Bohemian Rhapsody

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop.

That just so happens

to be

about movies.

Okay, I'm not going to keep doing that.

And how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone Bohemian Rhapsody.

As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett.

Lizzie, how are you doing this fine afternoon?

I'm great.

I'm really excited to get into this one.

I think we both have very strong feelings about it, but I would like to remind you at the top of this episode that a lot, a lot of people love this movie.

And I think that we should do our best to understand why.

And I think I can appreciate that.

Spoiler alert, Chris and I do not love this movie, but I think the story that you're going to get today is very, very interesting.

It's a lot of what went wrongs.

It's a lot of what not to do's and also some heroes mixed in there, which is nice.

So before we get into it, we are, of course, talking about Bohemian Rhapsody, the story of

Queen.

Yeah.

Just everybody, the whole thing.

Everybody all the time, all the way through.

Everybody Freddy Mercury ever met.

Every, everybody Freddie Mercury ever shook hands with, and not so much Freddie Mercury, but that's okay.

For $900 million worth of ticket sales, that's okay.

So holy shit.

Yeah, yeah.

This thing made bank.

Oh, good for them.

Chris, had you seen Bohemian Rhapsody before?

And what were your feelings upon re-watching it?

Yeah, once before and then re-watched it.

Yes, we're not here to dunk on movies that you guys like at all.

And I guess I'd describe it this way.

So I had a professor who once said, if you could choose between having a photograph of someone that you love who's no longer here or having a recording of their voice, you should always choose the recording of their voice.

Because if you play that through a speaker and close your eyes, it is as close to resurrection as you can get.

The actual physics of the sound hitting you are not dissimilar from them being in the room speaking to you.

And when I watch this movie, I feel that I have been handed a very well-crafted and loving photograph of a person.

And I don't have any sense of the texture of who that person is.

And I feel no closer to understanding Freddie Mercury at the ending of this movie as I do at the beginning.

That being said, I do think the movie improves as it goes on.

I thought the first half honestly felt closer.

I mentioned this to you, Lizzie, closer to something like walk hard than walk the line.

It almost feels like parody, but I do think even I had to admit, I thought the movie improved pretty markedly in the back half.

And I'm curious if there are any production reasons for that.

I have no idea.

If the goal of a biopic is to present the facts of somebody's life, then I suppose this movie may have succeeded.

It feels okay.

Well, it feels like a reader's digest sort of approach to telling the story of someone's life.

I was thinking a lot about all that jazz, which I feel despite Bob Fossey claiming it is not autobiographical.

No, we can throw that out the window.

We know to a certain extent it was.

And after I watched it, I really felt like I knew Bob Fosse, the good, the bad, and everything in between.

And after watching Bohemian Rhapsody, I just thought, I'd like to go listen to Some Queen, but I don't feel like I know anything more about Freddie Mercury.

Yes.

Or really the band in general.

Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way of expressing, I think, both of our problems with this movie.

So I was talking to my mother-in-law last night who really, really loves this movie, like really love it.

My parents also really like this movie.

Yeah.

And talking to her, I was like, okay, like this movie meant something to her.

It moved her.

She loved it.

I don't want to shit on this movie.

Like a lot of people really loved this.

And I asked her why.

I was like, you know, what was it about this?

And I think this movie hinges so heavily on how fucking great Queen's music is

because the music does all of the heavy lifting for them.

It's so good.

It's so exciting.

Well, the music, and I will say, I think, as we're going to get to, Rami Malik absolutely works his ass off and does, I think, the best he possibly could with what he had.

I think it's maybe more of an impersonation than it is an in-depth performance.

I don't even know if that's fair.

I think he is so fun to watch.

He looks and moves so much like Freddie Mercury.

And of course, the music you're hearing, it is Queen.

It is Freddie Mercury.

We're going to get into that a little bit.

But I think that's the reason people love this is because they just love Queen because Queen is great.

The music is great.

And like that just moves the whole thing along.

And I think it is enough to ignore.

as you put it, the walk hardness of this movie.

It's wild when you really pay attention to it.

It does feel like they watched Walk Hard and said, let's do that, but make it serious.

I was also reminded of Braveheart a little bit and some of the broadness of some of the choices well i was reminded of your favorite word chris which as i've been listening back to some recent episodes you've used a lot and i appreciate it because i had to look it up which is a hagiography yes i think this is a hagiography well let's get into it this movie became a little bit of an industry punching bag it did it's actually it's weirdly an underdog movie it became an industry punching bag it had a remarkably absent director yeah a horrifyingly complicated editorial process i'm sure there's one scene in particular that went around the internet for the sheer volume of cuts as they're meeting with that manager for the first time.

And it's just like, close up, close up, close up, close up out on everybody's faces.

And yet, despite all of that working against it, it found its audience.

And this movie made an absurd amount of money, as you mentioned.

So let's get into it.

Let's do it.

All right.

It was released in November of 2018.

It's directed, unfortunately, as we will get to, by Brian Singer and Dexter Fletcher, who is uncredited.

We will also discuss that as well.

With a story by Peter Morgan and screenplay by Anthony McCartan.

As per usual with movies of this level, there were many other writers attached to this, but he's the main one.

Produced by Graham King and Jim Beach, Queen's real-life manager.

Production companies, 20th Century Fox, starring Rami Malik, Lucy Boynton, Gwillem Lee, Ben Hardy, Joe Mazzello, Aiden Gillen, Alan Leach, Tom Hollander, and the scene that Chris just referenced, of course, Mike Myers.

The IMDb log line is, as always, with his impeccable vocal abilities, Freddie Mercury and his rock band Queen achieve super stardom.

However, amidst his skyrocketing success, he grapples with his ego, sexuality, and a fatal illness.

Does he?

Does he grapple with those things?

It could be argued that it doesn't really deal with those at all.

Anyway, the story of this film begins not with Rami Malik, or even with Brian Singer, or even Brian May, all of whom we will get to.

Instead, it seems to begin sometime around 2008 with a man who was very familiar with a different queen.

And that, of course, is the writer of The Queen and creator of The Crown, Peter Morgan.

Chris, are you a fan of Peter Morgan's queen content?

I watched a little bit of The Crown

first going around.

It's impeccably made.

The writing's great.

I don't find the British monarchy compelling.

It's high-end reality television, right?

At the end of the day.

I love it.

Can't get enough.

I totally understand.

It's just not for me.

So I'm not that familiar with Peter Morgan's work.

Well, pretty much everyone can agree that he was around for the genesis of this project.

And he does, as I said, retain a story by credit on the final product.

What his basic idea was,

which is why he retained a story by credit, is that he wanted to chronicle the lead up to and eventual performance at Live Aid.

Now, I think this is what Peter Morgan does best.

He looks at a particular pivotal moment in time for a historical figure, whether that's the Frost Nixon interview for Richard Nixon or Princess Diana's death for Queen Elizabeth II.

And he uses that snapshot to paint a larger picture of that person's life.

Those are my favorite kinds of biopics.

I do not like something that tries to encompass someone's entire life.

I think it's not worth trying to pack into two hours.

I think you can learn a lot more by focusing on a specific moment and how someone reacts under pressure in that moment.

They touch on this very briefly in the movie, Chris, but the band was in a bit of turmoil.

I believe Freddie Mercury was considering doing a solo album at that point.

And then, you know, they end up kind of, by some accounts, sort of saving live aid.

Certainly, the way they paint it in Bohemian Rhapsody, that's the case.

There's some debate about that, whether it was them or David Bowie or whatever.

What do you think about what that version of this might have been?

Better.

Yeah.

No, I would tend to agree.

I think that, again, the cradle to the grave is a difficult approach for film.

It's just the medium isn't built for it, in my opinion.

And so that's more appealing to me.

And the part of the Wockhard joke that I made is Wockhard has that joke of before he goes out there, he's going to relive his entire life in this moment on the stage.

It's exactly what they do.

Right.

How it sets up in this movie.

Yes.

Now, As I said, everyone can agree that Peter Morgan is here at the beginning of this, but what no one can seem to agree upon is how Sasha Baron Cohen got involved or when he got involved.

Now, to hear him tell the story, Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to begin not with Peter Morgan, but with him around the same time in 2008.

In a now infamous Howard Stern interview, Sasha Baron Cohen talked about having worked on the film for about six years before he left the project.

So he says that he brought Peter Morgan onto the project and not the other way around.

Based on an article in 2018 in People, Peter Morgan seems to kind of back that up.

And also that Sasha Baron Cohen had been in talks with the band from the very beginning, and he had a very specific vision for the film.

So, here he is on Howard Stern explaining it.

I mean, there are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury, you know, crazy, crazy.

