankovic Story&#8221; dropped on Monday, featuring Radcliffe as the famed quippy singer. With his curly brown mop of hair, wire-rim glasses, and bushy mustache, Radcliffe is almost unrecognizable. &#8220;My whole life, all&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":7723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-inspiring-messages"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Weird: The Al Yankovic Story&quot; Wants Viewers to Be As Weird As They Want to Be<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&quot;Weird: The Al Yankovic Story&quot; releases this month and the message of the film is you never know where being weird can take you.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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