Daniel Radcliffe Share Stories From 'Weird: The Al Yankovic Story' | The Awardist

there was one day when uh Roku sent a team a behind the scenes crew to like record the transformation and you know the mustache was my own so like that was already on and then I already had the wig on so the guys were just like well what what is that I was like it's mainly it's already happened like it's a wig and it's a Hawaiian shirt and it's my accordion and that's that's really that's what we're doing [Music] I think unexpected is kind of what what we were going for people would be um uh expecting us a straight up like spoof uh you know Naked Gun Hot Shots airplane and uh you know we want to deliver some a richer experience I think the offer came in for this movie and the script came in before I read it and I just like read the log line I also like didn't know what I was gonna read or what it was gonna be and then as soon as you start you're like oh yes this is all this ever could have been like this is uh this is exactly what it has to be it's so thoroughly like explored the premise of being a parody of biopics and like hit every beat and note that you wanted it to hit are you really like Come Away with the sense like well this would be a lot of fun to make like it um and then you know I had a I had like one Zoom meeting with uh Eric and Al I don't think I was playing very hard to get in that meeting I think I was pretty much just being like this script is amazing like when do we when do we get to do it it was very exciting for Ellen I I'll say that my whole life all I wanted I'm afraid we found your son had a polka party [Music] [Applause] let's make up new words to a song that already exists oh well you should do that then [Music] it was not something I I could have predicted um but you know that's the the joy of uh of my job is that you you know sometimes you get something like this and you go wait what like that was I think that was the world's the world's first reaction to hearing that I had been cast as Weird Al was my first reaction on being offered the part was just like wait what me um but then as I read it I was like oh right I see why it why this can work why it works with me um and yeah no it was uh not predicted but but a lovely surprise I mean you know he's such a a great actor that can that can play both drama and comedy we're just such big fans of of his entire body of work and felt that he would really understand and what we were going for and what we really needed was him to like lean into the drama of this character in an absurd way and that's what's going to make it really funny and we thought that he just really checked all the uh all the boxes for us I was um on staff at funny or die and I was making uh some other fake movie trailers I did one called Gobstopper which was like a torture porn version of Willy Wonka with Christopher Lloyd is this like evil Willy Wonka and uh it was around the time that that Notorious B.I.G biopic had come out and I know that all these biopics play really fast and loose with the facts so you know I had this idea to just make a fake biopic trailer about someone who's still alive that you could very easily fact check this thing by asking the person if this really happened or not and then to fabricate everything and I thought it would be a really funny idea to do it with Weird Al because you know I was such a big fan of his and he's a you know the king of parodies so it worked on this meta level too like a parody trailer about the person that does pair that's biopic it was just meant to live online and and be a sketch um you know when it came out we'd very briefly talked about oh I wonder if we could turn this into a real thing and uh for whatever reason we didn't about a decade goes by and I get a random email from Weird Al one morning that just says I I think it's time you know he's like uh I saw but you know Bohemian Rhapsody the trailer for Rocket Man was out at the time and and biopics were just back in the Zeitgeist it seems like it was a huge slate of you know the Whitney Houston Elvis had been announced we just thought the the the time was right to uh you know to turn it into a full feature everyone's in a great while I can spot a talent that I know is the future of music but first we gotta find you a stage name Al Yankovic it's long it's hard to pronounce I'm just gonna throw this out there Weird Al Yankovic I love it [Music] Weird Al has taken the World by storm I would write the first five pages I'd send it to Al at the end of the day the next day he would revise those five pages add five more send it back to me and we just kept rewriting each other and the agreement was you know you can't have an ego about anything that you wrote if you kill someone else's thing I was a huge Weird Al fan when my sense of humor was developing you know we find the same things funny and that's partly because I learned what was funny from Weird Al so uh it was really a joy writing this script together and you know I was happy when he would reject something that I wrote because I'm like okay I guess it wasn't funny I trust I trust Al this thing's with me and I like both me and out what kind of just sitting back and watching Will Forte a little bit in those scenes because he was so funny the funniest I've done uh films that