The guy was wild.

I mean, he was living an extreme lifestyle.

That debauchery.

Debauchery.

I mean, there were, you know, there are stories of, you know, I don't know what you call them, that little people.

What is the temple party?

Little people with, you know, plates with cocaine on their heads walking around parties.

So he has this vision of this movie being very, very

R-rated.

Debauched.

Debauched, yes.

Which, like, does seem to line up with Freddie Mercury's real tastes.

And by the way, there are some little people walking around the party in Bohemian Rhapsody.

I don't know if you noticed that, but they did not have plates of cocaine attached to their heads.

Once Morgan and Cohen were working on the film, Peter Morgan called up Academy Award-winning producer Graham King.

At this point, he had been nominated for the Aviator.

He had won for The Departed.

He was an enormous fan of Queen and was immediately interested in the project.

And he also started meeting with the band as early as 2008.

He met specifically with Brian May, the guitarist, and Roger Taylor, the drummer, to try and convince them to grant him the life rights to the story.

Now, they were on board for a biopic, but they had one very important condition that's going to prove problematic over the course of this episode.

They were very specific about the director.

The director had to be just perfect.

And one of the ways it seems that King was able to convince them that they should all do this together was he made it very clear from the get-go that this would be a collaborative project with them.

AKA, they would have quite a lot of creative control.

He done made a mistake.

So uh-oh.

Peter Morgan was immediately concerned.

He told Cinema Blend, I'm not sure how much they'll like what I write.

I think they'll recognize the truth in it, but it's a series of painful memories for them.

I'm essentially writing about the most painful time in the band's history.

You know, I don't think he got permission from Queen Lizzie to do The Queen or the Crown, and I guarantee you she didn't like a lot of what was written there.

But I think he is very loving and careful with the characters that he crafts, so I don't think it would have been a disrespectful version at all.

Regardless, they all kept plowing along, and in 2010, Sasha Baron Cohen was, as far as I can tell, pretty much officially announced as as playing Freddie Mercury in the film, which was at that point titled, What, Chris?

What's your guess?

It's not called Queen?

No.

Oh,

what's it called?

I have no idea.

Freddie Mercury.

Oh, really?

Uh-huh.

Interesting.

It should be a little clue right there as to how things changed.

Brian May said at the time, we have Sasha Baron Cohen, which will probably be a shock to a lot of people, but he's been talking with us for a very long time.

Now, I'm putting a lot of emphasis on this because later on, this will all come into question.

In 2011, the film moved over to Sony, at which point Amy Pascal, the then president of Sony, and Sasha Baron Cohen, began meeting with potential directors.

A former Sony executive confirmed to Vulture that Cohen had been integral to the early development of the film.

They also confirmed that, as the working title would suggest, the film focused on Freddy Mercury, not the whole band.

It included ups and downs with the band, but it was fully from his POV.

Now, early directors considered any ideas?

Oh, man.

Danny Boyle?

No, although I think he would have been good.

Okay.

Is it musical, like musically?

One is, yes.

Tom Hooper?

Yes, nailed it.

Tom Hooper.

And then one that's a little bit more unexpected, but I think could have been awesome.

David Fincher.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, that version.

Can you imagine a Sasha Baron Cohen?

Yeah.

Peter Morgan written David Fincher.

I mean, that's kind of amazing.

I think Baron Cohen actually makes a lot of sense and has a theatricality that would have worked really well.

I don't know if he can sing, but I don't think Robbie Malik sings either, so it's fine.

Yeah, you don't really need to.

Nobody can do Freddie Mercury.

He is way too tall, which I do wonder if that would have been a problem.

He is.

It's interesting.

Malik fits the physicality a little bit better, but looking at Baron Cohen's face, he looks way more like Freddie Mercury than Malik does.

And his energy feels more Freddy to me than Malik does, naturally.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

In addition to Graham King, Jane Rosenthal of Tribeca Films joined to produce alongside her very longtime producing partner.

You may have noticed this name in the credits, Robert De Niro.

And by 2012, a frontrunner was announced to direct the queen director, Stephen Frears.

However, Freers sensed something was amiss right away.

He told Vulture you could always tell there would be trouble with the rest of the band because Sasha was so outrageous and they weren't.

They were much more conventional.

He also referenced Sasha Baron Cohen wanting to do endless naked scenes, which, like, good.

I'm guessing Freddie was naked a lot back in the season.

I think he probably was.

Yeah.

But in 2013, after almost six years of development, Sasha Baron Cohen suddenly quit.

Both Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears jumped ship immediately after he bailed.

I think that's pretty telling that everybody was like, nope, and left as soon as he did.

So they've lost their star, their writer, their director, and everyone thinks this thing is just going to die.

But Graham King is like, not on my watch.

And he plowed ahead with Brian May and Roger Taylor, now even more heavily involved in the creative elements of the film.

They started getting very excited about a new prospect to play Freddie Mercury, a British actor this time, someone whose physicality might match a little bit more.

He's very slight, very lithe.

Any ideas?

No, there is actually somebody that I think would have been wonderful.

Who?

I think Kimish Patel would have been perfect.

Oh.

Because he has big teeth.

He can actually sing.

I love him.

Have you seen Yesterday?

Yeah.

He has a beautiful voice.

He doesn't have a Freddy voice, but he has a beautiful voice.

Not going to lie.

Got a bit of a crush on Himesh Patel.

He's great.

I think he could have been a fantastic Freddy.

I love that.

That's who I would have cast personally.

Interesting.

Well, this was Ben Wishaw.

Oh, okay.

Who's great too?

He's like a little bit of a wispy version of Freddy, but he's a fantastic actor.

He is.

I mean, ethnically, as we're going to get to, that's interesting, maybe not appropriate casting, but he's an amazing actor.

When he was asked about the project by Time Out Paris in 2014, though, he said, Actually, I don't know what's happening.

It seems to be on a back burner.

It was going, there were problems getting the script working.

So, the script.

Here's what Graham King had to say about why this was so hard to nail down.

He said, The reason this took so long to get made is Mercury had a very complicated life, and it's just getting the balance of someone's life story and the band's life story into a two-hour and 15-minute film.

So, Chris, what part of that sentence now sounds different than what we had been discussing?

The band's life story.

Yeah, there we go.

So let's talk about this for a second.

I don't begrudge them wanting creative control.

I don't begrudge them wanting their stories told too.

To me, this is a problem with and mistake that Graham King made because everybody else seemed to recognize You should not move forward with this project if they are this emotionally invested in the creative elements of it.

But I mean, Chris, what do you think?

Is it worth trying to plow through?

Yeah, well, the spoils go to the victor.

And with hindsight, of course, he made nearly a billion dollars with this.

It was absolutely worth it.

He had the opportunity to tell Queen's story, and that's what he did to a certain degree.

From a creative perspective, I think that the main problem with this movie is that it is attempting to tell the story of an extremely unconventional person who is beloved specifically for his unconventionality as both a musician and a person through an extremely conventional lens, which is the perspective of the band.

And there are some interesting unintended consequences.

From a classic story perspective, Freddy Mercury's homosexuality is technically the villain of the movie.

If you look at when his homosexuality shows up, roughly midway between the end of act one and the midpoint, and then the midpoint and the end of act two.

And they try to lessen that with the relationship with Jim Hudson as like the kind of one non-hedonistic gay man who gives him some interest at the midpoint.

But I think that, again, the flaw of the film is that Freddy is the driver of the downfall of the band, right?

And then he has needed to come back, but then they also want to make it clear that the band was really important and also had ideas and did yeah, they really want you to know that Brian May wrote We Will Rock You.

I know, and Brian May is an incredible guitarist.

He's amazing, he's amazing, they're an amazing band.

Like, none of this is to knock the band.

And relative to Freddy Mercury, they are all very boring as subjects for a movie.

And I say that as someone who should never have a movie made about them because I would be like watching paint dry.

And so that's the downfall, I think, of this film.

Very well said.

So it's around this time that up-and-coming British director Dexter Fleischer was in talks to direct the film.

Producers were very impressed with his sophomore feature.

It was a musical based on songs by the Proclaimers.

You know them, of course.

Are you not going to sing it?

I really set you up to sing it.

Well, hold on, hold on.

Aren't they?

And I've gone down

by the violence.

Okay.

All right.

Never mind.

Anyway, the movie was called Sunshine on Leith.

It's very cute.

They liked it a lot.

Now, Fletcher may have only directed two features, but he was not at all new to British cinema.

He had been a very successful child and teenage actor in movies like Bugsy Malone, shows like Press Gang.

But his childhood was difficult since he became the breadwinner for his family.

