ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Weird: The Al Yankovic Story director Eric Appel about expanding the original Funny or Die sketch into a full feature-length movie. The film is set to stream on The Roku Channel on November 4.
“The biopic holds nothing back, exploring every facet of Yankovic’s life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like ‘Eat It’ and ‘Like a Surgeon’ to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle,” reads the synopsis. “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story takes audiences on a truly unbelievable journey through Yankovic’s life and career, from gifted child prodigy to the greatest musical legend of all time.”
Tyler Treese: What was the biggest challenge in lengthening this from the original skit, which was so funny online, while keeping it just as funny? Because that seems like such a challenge, and you pulled it off.
Eric Appel: Well, first of all, thank you so much for saying that. It was challenging stretching this out to feature length in that it’s not like a direct parody of any specific biopic. We sort of borrow from everything from movies like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Walk the Line, all the way to Boogie Nights, Forest Gump, even the fictional biopics. We really wanted to create our own original story and not follow a template so much. Like, we wanted to play off biopic tropes, but really create a refreshing or original story that would surprise people. So I think, I mean, that was the biggest challenge, that we stray from Al’s real life. So it’s not like I did a bunch of research on Al’s actual life. There are nuggets of truth in this movie, but the challenge was really creating an original story for this bizarro movie version of Weird Al.
Yeah, definitely nuggets of truth, like “Eat It” being an original song. Aaron Paul was so great in the original skit and he told me he was going to have a cameo, but then he got COVID. Was he gonna be at the pool party, or what was he going to do in the film?
He was actually going to be another heckler in the “I love Rocky Road” scene, when they play at the bar, the Cobra Pit. He was going to be a biker. We were going to give him a big beard and disguise him his a biker. My goal, I wanted people to see this movie and say, “Wait a second,” and have to rewind. “Is that Aaron? Is that Aaron Paul underneath this biker disguise?” But he was going to be shouting down Daniel as he came out on stage.
Wow, that’s real funny. There are so many amazing cameos and so much comedy royalty in this film. I’m sure a lot of people just wanted to pay tribute to Al and his legacy, but how was it assembling such a cast? Because it’s incredible.
Yeah,it was pretty amazing. Like our main actors when they signed on, you know, Daniel [Radcliffe] and Evan [Rachel Wood] and Rainn [Wilson], Julianne Nicholson, who was just coming off an Emmy win for Mare of Easttown, and what I didn’t know at the time was also playing Marilyn Monroe’s mother in Blonde. You know, what a palate cleanser this must have been, to come in and play Weird Al’s mom.
But really for most of our cameos, it was friends of Al. I mean, everyone loves Weird Al, and he’s got a very robust Rolodex to pull from. So we kind of just listed out all of the friends and acquaintances of his, and just started assigning characters to them. He reached out personally to a bunch of people, and I mean it was so fun getting yeses immediately from all of this major comedic talent.
I expected the comedy to be good, but I didn’t expect the fight sequences to be so awesome. Al was just a total badass. How was it filming those?
I mean, it was amazing. Yeah, he’s John Wick in a Hawaiian shirt. It was great filming those fight scenes. I mean, luckily, we had the time to rehearse. We shot the movie in 18 days, which was a bit of a challenge. But we got rehearsal time to choreograph all these fight scenes and you know, Daniel Radcliffe is doing a lot of the stunt work himself in the fight scenes. He really picked up the fight choreography really well, and yeah, we just got in there fast and furious and got it done. I’m really happy with how they turned out.
