Michael Gracey On Telling Singer Robbie Williams’ Life Story As Musical With A Most Unusual Twist
After today’s Telluride premiere of Better Man, the cat will be out of the bag. Or, more appropriately, the monkey will be out of the barrel.
The film covers Robbie Williams’ larger-than-life ascension from the bad boy in the Brit boy band Take That to superstar solo artist – with all the drug and alcohol use, struggles with depression and anxiety – is captured in its decadent glory befitting a superstar who pushed every envelope. Directed by Michael Gracey, Better Man is as much a full-blown musical as his last hit, The Greatest Showman. Only here, all of the characters are depicted by humans, except for Williams. He appears throughout the film in the form of, as Williams says, “a cheeky chimpanzee.”
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In this interview, Gracey discusses this massive creative swing he, Williams and the film’s financiers and the distributor Paramount Pictures have taken. I met Williams at a Telluride brunch this morning. He’s slim and has the healthy look of one who has put the bad boy days behind him — “still naughty, just sober.” He felt not only has the movie accurately captured his crazy journey, but that it might succeed enough that a receptive US audience might propel the kind of same that has been his reality since teens, in places like the UK and Australia, where he still cannot go to a mall or walk down the street without being mobbed. The film covers his excesses, and his craving for approval from his father, who got Robbie bit by the showbiz bug, then left the family to pursue his own dreams. It left a whole Williams filled in all the wrong ways.
“To say I was blown away wouldn’t do it justice,” Williams told me about seeing the whole film for the first time. “But then I go into this existential, well do I think it’s amazing because I’m narcissist, or is it actually amazing? Because it feels pretty fucking mind-blowing.” There is a lot depicted that a narcissist would not love, particularly the drug use and mental health woes that are somehow easier to watch when a chimp going through it.
“I’ve had this problem that has sometimes been a strength, where I don’t know when to stop oversharing,” the singer said. “And this is a movie full of classic oversharing, whether I look good or look bad. But it’s got a fantastic portrayal of what happened in my life. It’s honest.”
Williams hopes a new audience in the U.S. will want to hear more from him. He lived in L.A. for many years, and could walk down the street or go to the mall like a normal person.
“I am completely anonymous, and I didn’t plan to change it until now,” he said. “And now I’m kind of desperate for that to change. I moved [to L.A.] so I could be Bruce Wayne in America and Batman everywhere else. It worked for me because there were periods in my life which were pretty risqué. I needed a place to retreat and not be known, and I got that. But now I’m old and wise enough to want the experience of incredible success again. And maybe that would be in America. I’d like to enjoy that kind of success as an adult now instead of a teenager that couldn’t experience any sort of joy because of what was happening mentally. I said to Michael yesterday, one-quarter joking, as we got off the chair lifts that took us over the mountain, and walked through the town here … I said, “Mate, I hope I can’t f*cking do this in 18 months time.” I know mentally what that invites into your life, but America’s a place that I’ve lived in for 24 years, and it’s a place that I’ve dreamed about all of my life. I’ve been happy being anonymous in America. But now I would like to show off for America, and I would like to be received with love. Maybe I can do that. But it all depends on the film.”
Gracey provided the song-and-dance and storytelling propulsion, with show-stopping musical numbers that included one on Regent Street with hundreds of dancers set against the backdrop of those magnificent white buildings. It seems as good a place as any to start because it’s part of the adversity that is part of this film’s backstory.
DEADLINE: There are some song-and-dance numbers that would stand up to anything you did in The Greatest Showman, or many other musicals. The one on Regent Street, especially. How did you manage to shut down that whole block?
MICHAEL GRACEY: That was a year and a half in the planning. We had four nights to shoot it, and we couldn’t rehearse there. We had to literally just … go for it. The only way to rehearse it was tape out every curb, every rubbish bin, every bus stop in a huge studio space, on which 500 dancers practiced for a week and the whole camera crew rehearsed the entire musical number. Cut to the last day of rehearsal, just before we would shoot, and we got a phone call from the Crown of State, because even though Westminster Council is the council for Regent Street, the land is Crown Land. It’s owned by The Crown. And they called me and they said: “The Queen died last night. You’re not shooting.”
DEADLINE: How do you overcome something like that?
GRACEY: We’d planned a year and a half, bought out the shops, we paid for every bit of gear. Everything was booked, and then the Queen died. We lost that money after the 10 days of mourning, the funeral, the coronation. It was five months before we got back onto Regent Street to shoot that number. And we had to raise the money again to do it. We came this close to it not happening. Every time that number comes on, I just grin from ear to ear because we came so close, Mike, to that never, ever occurring. It was a miracle that we got that number.
DEADLINE: What did that setback cost the production?
GRACEY: As a result, we went over our allocated time with Weta, who had blocked out X amount of time to do this project. And some of the artists were getting moved off the project onto other projects, and there were artists at Weta who literally said, “I will leave this company if you make me go onto another project.” That’s how passionate they were about staying around to realize this film. I’m not sure I’m meant to say how much [the cancellation] cost, but it’s in the millions. It is an enormous musical number.