That's a very strange dynamic to have with your parents.

He struggled with drug addiction.

He blew through all of his money.

And he told the Hollywood reporter, I became unreliable at work because I didn't trust what I could do.

I didn't have any respect for myself, so I didn't have any respect for my work.

It wasn't until what went wrong hero Alan Rickman stepped in and introduced him to his future wife that he got his shit together.

He booked a role in Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels and then started a real friendship and partnership with producer director Matthew Vaughan, working together again on Kickass, Stardust, Layer Cake, and more.

So by 2013, he'd made two small features, both of which had been moderately successful, and he came in with a real vision for what Bohemian Rhapsody could be.

He wanted, again, a hard R biopic written by the Rhodes screenwriter, Joe Penall, about an immigrant, a gay man, all the outsider values, as he told The Hollywood Reporter.

He actually made it almost up to the first week of pre-production.

Wow.

And then just like Sasha Baron Cohen, Peter Morgan, and Streven Freers before him, Brian May and Roger Taylor balked at the direction for the film.

So Fletcher, Ben Wishaw, even Graham King at this point were pushing hard for script changes, but May and Taylor just would not budge and the delays piled up.

So Fletcher and Wishaw left.

Even more bad luck hit the production in 2015.

Any idea why?

The Sony hack?

The Sony hack, yes.

So thanks to Seth Rogan's film, The Interview, a North Korean group hacked Sony.

We will talk about that movie.

I still can't believe this is a real thing.

Of course, releasing quite a few of Amy Pascal's email communiques with Scott Rudin.

They included some really just dumb, racist jokes about Obama, some nasty stuff about Angelina Jolie, among many others.

So she stepped down, which meant that the Queen biopic had lost one of its highest ranking champions.

But Graham King did not give up.

His production company, GK Films, continued to plow ahead, this time with Andrew McCartan, best known for writing The Theory of Everything, who stepped in to revise Peter Morgan's screenplay.

Of course, with approval from who, Chris?

Brian May.

Brian May and Roger Taylor.

Badooch.

Yes, that's right.

Now, McCartne makes some interesting choices, and I'm saying McCartan makes these choices.

I don't know if he is the one who made these.

As I said, there are a lot of other people.

Right.

In McCartan's draft, these choices have been made.

Sure.

In the draft that gets finalized, this is what starts to pop up.

In the film, we see Freddie Mercury being seduced by his manager, Paul Prenter, to go solo, which then causes tensions with the bandmate.

In reality, he was not even the first queen member to make a solo album.

Roger Taylor was.

He had released several before Freddie Mercury's first solo effort ever came out.

Hadn't Freddy also been doing some solo work?

I don't know if he did an album, but hadn't he been doing solo work before he met the rest of the band members of Queen?

They make it seem as if this guy walked out of his dorm and had never sung before and was like, here's a poem I wrote.

Maybe I can be your lead singer.

And my understanding is like he was trying to be a musician to a certain extent before this.

Yes.

So this is a big one.

In the movie, as you see, he learns that he's sick shortly before the band reunites for Live Aid, and they kind of use that as almost like motivation for why he wants to do that.

In reality, he was not formally diagnosed with AIDS until 1987, and Live Aid was 1985.

That's a pretty big leap.

And I feel like what that does is it ignores the moment of conflict between him and the band in favor of a moment of sort of internal conflict about these like quote-unquote debauched decisions he's made, which to your point casts his life in a very different light than I think what Peter Morgan, Sasha Baron Cohen, Dexter Fletcher, everyone was trying to do.

I think that also, because Lizzie, this is something I happen to have looked into at some point in my life, but I know there's a lot of debate about when he knew, like he may have known as early as 82 because he was showing symptoms, or he could have known in the late 70s.

The bigger point is.

it would not have been disclosed to the rest of the band, right, until after maybe a formal diagnosis in 87, even if Freddie internally was thinking, maybe I do have this, or you know what I'm saying?

Something like that.

So at this point, Sony did still hold the rights to opt in if they liked the script, but they've like basically dropped the project.

So remember that Howard Stern interview that Sasha Baron Cohen did.

He goes on the show in 2016 and he does not mince words.

In particular, he referenced one of his first meetings with the band and I will let him tell this story.

Again, this is from his interview on the Howard Stern show in 2016.

my first meeting i should have never carried on because a member of the band i won't say who said

i won't say who but he said you know this is such a great movie because it's got such an amazing thing happens in the middle of the movie uh-huh i go what happens in the middle of the movie he goes uh you know freddie dies

i go all right i go all right so you mean it's a bit like pulp fiction you know the end is the middle and the middle is the end i go all right that's really amazing that's a wild That's a wild movie.

All right, that's interesting.

I never thought about that.

He goes, no, no, no.

Normal movie.

I go, so

what happens in the second half of the movie?

He said, well, you know, we see how the band carries on from strength to strength.

And I said, listen, I go, not one person is going to see a movie

where the lead character dies from eight and then you carry on.

That would be just the craziest movie.

Guys.

Guys, we've got to carry on.

He's right.

I love that.

Normal movie.

Normal movie.

I guess it's worth noting, a Sony exec did say that no official script ever had Freddie dying in the middle of the movie because that would be insane.

I think we can all agree that.

But I do believe, Cohen, that that was discussed.

Now, at this point, Brian May hit back in the press saying Baron Cohen was too recognizable.

That's why they'd passed on him, that they'd had a nice time, but he'd told untruths.

They also start to claim at this point that he was barely involved other than expressing his own interest in doing the project and that he was never officially confirmed.

But that's that's not true.

Like, you can see very easily that he was really the genesis of this project in a lot of ways.

Roger Taylor put it a little bit more bluntly.

I think he would have been utter shit.

He said, Sasha is pushy, if nothing else.

He's also six inches too tall.

But I watched his last five films and came to the conclusion he's not a very good actor.

I might be wrong there.

I thought he was an utterly brilliant, subversive comedian.

That's what he's great at.

I think he is a good actor.

I don't agree agree with that.

Now they may not have a director or a finished script, but sometime in 2016 in New York City on the set of Mr.

Robot, Rami Malik received a call from Graham King.

He had actually already auditioned for Bohemian Rhapsody, and it seemed that King really liked him for it, but they were having trouble convincing the rest of the team, of course, Brian May and Roger Taylor.

So they had him send in another audition tape and he did it.

He did not have the part at this point.

The film didn't even really have funding, but he didn't care.

He started preparing as though he had the part because he was like, Worst case scenario, I have a great Freddy Mercury impression, and at least I will be ready.

Does he?

Oh, buddy.

Sorry.

So, after sending in another recording of himself performing as Freddy at Abbey Road, the producers told him to go meet Brian May and Roger Taylor at Taylor's flat.

He assumed, I think safely, as one would, that they must have seen the tape that he had sent in, and that's why he's meeting with them.

He assumed wrong.

Here he is on the late show with Stephen Colbert explaining what happened.

Well, they were sent a tape of it.

So,

and you know, they couldn't, yeah, I thought they had seen it before I met them, but I met them

in Roger Taylor's flat.

I met Brian May as well, and I went under the impression that they had seen this tape, but they hadn't downloaded it properly.

So, I ended up watching them watch me for the first time in between the you know, they're watching Investment.

Yeah, I was like, No pressure.

No pressure.

Well, how did they take you?

They took me?

Would be stressful.

Would be so stressful.

I have to say, he just comes across as so gracious and sweet in really all of his interviews.

But he's right.

They did take him.

They all agreed that they had their Freddie Mercury.

So let's talk very briefly about Rami Malik.

He was born in 1981 in Torrance, California to Egyptian parents who had immigrated to the United States.

Arabic was his first language.

It was spoken at home until he was about four years old.

And important to note that Freddie Mercury was, as they show in the movie, born Farak Bolsara.

He was not born in England, but in Zanzibar to Indian parents of Parsi descent.

If you're not familiar, the Parsi people are Zoroastrians descended from Persian refugees who settled in India.

Rami said, not to compare myself to him in any way, shape, or form, but I am a first-generation American.

My family came from Egypt and sought a better life for their children in the U.S.

Obviously, like so many people, they would have loved for us to be doctors and lawyers.

It was very difficult to convince anyone that I wanted to do this and that I could do this.

So in 2006, he got his big break in Night at the Museum playing Pharaoh Ahmed Ra.

He reprised this role for multiple sequels.

In 2010, he got a recurring role on 24 as a terrorist.

But after that, Rami said, I'm not doing that anymore.

He decided he would turn down any roles that stereotyped Arabs, and he actually had to be convinced that the villain in No Time to Die was not religiously motivated.

