Bohemian Rhapsody

Well, I caught Bohemian Rhapsody at the IMAX the other night and I must say that the best part, in my opinion, was the 20th Century Fox credit which occurs before the movie’s opening scene — to my delight, its famous orchestral theme got the Brian May wire choir treatment.

It was a Queen version of a classic piece of music we all recognize. Sadly, the movie that followed wasn’t able to sustain that level of excitement as the story unfolded.

By now, it’s obvious that the movie has its hardcore fans and its detractors. iMDB viewers are giving it very high ratings (8.4 at last count) but if you dare to read a random sampling of the external reviews, they’re pretty unanimous in panning it for being, well, not faithful to the band’s timeline or trying to shoehorn too many landmark moments into a 134-minute movie.

The scenes that stood out for me were:

• Freddie’s interactions with his family, which were both humorous and touching;
• Mike Myers playing the EMI executive who’s having trouble understanding the whole opera thing;
• The last 20 minutes where they re-enact their Live Aid performance 

In addition to Brian’s rendition of the 20th Century Fox theme, no one's commented on the Marlene Dietrich poster that Freddie walks by in one of the early scenes. I remember watching a Mick Rock documentary where he talks about his inspiration for the harsh lighting and iconic poses depicted on the Queen II cover photo...he more or less admitted that he borrowed the aesthetic from old Marlene Dietrich photos.

So while that small detail is probably lost on the casual movie-goer, my hat goes off to whoever decided to put that poster in the shot. Too bad the rest of the details in the movie didn’t have that same fundamental grounding in reality.

I’m disappointed in Brian and Roger for letting the script dismantle the integrity of the band’s history. By allowing blatant mistakes in their chronology, they are endorsing these fabrications. As stewards of their own legacy, they’ve taken extreme measures in the past to ensure quality and accuracy in everything Queen Productions has put out since Freddie’s death, so why would they rubber stamp a project with obvious errors even if it falls under creative license for a movie adaptation?

Beyond the liberties the script takes with the band’s history (i.e., Fat Bottomed Girls playing over a montage of their 1974 US tour, or Freddie learning he has AIDS in 1985), I would argue the portrayal of conflict is perhaps the film’s greatest weakness. I counted at least seven elements of conflict going on simultaneously:

• Freddie’s relationship with Mary and how it evolves (devolves?) over the years
• Freddie’s relationship with Paul Prenter
• Freddie’s relationship with Jim Hutton
• Freddie’s relationship with his Parsi family
• The band’s fighting with the record label to retain the vision for their music
• Freddie being confronted with a solo record deal which puts him at odds with the band
• Freddie learning he has HIV so time is now against him 

Did the film studio simply push to get it done, especially given the setbacks that Sasha Baron Cohen and Bryan Singer brought to the movie's development and production? In hindsight, the two-minute trailers for Bohemian Rhapsody were actually more effective at capturing the spirit and essence of Freddie and Queen than did the 134-minute film itself.

Did I like it at all? Sure. I’m over the moon whenever the band and Freddie make it into mainstream media and their achievements are recognized by the masses. But in my opinion it came off as sanitized and a bit cowardly. I have heard, however, that that was the stated intention of Brian and Roger from the beginning, which, of course, led to their falling out with Sasha Baron Cohen. Were they protecting Freddie’s parents’ honour? Did they simply want to avoid an “R” rating? Having Bryan Singer’s departure come at a time when he was called out during the #metoo movement certainly didn’t help.

Now I’m left wondering what a Sasha Baron Cohen interpretation would have looked like. There’s no question that Freddie did lots of drugs, chain-smoked, and could be as lewd as the next rock star. However, if Cohen managed to balance out Freddie’s debauchery with his fondness for Shakespeare, Liza Minnelli, Cecile B. DeMille, ballet, art history (Dadd, anyone?), and Jim Croce, then I think we’d be closer to understanding the man who was fearless in living life to the fullest.

#BohemianRhapsody 
#BohemianRhapsodyMovie 
#FreddieMercury
#queen

From Stone Town to Heavy Metal

When Another One Bites the Dust came up on our PVR’s episode list for The Amazing Race (S29:E4) from April 2017, I was very curious to see how Queen factored into this very popular reality show.

After the obligatory recap of the previous week’s episode, host Phil Keoghan explains that the next leg of the race lands them in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island off the coast of East Africa that is part of Tanzania. Aha, there’s the Queen connection, they’re visiting Freddie’s birthplace. I wondered if the choice of Zanzibar for one of the show’s locations was due to a producer knowing about Freddie’s history on that remote island and it would be a great fit as an exotic location the racers hadn’t been to yet? Or, did they choose Zanzibar because it is an exotic location that might give the American contestants a bit of ratings-friendly culture shock and it just so happened that when they Googled Zanzibar they discovered the Freddie connection and wrote an episode around him?

Whatever the case, it was neat to see Freddie’s birthplace included in a reality show.

The first time we learn that Freddie is part of the episode is when the contestants are told to make their way to Mercury House, although it’s initially referred to as “Farrokh House” which didn’t seem to resonate with the players given that they were in Zanzibar.

Once the teams began asking the locals about Farrokh House, the players discovered that it is Freddie Mercury’s childhood home. The problem, though, is that his original home was demolished and some of the locals knew this, so they were taken to a pile of rubble where they sifted through the debris for the next clue.

Luckier players were taken to the actual “Mercury House” that is part museum, part heritage home and was the location of the LOCK or KNOCK detour. The outside entrance to this building has a windowed display case featuring a variety of Freddie images.

Choosing LOCK meant players had to search through stacks of wooden chests of drawers seeking a key that would open a particular padlock and reveal the next destination. Choosing KNOCK required players to meander through the back alleys and walkways of Stone Town looking for three distinct doors which are considered “royal” doors by the residents. Once they visited all three, they’d get their next clue.

The final Queen connection came near the end of the episode when Phil and the players made their way off the island and back to Tanzania where a Road Block awaited.

For this “Heavy Metal” Road Block, the team had to fashion a metal straining spoon out of a sheet of aluminum without the benefit of modern tools.

Heavy metal? At this point, the Queen/royalty/music/Zanzibar connections seem a bit forced. But, since they were on a musical theme and they had a road block dealing with metal, why not use the term heavy metal...even though most of their music fell outside of that genre. It’s a minor detail, I suppose.

So who connected the dots between Zanzibar and Freddie as a possible leg of the race? The husband and wife team of Dutch-born Bertram van Munster and American-born Elise Doganieri are a power couple in the world of reality TV producers. I tend to think that van Munster’s European upbringing — and Queen’s overall fanbase in the European community — would suggest that he knew about Freddie’s history with Zanzibar first and conceptualized the episode around those themes. But, maybe I’m wrong…perhaps Doganieri is the Queen aficionado in the family and she made it happen. Doesn’t matter…I’m just happy it made the cut and the episode was able to showcase Farrokh Bulsara’s humble beginnings and how remarkable his rise to international fame really was, all things considered.

I wonder if tourism picked up for the tiny island after this episode. Much to the angst of the local politicians who govern the officially Muslim territory, his gay lifestyle is part of his legacy. 

screen capture from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z-hleeVmTQ

They did succeed in banning a large scale celebration at Mercury’s, a local restaurant and bar, that was planned for Freddie’s 60th birthday, but this still shot from a YouTube video showing visitors to Mercury House prior to the Amazing Race appearance indicates that Freddie is a sizable draw for tourism dollars and at least some of the locals are keen to look past dogma and capitalize on his Western accomplishments.