After the smash hit success of musical biopic The Greatest Showman, you would be forgiven for thinking director Michael Gracey might want to avoid making another musical film about a real-life figure. Yet, Gracey returns with Better Man, a musical film about the rise of Robbie Williams. In true Williams fashion, the film foregoes the formal trappings of the usual music biopic, instead transforming into a parable about the fame machine complete with huge musical set pieces. And the biggest catch? Robbie Williams is portrayed in the film as an ape. FILMHOUNDS sat down with Gracey to discuss the film in all its strange, excessive glory.
How do you go about turning Robbie Williams' life into film?
So it actually started with a series of recordings. When I was in L.A. I would go over to his house, he has a recording studio and we would just sit there and chat. Sort of like how you and I are now, and I would just ask him questions about his life. Sometimes he would finish the story, sometimes he'd go off on a tangent. But there were these very free-flowing conversations that formed the basis of the first draft of the script. At that stage, it wasn't specifically to make a film. I really enjoyed, not just the stories, but how Rob tells them. This is why I kept the voice-over in the film, I think it's what I loved about the original telling of the stories. It's the way in which he presents them, and so that was it. After a year and a half I think I had enough pieces to sort of chop up and make into a radio play. That was the recording that Simon Gleason, myself and Oliver Cole turned into the script.
One thing I noticed was that the film never explains why he's an ape – I know the trailer does – what was the decision behind never addressing the ape in the room?
I never wanted to address it! Because it's just the way he sees himself. You don't explain something to someone if they don't see it. In a therapy session, you might go “this is how I imagine myself”. But it's sort of, in the same way that those versions of himself aren't in the audience looking at him in disgust, it's all in his head. It's all just in his head. I never wanted to explain that, I just wanted it to be what it is. You sort of buy into it in the first couple of scenes, and a lot of people say that they forget he's a monkey. You're accepting that that is the character, you've set the contract with the audience and you go. Some people have said they thought that in the last scene we'd cut to real Robbie Williams and I was always like no, because he still sees himself that way. It's not like the guy got to a point in his life where he was like “I'm fully comfortable with who I am.” He's still full of that self-doubt. I mean he's in a very different place, and he's not self-medicating with the drugs and the alcohol. But he still struggles, you know?
And you say that it's how he sees himself. I've always said that biographical films should reflect the subject. So in the same way that The Greatest Showman is how P.T. Barnum would tell the story.
That's 100% right.
This is not *the* truth, it's Robbie's truth. How much is that you saying you have reflected the subject?
Right! It's funny you should say that, we used to say when we were developing Showman, P.T. Barnum looks nothing like Hugh Jackman.
It's a very generous interpretation of Barnum.
But, if P.T. Barnum was casting this film he would cast Hugh Jackman. No question. This is a guy who rewrote his autobiography three times. He's never going to let the truth get in the way of a good story. This is a more interesting challenge in that it's definitely from the perspective of Rob. Like with a lot of films, you have to fold in moments to make it work within the time.
For example when Rob left Take That it was during a rehearsal, and there was a table that had a watermelon on it, and after the boys had their conversation, in a very awkward moment he turned to the table and said “do you mind if I Take That?” And they were like sure, and as he left he held it up and said “This. Is. The. End.” And sort of floated out the door. I just always loved the watermelon in that story, it's just awkward, and it makes no sense but it's what you do when you don't know what to say.
It does seem like something Robbie Williams would do.
Yeah. And then the sitting around while Rob was on the swing at Gary's house. That was what they used to do when they would discuss how he's messing up. When you watch the film, it must have been really hard being in a boy band and Gary's trying to hold it all together, while Rob was being such a fuck up. You know at sixteen you'd be like “just stop! This is an amazing thing that you're messing up time and time again.” So there would have been real frustration with that, and one of the ways they dealt with that frustration was they would sit and talk to Rob and talk about how he needed to be better. And Rob, you know being who he is, rather than sit there and listen to what they're saying would sit on the swing and swing back and forth and at the end he would say “is that it then?” And when they said that was it he'd say “wheeeee” and just jump off. So in the film you just fold them in together.