Otherwise, he would not have done it.

And then in 2015, he broke out big with what show, Chris?

Mr.

Robot.

Mr.

Robot, which I don't know if you watched, I loved it.

He won an Emmy in 2016 for Best Actor in a Drama Series and was the first non-white actor in 18 years to do so.

So he's on board.

Some additional casting.

Alan Leach as Paul Prenter.

Apparently, he couldn't figure out why Brian May and Roger Taylor were really cold and weird towards him during the whole shoot.

And they told him on the last day it was because he looked so much like the real Paul Prenter that they'd been really creeped out.

And he does, if you look at side by sides.

Gwillem Lee as Brian May.

Looks a lot like Brian May.

Looks exactly like Brian May.

And also, he's not using hand doubles.

Oh, really?

Yeah, that's him.

Wow.

Talented guitarists.

It's very.

And he learned that.

I mean, he could play like some rhythm guitar, but he worked really hard.

Joseph Mazzello, aka Tibby from Jurassic Park, who I love as John Deacon.

You may notice John Deacon, not involved in this film at all.

About as involved as he seems to be in the movie.

Yes.

Yep.

He had stepped away from the spotlight in the mid-90s.

And according to to Brian May, was thrilled to not be a part of this.

Lucy Boynton as Freddie Mercury's girlfriend and eventual wife.

She would become Rami Malik's real-life girlfriend after meeting on set.

And then, Chris, you mentioned this, but who does Mike Myers play in this movie?

Record producer.

God, I'm blanking on his name right now.

Well, he's the EMI executive who, of course, refuses to release Bohemian Rhapsody.

Right.

Which is a very funny nod to Wayne's World is how I read it.

Roger Ebert did not think it was a very funny nod.

He hated it, in fact, and said that it was basically calling the audience about as dumb as you possibly can.

It's a pretty big wink.

And I think they're doing other things to call the audience dumb personally.

But it is Mike Myers as British Danny McBride is a very funny, very funny riff.

You've also got Tom Hollander as Jim Beach.

I always really love him.

He's great.

And then Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor.

Now, Hardy got the role because he lied about being able to play the drums.

He pulls it off just fine in the movie.

Good on you, Ben.

But really, his in came by way of campaigning, and as we said, lying very hard to his X-Men Apocalypse director, Brian Singer.

Yay, we're here.

Here we go.

I was wondering how we would get Mr.

Singer into the fold.

Ah, here he is.

So all this casting is happening because by November of 2016, Bohemian Rhapsody had been picked up by 20th Century Fox and New Regency, and they finally had their director.

Turns out the man that everyone in Queen could agree upon was Brian Singer.

Now, if you're thinking, what the fuck, was he not known for his terrible behavior at that point?

No, he definitely was.

Here's Jennifer Lawrence speaking at the Hollywood Reporters Roundtable about her experience of working with him.

And keep in mind, she worked with him on both X-Men Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, both of which came out prior to Singer being hired on Bohemian Rhapsody.

It did always just kind of make us laugh about how we are, you know, how we ended up with the, you know, women shouldn't shouldn't be in roles like this because we're just so emotional.

And we're just, you know, so, and it's just, I have seen,

I mean, I've worked with Brian Singer.

I've seen, I've seen emotional men.

I've seen, I mean, the biggest hissy fits I've ever seen thrown on set.

I've been, I've watched a man.

I've, I've worked.

I think it's so telling in that clip how hard everyone else is laughing when she said, I've worked with Brian Singer.

Yeah, open secret, you know what what I mean, by this point in Hollywood, it seems.

Yeah, here's a little background on him.

Prior to 2016, he was born in 1965 in New York City.

He was adopted and raised in New Jersey.

He was a horrible student, eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, but didn't matter.

All he cared about was making eight millimeter films with his buddies.

One of those buddies was, of course, Ethan Hawk.

In 1985, he studied filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts before transferring to Chris's alma mater, the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

But lest you think he graduated from your exact program, he did not.

He never made it into the production program.

He had the degree in critical studies.

In 1988, he made a short film called Lion's Den featuring Ethan Hawk and editor John Ottman, who would follow him all the way to Bohemian Rhapsody.

This got him some attention from investors.

In 93, he makes a featured directorial debut with Public Access, which was a Sundance hit.

In 1994, he founded his company, Bad Hat Harry Productions, and in 1995, he blasts into the mainstream with what movie, Chris?

The Usual Suspects.

Yes, where he teams up with

fellow creep Kevin Spacey.

What a pair those two must have been.

In the late 90s, having his pick of films to make, he chose Apt Pupil, which was based on different seasons with Stephen King.

Exactly.

We are in our Stephen King era.

Now, I'm not going to dive into this very much because I think we will probably cover this movie because there's an awful lot that went on behind the scenes that was gross, including an actual alleged assault by Singer.

But the big thing is, he allegedly made extras as young as 14 years old stripped completely naked for a shower scene.

Criminal charges weren't filed.

Civil suits were on behalf of nine minors.

He also had become known around Hollywood for his really disgusting parties and predilection for very young men.

Young boys in instances.

Children.

Yeah.

In 2000, Singer took another another major step up in his career with, of course, X-Men, huge $75 million budget, crushed at the box office.

We've talked about it before.

He is now a golden goose.

He is the author who can also bring home many millions of dollars.

But behind the scenes on X-Men, he was garnering a reputation as a real asshole.

One executive told the Hollywood Reporter later, quote, his behavior was poor on the movie.

We accommodated him on the first movie, and therefore we can accommodate him on the second movie, and on and on, and it created a monster.

In 2003, he directed X2.

Again, we will cover this at some point.

But according to Alan Cummings' memoir, Singer admitted he was taking painkillers, and the cast staged an intervention concerned about their own safety on set due to his drug use and generally abusive behavior.

They apparently showed up in his trailer in costume, which I would pay so much money to see that.

An X-Men intervention would be incredible.

Yes.

He turned on them, yelling at them for being crap actors, at which point Hallie Berry said, I've seen enough, and delivered the iconic line that he could kiss her black ass as she walked out.

Good for her.

All right, fast forwarding to April of 2014.

A child actor named Michael Egan filed a lawsuit against Singer and three other entertainment executives for sexually abusing him when he was around 15 to 17 years old in the 90s.

He described a party house in Encino where Singer and others allegedly drugged and assaulted underage boys.

These allegations pop up right around the same time as X-Men Days of Future Past, which Singer had returned to direct.

He did not do first class.

He responded, he denied the allegations, chalked it all up to a financial shakedown.

Now, I think this is important to remember because of the story we're going to get into.

This one is complicated.

Michael Egan dropped three of the four lawsuits and eventually dropped the one against Singer too.

He also got indicted for investment fraud, which Singer's team was able to successfully turn around and discredit him with, saying, you know, this is a shakedown.

It got even messier.

Egan's own lawyers dropped him, stating the allegations against at least two of the executives were false, and Singer was able to submit documents showing that he was not in Hawaii when Egan had said that he was during an assault.

All of which to say, he unfortunately was not credible from a legal perspective.

As a later article will point out, there are reasons to believe some elements of what he said.

I would not completely discredit him.

But in 2015, the documentary Open Secret by Amy Berg came out, detailing alleged child sexual abuse in Hollywood, particularly at the hands of a man named Mark Collins Rector, who is now a convicted sex offender and who Singer had direct business ties to.

He was an investor in his company.

It is alleged that Singer was present and participating in these parties.

In 2016, X-Men Apocalypse, which Singer directed, premiered.

This was another notoriously troubled production.

Olivia Munn was very open about what a horrible time she'd had with him on set, said at one point he just bailed for 10 days, texting the actors, hey guys, I'm busy right now, but just go ahead and start filming without me.

I don't know what he was busy with, but it just blows my mind.

That is wild.

Yeah.

Reports were rampant that writer-producer Simon Kinberg had to step in to direct along with DP Newton Thomas Siegel and editor-composer John Ottman.

Remember those two because they're on Bohemian Rhapsody.

And yet that same year, on November 7th, 7th, he was announced as the director of Bohemian Rhapsody alongside Rami Malik starring as Freddie Mercury.

If you have the same question I did, Chris, which is,

why?

Why would you do this?

I will try to answer that for you.

He famously was not an X-Men fanatic, but it turns out he was a super fan of Freddie Mercury.

He had taken a general meeting with Graham King years earlier, and he was totally disinterested until King mentioned the Freddie Mercury project and suddenly Brian Singer was obsessed.

He called and texted King relentlessly from that point forward, but here is the real kicker.

He won over Brian May and Roger Taylor.

King had had such a hard time attaching a director.

that everyone could be happy with.