DEADLINE: This was a hard one to get made. What was the biggest challenge in finding backers for your vision, which included the most radical depiction of a famous music star?
GRACEY: Showman was a studio film, and this was independent. I felt like this would be a very hard pitch for any studio. And to be fair, the monkey of it all was almost a non-starter for so many of the financiers that we approached. At first, in their head, they’re like, “Oh yeah, of course — the director of The Greatest Showman and Robbie Williams. Fantastic.” And then I would’ve to say, just one thing: “Robbie’s going to be portrayed by a monkey.”
DEADLINE: Reaction?
GRACEY: For two weeks, it was, “Right, but in some sort of dream sequence or fantasy moment.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, no — the entire film” … and literally so many of the financing meetings came to an end right there.
DEADLINE: Why a monkey? What was that symbolic of in the way that Robbie looked at himself?
GRACEY: I developed a script through a series of interviews with Rob. So over the course of a year and a half, I interviewed Rob every time I came to L.A. and we would just sit in his recording studio and talk. And to be honest, when we first started, it wasn’t necessarily for a film. I just wanted to capture him in his own voice telling his story because I found it so compelling. The majority of the recordings in the film, the voiceover is from those recordings. Then I started taking those and chopping them together, almost like a radio play, just to see if I could form a narrative that spanned the length of a film that would keep me engaged, just purely if I shut my eyes and listened to it.
And once I got that, I was like, I just don’t want to do another Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman musical biopic, at least from the point of view in which they were approached. I just felt there was a more creative way of entering into this particular story. So I went back to those recordings, and when I was listening to them, I found Rob saying often that he was just dragged up to perform, like a monkey, or it didn’t really matter. He was just up the back performing like a monkey. And he said it enough times that I was like, “Oh, that’s how he sees himself. He literally sees himself as a performing monkey.” And I thought, “That would be amazing; I would love to see that film.” That’s where the idea came from. And then of course, I had to pitch it to him.
DEADLINE: Tell me how that went.
GRACEY: I said, “If you were an animal, how do you see yourself?” And he immediately said, “A lion, definitely a lion.” In my head, I went, “No, that’s the wrong answer.” So I said, “Really?” And he sort of smiled. and he went, “Wow, if I’m being honest, I’m more of a monkey.”
DEADLINE: It’s one thing to banter that with somebody, quite another to anchor your musical biopic with it. He’s got a global following — it’s a lot to ask. How did you get him to wrap his arms around that?
GRACEY: The film’s pretty raw. I always think that when you go to those dark places, you feel the light so much more. And just from my experience when I watch films, Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, those moments of elation are so much brighter when you go to those depths of despair. I really didn’t want to shy away from that with Rob’s story. He has such moments of extreme highs and these extreme lows. I just pitched it back to him that we would tell this compelling, moving emotional rollercoaster of a story, but we would do it from the point of view of how he sees himself. So he would be portrayed as a monkey through the whole film, and he just grinned. And he was like, “Yeah.” I showed him two pencil sketches by Brian Sloan, an artist I worked with. That’s what sold him. They really captured Rob. You could still see Rob in the monkey. I think in the film, the monkey’s eyes are Rob’s eyes, like a hundred percent. We took high-res scans of Rob’s eyes. Weta had done three Planet of the Apes films at the time that I approached them. And I was so blown away with War for the Planet of the Apes because so much of that storytelling was unspoken. It came down to the performance of Andy Serkis, being portrayed through Caesar the monkey — or the ape, I should say.
I was completely convinced that we could trade off three films worth of R&D and refine what it is to portray these performances in the most subtle way. I thought this would be sort of taking it to a new challenge because now not only is he going to give all of those performances, but he also has to be able to sing and dance. Fortunately, Weta were completely on board with it. They were so excited about the challenge of bringing Robbie to life as a monkey. But to Rob’s credit, he didn’t blink an eye. He really, from the moment I pitched it to him, he was on board and he didn’t waver. Sometimes you sort of pitch an idea everyone loves, and as time goes on, people start questioning it. He never once questioned it or the level of honesty that we were going to do this with. He didn’t question the monkey, which I think remarkable on both those fronts, for someone with so many voices in his head and anxiety and real depression and the sort of mental illness that he battles.
DEADLINE: What did you film that made you feel, “I’m all in. This is going to work”…
GRACEY: The way I work, and I did the same on Showman. I shoot the whole film out just on iPhones and cut it together, and we just did the process over and over again. And the moment we start casting actors, throwing them on their feet and workshop it almost like it’s a theater piece, I was getting goosebumps and thought, “This is going to work.” That pre-vis is actually what helped me finance the film. I could show the opening number, of him as a little kid, and I could show “My Way,” the final number. And even in the crust forms, people understood that the bookends of the film worked.