are based on people's lives before based on real people before um and there's a real pressure to them being on set and watching like stuff from their life get filmed obviously not all of this film is from Al's life but having him there so kind of visibly excited about the way it was going and seeming to enjoy watching the film get made so much was like I don't know it was a real kind of boost every day just like having him there on set with us a door-to-door accordion salesman did give Al his first accordion that was true um in real life uh Al's father did not uh beat the guy up which happens in our movie My Bologna was recorded uh in in a bathroom because the acoustics were really great in there it was on Al's college campus you know aside from that there really is not much else that's true there are there's true things that inspired moments in our movie like Al wrote Like a Surgeon because he had heard like through Madonna's manager that she said when is someone uh when's Weird Al gonna parody Like a Virgin and that inspired him to do like a surgeon um we obviously spun that out into you know Madonna will stop at nothing to get out to uh parody her song and uh he had turned her in this arch villain but other than that you know it's the opposite of what Al's real life was you know we just wanted his parents were very supportive we wanted to just create the most dramatic like make the ultimate biopic and put all the biopic moments that never really happened to Al into Al's life which is really the only way that you can do a biopic about Weird Al Yankovic it captures the spirit of what what Al does maybe one creative genius a dozen of a checkered pass involving alcohol I think Madonna's a bad influence on you no offense when Al gets the phone call in the restaurant and Larson losing it about Michael Jackson um that was definitely one of my absolute favorite moments in the spirit but really there are so there are so many there are also like stuff that I know got cut just because it like didn't work in the context of the film like there was one thing that was like made our look like an early on where like that was when he goes to post the My Bologna Tate to uh Dr Demento you just see me like slamming it into the letterbox but the original start of that shot is me like shoulder barging an old lady out of the way who's posting something to then post that I know exactly why it was cut and it's a good choice but I still have the footage on my phone and that also makes me laugh every so often Arturo Castro as Pablo Escobar like the original idea for that character was to to have him be really serious and sort of the the juxtaposition of this silly birthday party happening was like a really Gruff mean Pablo Escobar and Arturo just made this really funny choice it's just the way that he played him was just so light and kind of silly and it helped the turn when Pablo Escobar actually does get intimidating near the end of the scene every single thing that he does is Escobar um celebrating his birthday party and being excited about Weird Al showing up um makes me laugh every single time I watch it foreign coordinator was like amazing and Andrew Meister double was brilliant and that scene would not have happened were not for the both of them and how how great they were the things uh Potter taught me about some work was just like putting yourself in the hands of the stunt team and like working with them because they like know what they're doing and all brilliant at it but yeah it was super fun I mean I I love getting to do that kind of stuff because I got to do so much of it on Potter I don't get to do as much of it anymore but I got to do a lot of it actually on this film as Weird Al um so yeah it was very it was really it was very very fun to do foreign Another One Rides the Bus hey hey Another One Rides the Bus it was Al Yankovic's uh Christmas card mailing list that we leaned on for that scene Al sort of work worked as our casting director just for that scene we came up with all these uh yeah ideas for um you know these funny like early 80s late 70s you know weirdo characters and Al just gave me a list of like here are people that I could personally reach out to it was amazing getting those like text messages back uh you know we decided oh let's let's see if Conan if there's any way Conan O'Brien would do Andy Warhol in 15 minutes later Al texts me it's like Conan's in he's such a lovely person he's such a nice guy um and through the years he's just like made so many friends like no one doesn't like Weird Al he's not always asking for favors either so when he does come calling you know everyone everyone shows up yeah thank you

Channel: Entertainment Weekly

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Keywords: Entertainment Weekly, EW, entertainment, film, music, movies, tv, celebrities, famous, pop culture, entertainment news, highlights, Hollywood, interviews, comedy, news, celebrity, film (media genre), the awardist, the awardist daniel radcliffe, daniel radcliffe, daniel radcliffe movies, daniel radcliffe extras, eric appel, eric appel interview, daniel radcliffe interview, weird al, weird al movie, weird al yankovic, weird al yankovic trailer, daniel radcliffe weird al

Id: AsZiNbNawUA

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023