I can totally see him caving on Singer once he had won over the remaining band members.

He also had not worked with Singer before.

So perhaps you could make the argument he didn't know how true the rumors were about him.

And the reason I went into detail on that case is because, as far as many people knew or claimed they knew at this point, the only actual suit against Brian Singer that they knew about was the Michael Egan case, which of course had fallen apart.

I have some questions about that, but anyway, Singer pulled together what must have been a very compelling pitch for Fox because they hired him and they 100% knew what a pain in the ass he was.

But this was a new level of passion.

He was displaying for the project.

Remember, he didn't give a shit about the X-Men franchise, but he did about this.

So I think they figured maybe, hey, this will be different.

And plus, they weren't putting up all the cash for the whole budget of around $55 million.

They were splitting it with New Regency.

And that's also a much smaller price point than an X-Men movie.

That's a good point.

As well.

And I'm sure they're justifying it to themselves with, he's the devil we know.

That's not a good justification.

I'm just saying I could see them spinning their wheels and landing on that.

I think you're right.

I mean, I think they had to convince themselves that this was okay.

Fox chairman Stacey Snyder absolutely knew what a pain in the butt he could be.

And so she and Vice Chairman Emma Watts sat down with Graham King and Brian Singer, and they laid out two rules.

One, don't break the law.

That shouldn't be a rule that you have to give your director.

It's probably in your contract too, I would imagine.

Yeah, yeah.

Probably just shouldn't do that.

And two is show up to work every day.

Yep.

Failure to comply will bring consequences.

Now, Graham King also later gave this quote to Hollywood Reporter.

Brian Singer got this movie green lit for me.

There's no doubt about it.

For that, I will always be grateful to him.

He must be one convincing piece of crap.

I'm sure he's very convincing.

I'm sure he's charming.

I'm sure he's very charismatic.

He's clearly very talented.

He's clearly smart.

And he's also, it's allegedly a predator.

Yeah.

Take the predator off the table because he was a monster to work with.

And they knew that at this point.

But there's so many, I mean, David O.

Russell comes to mind.

There's a number of folks who...

David O'Russell showed up to work, though.

He did.

But for example, it's interesting.

Jennifer Lawrence makes the point about Brian Singer throwing a hissy fit, which is funny.

Well, she mentions multiple men, yeah.

She does.

And I wonder, but she worked with David O'Russell multiple times, and I thought had spoken positively that might be wrong about that relationship, which is interesting considering he screamed obscenities at Lily Tomlin on iHeart Huckabees.

And George Clooney punched him in the face because he was being such an asshole to Spike Jones.

I guess the point I'm trying to get to is that while I can understand why a studio would hire a director based on the performance of their films and not necessarily the ease or difficulty with which it is to work with that person.

At the end of the day, that's kind of an easy decision to make by virtue of the fact that you're not the person that actually has to work with them.

The cast and crew are.

I just, the thing that I don't understand is this man does not show up to work.

That's actually the thing that is the most confusing because I don't know, just it's probably a reflection of my deficit of talent, but...

I feel like I'm drowning when I do show up to work and I'm directing a movie because it's so overwhelming and there's so much to do.

Or if you remember Frank Frank Darabont in Shaw Shank Redemption feeling like he didn't have a moment to think because he was so busy.

I can't imagine missing five days of shooting and then trying to come back into it.

That's insane.

Hey, guys, just go ahead and keep going without me.

I mean, I do feel like texting that every once in a while, but.

As we will see, he surrounds himself with very capable, very talented people who, for whatever reason, have been willing to clean up his crap for years.

Anyway, back to the film.

It was now in full swing in pre-production.

And as I said earlier, Rami Malik was working his ass off for this role even before he was officially cast.

And he just kept right on going once it was in production.

And he did this with basically no input from Brian Singer because according to the Hollywood Reporter's inside source, quote, he was up to his old tricks.

In fact, it was the hair, makeup, and costume team who Malik credited the most with helping him discover the character.

He said he really started with Freddie Mercury's teeth and he actually began wearing prosthetic teeth a full year before filming began and even before the makeup artist Jan Sewell joined the project.

He knew that Freddie was very self-conscious about his teeth, he was teased about them and so he used that to really inform the way that he moved, like hiding them with his mouth, which you can see a lot in the movie.

He was so excited when he found out that Jan Sewell would be joining as his makeup artist.

She'd just come off of the theory of everything and the Danish girl.

They worked together really, really closely with dental FX artist Chris Lyons.

What a job.

To get the teeth right, shaving them down millimeter by millimeter.

And he spent an enormous amount of time in costume fittings with Julian Day.

He really treated this as his rehearsal time because I don't think he got a lot otherwise.

He'd also been working for weeks with choreographers when he realized that that was not going to be enough.

Here he is speaking about this moment in an academy conversation on the Oscars YouTube channel.

And I realized, oh, I don't need a choreographer.

I need a movement coach.

And

I had watched, I loved Eddie Redmain's performance in the theory of everything.

And I said, who's he working with?

And apparently he's still working with this person, so I couldn't have them.

So I had to find my own.

Her name was Polly Bennett, and she ended up working with the entire band throughout.

So I have a question for you, Chris.

How unusual is it that the actor had to be the one to pinpoint that they needed this additional assistance and to bring on Polly Bennett, a movement coach, to work with the entire band at that point.

I think to work with the entire band, that seems unusual.

I don't think it would be unusual for an actor to say, look, I feel like I have a shortcoming in my abilities to do it personally.

Sure.

Or to bring it to the production and say, I would like you to hire me a guitar teacher or whatever it might be.

But bringing it for the production itself that does strike me as unusual.

Again, unless the actor is also a producer on the film, which does happen all the time.

Yeah, he's not.

It doesn't happen here.

And one thing I will say is I don't think Romney Malik's a great fit for this necessarily.

I find the vocal performance actually a little distracting, just having heard Freddie Mercury in interviews.

That being said, his physicality is really, really, really good in this movie.

And if you've watched the live aid performance, my daughter went through a Freddy Mercury phase where she was really obsessed with Freddie Mercury.

And we would watch Wayne's World and then we would watch Wembley and the Bohemian Rhapsody music video.

He, beat for beat, really pulls off Freddy's stage presence presence really, really well.

I agree.

I think that's a testament to both him and to his movement coach, Paulie Bennett.

Paulie Bennett, who's a huge movement coach.

Yes.

They watched a lot of Liza Minelli, by the way, because apparently Freddie Mercury was a huge fan.

So Romney Malik said that he actually found it more useful sometimes to watch Liza than to watch Freddy.

Now, you can watch a hundred Romney Malik interviews from his Oscars campaign.

And the one thing I want to call out is that he credits all of these below-the-line folks by name in every single one.

And I think he means it.

Now there was one sequence looming large over everyone before the cameras even started rolling which was of course what's the big set piece in this movie?

Wembly Live Aid.

Yep.

Obviously the team wanted the sequence to be as accurate as possible.

They worked with Queen's Archivist to get it down but Brian Singer decided he didn't want to just mimic the shots from the actual concert.

He wanted to capture it from fresh angles since you can just watch the normal thing on YouTube.

Sure, makes sense.

But naturally, something that challenging, I think, would require a really strong director at the helm.

But again, they had Brian Singer, and right off the bat, he was either physically or emotionally MIA.

Instead, much of the pre-production fell to cinematographer Newton Thomas Siegel.

I think how immediately Brian Singer was absent on this project was a shock even for him.

And again, he had worked with Brian Singer many times before this, but the guy just was not there.

So Siegel admitted to working alongside production designer Aaron Hay and AD Jack Ravenscroft to scout all of the locations and essentially handle most of the prep themselves, especially for this sequence.

He'd been worried about this particular sequence for very good reasons from the beginning that he explained to the American cinematographer.

He said, quote, I always felt that live A was going to be the hardest thing to shoot.

It's the climax of your movie.

It's the opening tease.

It has two big obstacles.

One is that the concert was done in the middle of the day in an outdoor stadium.

At least they came on late in the day, which was a saving grace.

The second obstacle is that the stage and the staging was purposely very, very bland.

Bob Geldof and the promoters went out of their way to spend as little money on the staging of the concert as possible because they were trying to raise money for Africa, which is a really interesting point.

He's right.

It's not like, it doesn't look good.

If you've watched the real thing, it's very plain.

He's just walking around with that half mic stand, you know, after he starts on the piano.

And of course, being in the middle of the day, they have to composite hundreds of thousands of people into this stadium, which is a lot harder to do than in a night scene.

If you notice a lot of the earlier concerts they do, they're framed in darkness against a stage so they can hide as much of the crowd as possible.