DEADLINE: Explain the magic trick. As we watch the Regent Street dance number or the one on the yacht, what are we looking at? Do you have somebody in a suit for the singing and dancing?
GRACEY: Jonno Davies plays Robbie for the majority of the film. He is an astonishing actor you’re going to be hearing a lot more about because the guy is crazy talented. So he was there in the motion-capture suit, just like Andy Serkis when he plays Gollum or Caesar. And it’s all the same tech that Weta built up over the years to really capture the most minute details of performance, facial performance along with body performance. And so that’s what Jonno is doing on a set.
DEADLINE: You put it all together and show it to Robbie. How nervous were you, and what did he say?
GRACEY: I’d shown Robbie rehearsals and previews, but I didn’t show him Jonno in the gray suit [before it was complete]. It’s too hard to wrap your head around, even for me, and I know exactly how we’re going to replace the guy in the gray suit, with the monkey. It wasn’t until afterwards that I really understood when the monkey is in a scene, it is the truest depiction of what it is to have a famous person in the room. Everyone just stares at the monkey.
It doesn’t matter who’s talking in frame, your eyes are so fixed on Robbie; even if he’s just standing in the background or sitting at a table, you are still staring at him. And that’s what you do with stars, with celebrities. You stare at them. Even if someone else is talking to you, they draw you in that way. And so I only ever showed Rob sequences that had the monkey in them. I never showed him gray-suit Jonno performing. And that was very intentional because I just felt it was too hard for him to wrap his head around. I mean, it’s hard enough for him to wrap his head around a singing-and-dancing monkey version of himself, let alone seeing a guy covered in dots and a gray wetsuit and a camera sticking out the front of their face. Rob watched 20 minutes of the film at a Cannes screening for international distributors.
The next time he watched it was the finished film.
DEADLINE: What did he say?
GRACEY: First time, it was like watching someone who was shell-shocked. It was so much to take in that I think it was very hard for him to process. He was hugging me, and he just was like, “That is a lot to process.” I got it completely. It’s not just the fact that it’s a monkey depicting your life. There were such extreme experiences that he was reliving while watching it, and not all of them were good. It took till the third watching of the film before he really could take it in. So he’s watched it three times now, and I think he finds it more enjoyable each time. The first, that was just an assault on all fronts.
DEADLINE: How was it for you, watching him watch himself as a monkey…
GRACEY: I’m watching some of those scenes and I’m holding my breath — and to be watching it as yourself must be incredibly daunting. But again, I am very grateful that Rob was willing to let us go to those places because I do think there is a tendency to water down stories, either because the person’s dead and they want to protect the legacy or the person’s alive, and they don’t want to go to those places that are sort of warts and all. Rob stood by his warts-and-all story, and he goes to some very dark places. It’s a credit to him and the trust that he put in me to allow me to tell that story. And in a very raw way; we were very purposely not glamorizing the rock-star lifestyle. We weren’t glamorizing the drug taking, we were showing it in a dirty, visceral way. Whether it’s alcohol or drugs, they can get portrayed in a very glamorous way. And we made a conscious choice to not do that.
DEADLINE: Closer to Sid and Nancy?
GRACEY: Yeah. My mom’s friends down at the supermarket are all, he would say to mom, “Oh, when’s Michael doing another film? We loved The Greatest Showman. We can’t wait to see his new film.” And my mom would smile and say, “Well, maybe you might not like it as much as you did The Greatest Showman.”
DEADLINE: Those songs could have been originals to me, like the ones in The Greatest Showman, because I didn’t grow up with his music. They’re standards in Europe, Australia and other places. Now, since he’s depicted as a monkey — or more accurately a chimpanzee — he can still maintain a bit of the anonymity over in the U.S. How much awareness of Robbie’s hit-song catalog be promoted to build awareness?
GRACEY: What you just said to me is everything. You just meet the film as if it is like The Greatest Showman, an original musical, right? American audiences don’t know these songs, but unlike Showman, he has had over 70 million worldwide album sales. Tell us exactly which songs are hit songs. Wow. So it’s like you’ve got the cheat code of going — we know these are hit songs, and you are meeting them as an audience for the first time, which is wonderful because in America, the thing that I love is that no one will ever hear this music and not think back to that moment in the film, and the context in which it exists in the film. It’s a very different experience for people overseas, who already know the songs, and you’re giving a new context to a song they already know.
But in America, it’s a more pure experience because they’re meeting a character they don’t know — music that they’re hearing for the first time, and that’s their level of investment. Their investment is in the monkey, and they are hearing these songs and these beautiful narrative moments, whether it’s she’s the one on the boat or rock DJ and dancers going down Regent Street or whatever the moment is within the context of the narrative. They will forever associate that song with this film. And I think that’s an amazing thing. No downside to either, but if you were to ask me which I think is the more exciting, it’s meeting it for the first time. It’s rare you go to the cinema, experience something and go, “I haven’t seen anything like this.”
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