The Rock D.J. sequence is a real show-stopper number of the film, what was planning and shooting like. That looks like a massive feat to pull off?
Oh my god. It was. It was a year and a half of planning. Shutting off Regent Street for four nights, like no other production has done that. It was only thanks to The Crown Estate and Westminster Council that we were able to pull that off. Dan Weldon at Partisan who I shoot commercials through, they did all of the leg work to make that a reality. We used to go down there in the middle of the night and shoot it out on our iPhones with dancers to try and time out to see which parts of the street we needed. Leading up to it we did a whole week of rehearsals with the double-decker bus and the taxis, the entire crew, the five hundred dancers. We taped out the four sections of the street we needed in a studio and just rehearsed them over and over again. Because we needed to know that after a certain amount of hours we could move our gear on, do the shoot and get the gear off all by 06:00. Because if any of the nights we went over, the next night they were stopping us from shooting. We were literally on stop clocks to make sure the planning was in keeping with the time allocated. We got to the end of that week, and we were all happy and Dan then got the phone call that the Queen had died the night before and we wouldn't be shooting.
Literally two nights before we were due to start shooting the Queen died and there were ten days of mourning, and we weren't shooting. And they needed to organise the funeral and the coronation, and by the time we had to raise all the money again, because we lost all the money. It's an independent film, it's not like we had some studio writing us a cheque. So, it took another five months to get back onto Regent Street. So however difficult it looks, the reality was so much more difficult. Obviously over those five months you have producers saying “you don't really need this number, do you?” And you're like “yes we do!”
It's the best number!
It's the biggest dance number I've ever shot in my life, and I've shot some big dance numbers. I'm so happy that we persisted, because yeah it's amazing.
For me the real heart of the film is national treasure Alison Steadman as his Nan.
The best.
How vital was it, that given the film's excess and you know an ape getting a hand-shandy—
I've never heard that before “a hand-shandy”! That's fantastic.
How much do you have to root it in an emotional core?
All of the spectacle, the dance numbers, the cheekiness, the Rob being Rob, the drug taking, it means nothing unless you care. And you care because Nan cares. She just gives this kid unconditional love. She believes in him, she reassures him, and you know when Rob's real Nan passed away it devastated him. So we had to have someone who in very short scenes makes you care and Alison Steadman does that so effortlessly. She is the master, she's also the master of laughing on cue. If you tell her to laugh she will have the entire crew killing themselves laughing because it is so believable.
That is a talent.
It's such a talent! There's nothing worse than a fake laugh. She can real laugh like that. So, she was the first person we went to, and she was the only person I wanted. The fact that she said yes, I was so happy. I can't even begin to tell you.
This is now your second musical biopic, will you do another one?
Probably not.
Is there a desire in you to do something completely different?
I love musical storytelling, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean a break-into-song musical. Tarantino's films are musical storytelling, they're so musically driven. The Mission would not be The Mission without that score, and it is inherent to that. I love music-driven pieces not necessarily everyone singing and dancing. So, I don't know what is next but I'm sure whatever it is will have a music component to it.
Lastly, gun to your head, favourite Robbie song?
Oooh….
Don't worry, I won't tell him.
Probably ‘Come Undone'. Since working on it in the film. Not before.
What was it before?
Probably ‘Angels'.
Yeah, it's the famous one.
Or, maybe ‘Let Me Entertain You' before, and ‘Come Undone' now.
‘Rock D.J.' is my go-to Karaoke song.
‘Rock D.J.' I love the production on the new version, there's a bass line in the new version in the film, and there's these Earth, Wind & Fire horns. I love that rendition. I love it.
Better Man is in cinemas from 26th December 2024.