Yeah.

Well, there's even more problems.

They can't use the actual Wembley Stadium because the stadium had undergone major renovations and it didn't look anything like what it did during Leibate.

They also needed comprehensive access to wherever they were going.

That would require at least two full weeks of basically uninterrupted access.

They're not going to get that at Wembley or even really at a real stadium.

And they needed to find somewhere close to London because they were going to work with a bunch of extras and they needed to avoid avoid paying for travel.

So, Aaron Hay found an old airfield in Bovingdon.

Bovingdon.

Sorry, folks.

It's where they shoot Top Gear.

And he built a one-to-one replica of the 1985 live-aid stage down to the peeling plaster, the fading posters.

It looks exactly like it.

It looks so good.

They did such a good job.

Apparently, they actually had to move the build slightly at one point to make sure it didn't interfere with air traffic control at Heathrow.

But in early September of 2017, filming finally began.

And of course, what sequence do they start the whole shoot with?

Wembley?

Live Aid?

Yes, Live Aid.

Honestly, that's kind of a cool way to start the shoot because it's kind of going to set the tone for the whole thing.

Yeah, good or bad.

It's bold.

Exactly.

It's like, if we don't fall behind schedule, this is going to be great.

Or we're going to fall behind schedule and this is going to be a nightmare.

So day one was scheduled to just be a rehearsal day, but Rami Malik was immediately suspicious when they told him to arrive in costume and makeup.

And it turns out he had the right idea because when the crew got there, the plans changed and they were informed they were going to just start filming right away.

No rehearsals.

Here we go.

They start with that crane shot that sweeps over the crowd, circling back in to reveal him playing the piano.

That's a bonkers complicated shot to be the first one.

It would take forever to get.

And it did.

So day two's got to be better, right?

No.

Their plan was to film one song a day over the course of a ton of takes.

And this was supposed to be Radio Gaga, but they're outside.

It's England.

Weather continuity is an issue.

They're shooting one number over the course of a whole day.

So the light's going to change.

It was a nightmare.

And the grueling stop and start.

continued until Rami Malik actually spoke up and expressed concern about the energy this was going to create for the cast if they kept doing it this way.

His point was this is a concert.

It should have the propulsive energy of a concert.

And if we're shooting it one song per day, killing ourselves to get the exact right lighting, this is going to absolutely fall dead.

So he asked Graham King if they could please shoot at least one take of the whole concert, start to finish, in wide masters.

He told Deadline, quote, We brought in three cranes with cameras and ran the entire 22-minute set.

It was the best take we ever did.

You're running on pure adrenaline.

My heart is pounding just thinking about it.

Where is Brian Singer?

Well, it's interesting.

There are a few scenes where master shots seem to be missing.

I think some of the earlier concert scenes lack a little energy, but the Wembley one is great.

The Wembley is really good.

It's very fun and it captures the energy of that day from what I've seen, I think, pretty well.

That is, I think, due to Rami Malik and Newton Thomas Siegel.

Like that's the two of them coming together.

Yeah.

There's some cool shots in there, like the one from under the piano, from the pedals, under the bench into Brian May's guitar.

Yeah.

That's a cool shot.

And I was like, oh, how'd they do that?

There are some neat things in there for sure.

Very cool.

And throughout all of this, as far as I understand, Singer was technically present, but he was known to get exhausted and then just bail.

So it's like weekend at Bernie's, just he's like got sunglasses on in his director's chair propped up with a broom.

I mean, literally.

He's like, I think he was physically there, but they were having to be like, Brian, what do you, do you want to?

No?

Okay.

And then he would just be like, I'm tired.

And he would leave.

So from September to October, production moved to London, shooting out interior scenes at West London's Gillette building with the concert venues, international locations you mentioned, Chris, being recreated at LH2 Studios in West London.

But in October of 2017, this is when Brian Singer started to go fully missing for days at a time.

And again, this is Newton Thomas Siegel having to step in and direct.

And he wasn't just missing.

When he would show up, he would be incredibly late, which frequently left Rami Malik sitting in his makeup chair for hours after being ready to work at 6.30 a.m.

And if he's ready at 6.30, it means he was in that makeup chair at probably 3.30.

Yeah, prosthetics take time.

And also, in case you can't tell, Romy Malik is an incredibly hard worker.

And I think he is someone who really respects the team around him as well.

So this was pissing him off just more and more and more, I think, very understandably.

Because to your point, Chris, it's not just his time they're wasting.

It's everyone's time.

Needless to say, he and Brian Singer did not get along.

Tensions allegedly escalated at one point to a screaming fight in which Singer threw a microphone sand.

Singer said this wasn't true.

He said any discussion about fights between myself and Rami Malik are simply an exaggeration of a few creative differences that were quickly resolved.

This is normal on a film set, and I think the work speaks for itself.

I don't believe him for two seconds.

Romy Malik has come out and said he had a horrible time with Brian Singer, especially since in November of 2017, Romy Malik reportedly filed a complaint with 20th Century Fox about Singer's unprofessionalism and the fact that he, you know, wasn't there.

He was not there.

So 20th Century Fox sent some suits to London to keep an eye on the situation, and the Director's Guild also sent a representative to start do some digging.

This is what makes me think that Singer may have been more MIA than people are saying if the Directors Guild showed up.

But still, after evaluating everything, 20th Century Fox came back and told the cast and crew, ah, you're two-thirds of the way done.

You think you guys could just like shuck it up until the holidays, just go ahead and push through and just

wrap this guy up.

Well, yeah, from a financial perspective, right?

We've talked about this on other movies from the island of Dr.

Moreau, Ford.

If you're going to shut down, right, or Tombstone would be a more recent film that we covered.

Yeah.

It's going to be extremely difficult to find a director who's willing to take the job at this point.

And you're going to have to shut down the film for at minimum, usually a week, if if not more, right, to get somebody else up to speed.

And it's not that this isn't done, you know, the Lord and Miller on solo being replaced by Ron Howard, for example, but it is very expensive and it's turbulent.

And sometimes the two halves of the film that have been shot by different people don't blend seamlessly together.

Yeah.

So this is Fox reaping what it's sown with hiring Brian Singer.

Yeah, but it's them going, yeah, we, we know we made this decision, but if you guys could go ahead and take the fall.

No, what they really should have said is, unfortunately, Brian May picked Brian Singer for this movie.

So we're going to have to have you guys suck it up.

Yeah, I mean, kind of true.

I also just can't imagine how disheartening this must have been for Rami Malik to have stuck his neck out.

Cause like he was not.

a huge, huge star at this point.

Obviously, big TV show, but like.

And I'm sure he had high hopes for the movie, too.

Yes, of course.

And so that took a lot of guts to stand up to the studio and say, you need to come and investigate this.

Well, and then your concern might go from the, I was optimistic that this could make my career and that I might get accolades for it, to, this is a disaster.

Well, I'm worried that I'm going to diminish the legacy of somebody who's beloved.

Who he loved.

And that would be terrifying.

Exactly.

So production continued with Singer at the helm until Thanksgiving, at which point Brian Singer asked that they halt production so he could fly back to the States for a few weeks.

He said, I'm tired.

And he also tossed in something about his mom being sick.

And Stacey Snyder was like, Brian, remember my rules?

Do not get on that plane.

But Brian Singer probably figured at this point he was untouchable because he got on the plane.

And so finally, at the beginning of December, they fired his ass.

He said in a statement, quote, I wanted nothing more than to be able to finish this project and help honor the legacy of Freddie Mercury and Queen, but Fox would not permit me to do so because I needed to temporarily put my health and the health of my loved ones first.

Now, yes, yes, Brian, we understand your mom was very, very sick.

That's very sad.

But just one little problem, Chris.

She was in New Jersey.

And just a few days after arriving, Brian Singer was in Los Angeles.

So I don't know how sick she really was.

She could have been very sick, but not sick enough that he was actually staying there to take care of her.

He reminds me a bit of Elon Musk in his kind of spiraling absence.

It's just weird.

Yeah, it's unusual.

It's weird enough that I'm like, something is clearly wrong.

That's what I'm saying.

There's a, I think, some sort of breakdown happening here, some sort of mental breakdown.

100%.

And I think we will find out shortly what may have been behind it.

So production officially shut down on December 1st, but Fox didn't stop there.

They also shut down Singer's Bad Hat Harry production offices that were located on the Fox lot.

They basically put his boxes on the street and said, get out.

Now, at the same time, good old Dexter Fletcher was busy knee-deep in planning for another musical biopic, Rocket Man, which is, of course, Elton John's story, when he got a call from Rami Malik.

