Rowdon

Inspired by that "Rock and Pop Films" thread.

I'm sure this has been covered on previous threads, but ...

Am I alone in finding rock biopics useless because the actors playing the popstars are simply too old?
Take "Backbeat" for example. When you see photos of the Beatles in Hamburg, occasionally you see one where you think "Christ - he looks about 15". And you realise that (in George's case at least) he wasn't much over that. Even in a Hard Day's Night, they are just SO YOUNG. Then the biopic gets made and ... I'm sorry, but 30 year-olds with guitars don't looks the same. Seeing Ian Hart wandering around the streets of Hamburg doesn't make you think "God, it must have been such a culture shock for those kids."

Michael Myers is going to play Keith Moon? But he's 10 years older now than Moon was when he died. I like all (yes, all) of Myers' films, but Keith Moon apparently got severely depressed after "The Kids are allright", seeing how he'd gone from this cute angelic Mod to a clapped out old wino (a bit unfair, true) in 15 years - How's that going to come across in a film where the lead actor is already older ....

Seeing Brain Setzer as Eddie Cochran in La Bamba, you get NO sense of a boy who would be dead at 21. (Lou Diamond Phillips in the same film is SO unlike Richie Valens that it works).

There are so many examples: it's as if the youth of these people was of no importance, but to me it was central. Absoultely central. You watch an old interview with Pete Townsend - the interviewer is patronising him (probably unintentionally) because he's a little scamp, and Townsend is just simmering with fury: his smirks, his body language, tremulous voice as he tries to articulate his feelings ... it's all saying "Patronise me if you like. The war's over, you people have had your day. Now it's our turn.". You wouldn't get that impression if Townsend was 35.

So - does anyone else think these films would have been better with genuine 17 - 20 year olds in them, or is it just a timewasting attempt on my part not to go back to doing what I should be doing on this computer?

penfold

No, you're spot on...and I have the same problem with the British War Films of the fifties and onwards that everyone loves.....the actors are way too old...always. For example, and it's not unusual, Richard Todd in The Dam Busters; fine performance, no argument, but he was 35...the real Guy Gibson was 23 when the raid took place, and looked it...and the other crews were the same. When was the last time you saw a teenager play a Battle of Britain pilot?? And yet many were...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Rowdon

I hadn't bthought about war films. I seem to remember in Braveheart that some of the English soldiers who got killed looked very young. I think maybe filmmakers feel that people don't want to see genuinely young people with their whole lives ahead of them get mown down like ... well, grass, I suppose.