According to Fletcher and the Hollywood Reporter, Ramy was like, we fucking need you, man.

We need somebody.

If you come to set and shit on the floor, you'll still do a better job than this guy.

That's exactly what Dexter did.

Which is an amazing quote.

Now, producer director Matthew Vaughan tells it a little differently.

He says that Emma Watts from Fox reached out to him and said, there's been a bit of a ding-dong with Bohemian.

Also a great quote.

Good ones all around.

And asked if he could help.

He watched a cut and he realized, you know what, Singer did a very good job.

Or Singer, a cinematographer, did a very good job.

And Vaughan says he just hadn't finished it.

So he thought, you know what, I'm not the man to finish this, but I know who is because he and Fletcher were working together on Rocket Man.

And he figured stepping in to finish out Bohemian Rhapsody would be a good experience for Fletcher heading into, of course, the Glam Rock biopic of his own.

Fletcher was torn.

On one hand, he had absolutely zero time to spare while working on Rocketman.

On the other hand, he did want to help and he wanted to be known as the guy who shows up and does the work.

I think he was really smart about this.

They had not found a home for Rocketman yet, and he wanted to be known as the guy you can trust with the money.

So, just a few days later, at 8 a.m.

on Monday morning, he was on set for Bohemian Rhapsody, ready to finish the job.

Now, Chris, you mentioned it seems like there's some sort of breakdown or spiraling happening.

At almost the exact same time as Fletcher arrived, Cesar Sanchez-Guzman filed another suit against Brian Singer for having sexually abused him as a teenager.

My understanding is that Fox did not know about this when they fired Brian Singer, but Brian Singer most certainly knew that it was coming.

So back on set, Fletcher had to move at lightning speed to get caught up.

Initially, he wanted to bring on his own cinematographer, George Richmond, to finish the job.

Poor Newton Thomas Siegel had to have a call with both of them and tell them how he'd planned to capture the rest of the film.

But then, to his credit, Dexter Fletcher saw an early cut of the film and he changed his mind.

Also, I think Graham King and Rami Malik called the studio and they they were like, you have to let this poor man finish this movie.

And also, even though it would have been easier for Fletcher moving forward, it's better for the production to have the continuity of its existing cinematographer.

I think Dexter Fletcher is a class act, and I think he realized that.

100%.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with him wanting to have the person he normally works with necessarily, right, initially.

No, I think he recognized that it was his job to finish what they had started.

It was not his job to put his spin on this movie.

Siegel told the American cinematographer, quote, there were times when I think Dexter wanted to bring a little more of his personality into the film, but he and Graham realized that wasn't the kind of movie it was.

I think his great respect for what we had accomplished up to that point was one of the reasons the film does have a cohesive tone.

And it does.

Like the fact that this movie lost its director two-thirds of the way through and somebody else finished post-production, I think this thing looks remarkably good.

By January of 2018, Bohemian Rhapsody wrapped filming.

And it was still edited by John Ottman, who, as I mentioned, was Singer's possibly most longtime collaborator.

Now, as for why this extremely talented editor, and also he's a very experienced composer, put up with Singer for so long, he has had this to say.

It's weird.

It's a double-edged sword.

I like being in control of a situation, and as a filmmaker, the fewer cooks in the kitchen to drive me crazy, the better.

So I enjoy that part.

It's the long-haul nature of it.

For me, normally, I was doing both editing and the scoring on one movie and sometimes managing the whole thing.

So that's the negative.

I'm not sure I fully understand the quote.

It sounds like what he liked about it was that Brian Singer left him alone.

Correct.

He liked that Brian Singer wasn't there.

Which I understand as a post-production person or supervisor, I can see why that might be appealing.

Well, he's got to be really good at it because he's been handling this stuff by himself.

Like, it makes me sad.

You're super talented.

You don't need to work with this guy.

Regardless, he knocked the earliest cuts out of the park.

And despite everything with Brian Singer, 20th Century Fox was so impressed that they moved the release date up from Christmas to the first weekend in November.

So we talked about this briefly.

There's the question from many people, is Rami Malik singing in the movie?

Chris, you said no, right?

My guess was no, but I don't know.

So the answer is kind of yes and no.

The majority of what you're hearing is Freddie Mercury.

They used the stems of his vocals whenever they could.

Like, of course they did.

I don't think there's a version of this movie where you don't don't use freddie mercury's voice yeah like johnny cash can be approximated more easily bob dylan can be approximated not

very can right there are moments where obviously they didn't have any recording to pull from though like when he's playing the piano and singing so in those moments you are hearing some of rami malik's voice mixed in particularly at the top and you're actually hearing a decent amount of canadian singer mark martell who sounds almost exactly like freddie mercury i had heard that there was a different vocalist i didn't know know his name who was involved, and I assumed that was mostly what I was hearing, but I didn't realize how much they were using of the stems.

It's a mix.

They're using a lot of the stems.

They are using some of Rami Malik's voice at the beginning of the movie.

Yes.

They do a good job.

It's convincing.

I think that works really well in this movie.

I find his speaking vocal performance a little distracting.

I didn't find any of the singing distracting.

No, it looks right.

It fits.

I think the sound editing in this movie and the sound mixing is fantastic.

It's really good.

Now, unbelievably, unbelievably, Chris, while Dexter Fletcher was working on Bohemian Rhapsody, Fox passed on Rocketman.

Any guesses why?

They didn't want a competing project?

No.

Oh, I'm not sure.

Why?

It's the same reason they had passed on his pitch for Bohemian Rhapsody.

He was adamant this time that the movie be rated R and Elton John was too, so that it could be more honest about his life.

Yeah.

They declined.

Fortunately, Paramount said yes.

Fletcher did, of course, get an EP credit on Bohemian Rhapsody, but due to the Director's Guild rules about only crediting one director or one directing entity, Singer retained the only directing credit.

Which I guess is fair.

I mean, he was there through at least two-thirds of it.

It sounds like he didn't do the heavy lifting of actually directing, but.

I think contractually it makes the most sense, even if ethically it doesn't feel like it does.

No, it feels like the cinematographer.

Yeah, just give it to Newton Thomas Siegel.

Literally.

On October 23rd, 2018, Bohemian Rhapsody premiered at the Wembley Arena, and it was theatrically released in the United Kingdom the next day.

And November 2nd, it was released in the United States, opening on 4,000 screens.

It was the second biggest start of all time for a musical biopic behind only Straight Out of Compton.

It absolutely crushed.

Critics, on the other hand, thought it was a pile of shit.

According to Daily Beast writer Kevin Fallon, quote, the film plays fast and loose with facts in a way that suggests the entire project was born out of resentment from the surviving members of Queen that all these years after Mercury's death, the band's legacy is still so married to their late frontman's outsized voice, personality, and celebrity.

Richard Roper also said, after years of stops and starts with reports of various high-profile actors, writers, producers, and directors attached to and then drifting away from the project, the long-awaited, highly anticipated Freddy Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody finally arrives in theaters this weekend, and it's difficult to imagine how any alternate universe version could have possibly been worse than this rubbish.

God bless his trail-blazing soul.

Freddie Mercury did not live a PG-13 life, and yet Bohemian Rhapsody takes a very safe and sanitized PG-13 path.

Despite those reviews, on a budget of around $52 million, it brought in a worldwide gross of over $900 million.

Unbelievable.

It's just, it's limited strictly now to not even Marvel movie.

Superman will not hit $900 million worldwide.

Fantastic Four will not.

They would love it if they did.

That's insane.

Yeah, just hire Brian Singer.

Speaking of Brian Singer, he made upwards of $40 million on the film because of his deal.

But the team headed into the awards season saying as little as possible about Brian Singer.

Pretty much immediately, Ramy Malik emerged as the film's.

best shot, I think, at an Oscar.

In January, Bohemian Rhapsody won the Golden Globe for best motion picture drama.

Brian Singer didn't show his face, of course, but he posted on Instagram, what an honor.

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press.

Backstage at the Globes, Graham King was asked by reporters about the omission of Brian Singer, to which he responded, that's not something we should talk about tonight.

On January 22nd, the Oscar nominations were announced.

Bohemian Rhapsody was nominated for five awards, including Best Actor for Rami Malik, Film Editing for John Ottman, Sound Editing for John Warhurst and Nina Harstone, Sound mixing for Paul Massey, Tim Cavigan, and John Casale, and Best Picture for Graham King.

And the next day, the Atlantic dropped an article titled, Nobody is Going to Believe You.

It contained a year's worth of investigation into Brian Singer's alleged serial sexual abuse of young men.

Again, I'm going to change that and say, boys, children.

One of the victims was 13 years old at the time.

I'm going to read this quote from the article.

The portrait of Singer that emerges is of a troubled man who surrounded himself with vulnerable teenage boys, many of them estranged from their families.

Their accounts suggest that Singer didn't act alone.

He was aided by friends and associates who brought him young men.

And he was abetted in a less direct way by an industry in which a record of producing hits confers immense power.

You can, and I think should read this article.

It is a really impressive work of journalism.

It made me really sad, you know, that obviously the article itself, but also if you look at the byline of the journalists who wrote it, Alex French and Maximilian Potter, they are Esquire writers, and this was initially intended to be published in Esquire, but it got killed at like the last minute by the magazine's owner after being vetted for publication because Hearst executives wanted them to find more quote presentable victims as the ones in the story were quote all troubled.

And if you really read the story, they are troubled because they were sexually abused as children.

Like there is a direct line between the abuse that they experienced and the eventual, many of them, drug addiction that they fell into later in life.

It's heartbreaking.

And God, there's so many.

There's so many.

Like this guy and many others, not just Brian Singer, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, but were operating at just a really stunning level of...

predation on children.

Oh, by the way, of course, Brian Singer responded and said, it's no surprise that with Bohemian Rhapsody being an award-winning hit, this homophobic smear piece has been conveniently timed to take advantage of its success.

Fuck you, sir.

There's nothing homophobic about that article.

I also don't think in the year that they were developing that story, there was much hope that this movie was going to be an awards contender either.

I don't think they cared about this movie at all.

No.

Rami Malik did make a statement right away saying, as far as I knew, I was considered before Brian was even attached.

I think as we learned today, that seems true.

So I had my head down preparing for this for about a year ahead of time, and I really never looked up.

I didn't know much about Brian.

I think that the allegations and things were, believe it or not, honestly something I was not aware of.

And that is what it is.

Again, I think at this point in time, the most well-known allegation was that lawsuit by Michael Egan, which had been dropped.

Weirdly, Brian May made a now deleted statement on Instagram reminding people that Singer was innocent until proven guilty.

In February of 2019, Bohemian Rhapsody got four wins at the Oscars, including best actor, best film editing, best sound editing, and best sound mixing.

Rami Malik did not thank Brian Singer.

Instead, he thanked his mother.

He paid tribute to his father who'd passed away, gave a shout out to Lucy Boynton, and then to his casting crew said, I love you.

You are my equals.

You are my betters.

And I'm still mad at him for beating Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born because I do not think that is deserved.

I'm sorry.

I think Rami Malik, I like him a lot.

After looking into this, I respect him.

I just don't think those performances are on the same level at all.

I don't know, Chris, what do you think?

Can you remind me of what else was nominated that year?

Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Vice,

Bradley Cooper as Jackson Main in A Star is Born, Willem Dafoe in At Eternity's Gate, and Vigo Mortensen in Green Book.

Honestly, I would have given it to Christian Bale as Dick Cheney.

Really?

In Vice.

He is so convincing, and it is not an impression.

He feels like the most lived in Cheney to me.

I just think it's a remarkable performance.

And in a year where I believe Defoe's playing Vincent Van Gogh and at Eternity's Gate, Vigo Mortensen is playing Tony Lip.

He's playing a real purse.

Everybody is playing a real person.

I know Jackson Maine is not, but he's playing a singer.

Bale feels like he disappeared the most into the role to me personally.

So I probably would have given it to him.

I think Bradley Cooper would have been a great choice.

Malik would not have been my choice, but he wouldn't have been last on my list of that group either.

No, I just think we're going to pay for Bradley Cooper not winning an Oscar for the rest of his career.

No, we're going to get like 35 more maestros.

It's going to be what it is.

I don't want to.

He's going to crawl to that Oscar like Leo and the Revenant.

No, buddy.

Please don't climb inside a bear or whatever he did.

Singer unbelievably remained on board as the director for Red Sonia until two months later in March of 2019 when he was finally fired.

And I did not know this, but the protagonist of Red Sonia in the original comics is a sexual assault survivor.

That's it.

Okay.

That's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Well, Lizzie, what went right?

Chris, you're the guest.

You get to go first.

Okay, I will go first.

I'm going to give mine to cinematographer Newton Thomas Siegel.

Steven Poster, who we had the pleasure of speaking to about Donnie Darko, a film that he lensed, has said that the reason he got the Donny Darko opportunity was Newton Thomas Siegel was in consideration for the role.

He couldn't do it, and he recommended Stephen Poster, and Stephen Poster speaks very highly of him.

And so this only makes me like him more that he, you know, he kind of put this thing on his back.

I don't know the circumstances of his working relationship with Brian Singer.

I won't speculate about that and why he worked with him for as long as he did, but.

A ton of people did.

Yeah, I can't imagine dealing with an absent director like that and having to make those decisions.

And like you said, the movie has a cohesive look, and that is very much a consequence of what's in front of the camera, the costume department, hair and makeup.

Kudos to those departments.

You know, they show the photos of these characters at the end of the film, and they do do a remarkable job in recreating the past.

And I don't mean to diminish that in any way, but Mr.

Siegel just clearly directed a lot of this, it sounds like.

And that wasn't his job, and he didn't get any credit for it.

It looks great.

It is a cohesive movie.

I have my own quibbles with choices made, but you cannot tell that it was as disruptive behind the scenes.

In fact, I would argue the movie is so much less dramatic than what happened behind the scenes, right?

Totally.

So I give my what went right to him, but really to everybody below the line.

Just you guys all kept the boat running.

If anything, it proves maybe we don't need us directors as much as we think we do.

So kudos to all of them.

I will split mine because I think that there's two people over the course of this that very much deserve to be recognized.

One, obviously, is Rami Malik.

I'm with you, Chris.

I don't necessarily think that this performance needed to be as celebrated as it was, but what I can celebrate is how unbelievably hard he worked.

I can celebrate the fact that he stood up for his cast and crew when he was absolutely putting himself and his own job in jeopardy when he did that.

I can respect how much he loves and celebrates his below-the-line teammates and crew members.

I think he seems like a genuinely good person who, in a really shitty situation, did the right thing.

And then the other person I think needs to be recognized is Dexter Fletcher.

This was a hard thing to do, to come in and say, all right, I don't know anybody here, but I'm going to do the last three weeks of shooting.

And it seems to me like he recognized that they had been the ones directing this movie, to your point, Chris, up to this point.

And he basically had to get out of their way and just help them finish it.

And he did that.

And I think he did it with grace and with class.

And I respect him a lot for the way that he handled this.

And I never want to watch this movie again.

To those of you who do, now you know just how hard it was to make, and hopefully you can appreciate it that much more.

Yes.

Well, Lizzie, would you like to tell the folks at home what we're well, maybe I should tell them what we're covering next week because it's one that you guys have been asking for for a long time.

It is the incredibly troubled Fitzcaraldo.

We are talking about Verne Erzog for the first time on the podcast.

We're very excited.

We're going to have a couple fun guests that are going to be joining us.

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Yeah.

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I think.

Listen to the oil rigsmen.

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Well, Chris, I think as we learned today, nobody can really impersonate Freddie Mercury or do anything in his style.

His style was one of a kind, so I'm not going to try.

I'm going to read these names with gusto.

Angeline Renee Cook, Polly Ho-Yen, Evan Downey,

Nathan Senteno, Jory Hillpiper, Slipknots9, Kay Canava, James McAvoy, Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindleman, Scary Carey, the Provost Family, the O's sound like O's.

Zach Everton, Galen and Miguel, the Broken Glass Kids, David Friscolante, Adam Moffat, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Elrington, Emix Zodia, C.

Grace B.

Jen Mastro Marino, Christopher Elner, Blaze Ambrose, Jerome Wilkinson, Roja,

Lance Stater, Nate the Knife, Lena, Half Greyhound, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Jake Killen, Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, Ellen Singleton, JJ Rapido, Scott Gerwin, Sadie, just Sadie, Brian Donahue, Adrian Pangorea, Chris Leal, Kathleen Olson, Brooke, Leah Bowman, Steve Winterbauer, Don Scheibel, Rosemary Southward, Tom Kristen, Jason Frankel, Soman Shainani, Michael McGrath, Lan Ralad, Lydia Howes, Amy Eldeschlager McCoy.

Thank you all so, so very much from the bottom of our hearts.

Seriously, I cannot believe that we get to read your names every week because you pay us 50 bucks a month.

That's insane.

And some of you have been doing it for a very long time.

Honestly, your support means everything.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, guys.

Until next week, bye.

Go to patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at whatwentrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing and music by David Bowman.

This episode was researched by Laura Woods with additional editing from Karen Krebsaw.