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You may enjoy seeing some of your favorite comedians portray some of your older favorite comedians in A Futile and Stupid Gesture, but David Wain, Jonathan Stern and Peter Principato really made the film to shine a light on Doug Kenney, the late great comedy writer who co-founded the National Lampoon magazine, and co-wrote the screenplays to Animal House and Caddyshack, then abruptly fell off a Hawaiian cliff and died at age 33.
Unless you worked on the Lampoon, you probably never got to know or learn about Kenney.
It’s all too easy to make a biopic about a major historical figure or cultural icon, because audiences already know and/or love them and will turn them into box-office hits, or at least and more likely, Oscar contenders.
But filming a big-screen tribute to someone you didn’t know but probably should, well, that’s a risky endeavor.
Here are 10 great biopics about folks you never imagined wanting to learn their whole life stories about on the big screen, until suddenly you did.
'American Splendor'
Harvey Pekar did not look like a hero nor sound like one. Which made his life as a Cleveland file clerk even more interesting to the famed 1960s cartoonist, Robert Crumb, who helped Pekar bring his autobiographical American Splendor comic books to life in 1976. Pekar didn’t quit his day job, even after he became a favorite guest of David Letterman’s in the 1980s. Paul Giamatti stars as Pekar, although Pekar himself also chimes in, and Judah Friedlander and James Urbaniak also disappear into their roles as Pekar’s friends and collaborators.
'A Beautiful Mind'
True story: When I was a Princeton undergrad in the early 1990s, stories abounded about a peculiar old man who seemed to spend all of his time in the math building. What most of us didn’t know was that man, John Nash, was a mathematical genius on his long, slow road to recovery from paranoid schizophrenia. Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his revolutionary work on game theory. Russell Crowe stars as the genius mathematician whose mind betrays him. While Crowe didn’t win Oscar here, the film won Best Picture as well as Best Director for Ron Howard, Best Supporting Actress for Jennifer Connelly and Best Adapted Screenplay.
'Catch Me If You Can'
Leonardo DiCaprio has played several real-life larger than life players onscreen, but his best portrayal was recapturing his own youth, at 28 playing 18-year-old Frank Abagnale, who conned his way through several schemes, including commercial airline pilot, doctor and lawyer. Abagnale’s autobiography Catch Me If You Can begat this beguiling romp from Steven Spielberg. Even with that wicked awful Boston accent by Tom Hanks. Plus, it features Amy Adams in her first break-out performance!
'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'
If you watched The Gong Show, you might never have suspected that the wild-haired energetic host was also a CIA agent and assassin. Because maybe he wasn’t? Or was he? That’s the tale re-enacted here by Sam Rockwell in George Clooney’s directorial debut, based on the memoir of Chuck Barris (who also really did create The Dating Game for TV) with a screenplay by the ever-creative Charlie Kaufman.
'Ed Wood'
Instead of wasting your time hate-watching The Room or hate-laughing at The Room via The Disaster Artist, watch Tim Burton direct two true artists pay tribute to two true artists in cult director Ed Wood and actor Bela Lugosi. Johnny Depp plays Wood, while Martin Landau won an Oscar for portraying Lugosi as they “peak” with the production of 1959’s Plan 9 From Outer Space.
'Florence Foster Jenkins'
The trailers made Florence Foster Jenkins out to be the O.G. William Hung or Kardashian, becoming nationally famous in the 1930s and ’40s due to a lack of talent. The truth is more complicated, and more poignant. If anything, Jenkins’s husband and manager (played by Hugh Grant) seemed to be playing out the very first Make-A-Wish for his dying wife (Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep). Jenkins actually was an accomplished pianist as a child who performed at the White House, but contracted syphilis from her first husband at a time before penicillin was around to stop the infection from ruining her central nervous system. When she unwittingly rents out Carnegie Hall to sing for the troops during World War II, her husband asks: “What if it kills you?” Her reply: “Then I shall die happy.”
'The Founder'
Why would you want to watch a movie about McDonald’s? Well, for starters, because millennials likely never heard the name Ray Kroc, and anyone older knew Ray Kroc as the founder of McDonald’s, even though he didn’t start the global fast-food chain. Two brothers named McDonald did! Their story, and how Kroc (as played by Michael Keaton) pulled the french-fried rug out from under them, is heartwarming and ultimately heartbreaking. It’s a story as relevant now as it was in the 1950s about small business owners trying to live the American dream in the face of capitalist greed.
'Hidden Figures'
How Hidden Figures didn’t win more awards last year is baffling. Then again, it remains on brand for a film about three real NASA heroes whose math skills helped salvage and boost Project Mercury into space in the first place. And how Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson prevailed (as played by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe) in the face of racism, sexism and the rising power and reliance upon computers.
'I Love You Phillip Morris'
Jim Carrey plays gay con man Steven Jay Russell who escaped from prison multiple times so he can reunite with the man he fell in love with during his first stint in the pokey, the titular Phillip Morris (played by Ewan McGregor). Do you need to know anything more?
'The People vs. Larry Flynt'
Larry Flynt is no Hugh Hefner, and Hustler was no Playboy, and those facts may or may not endear you more or less to him. But Flynt, paralyzed since a 1978 assassination attempt, made a more meaningful and lasting impact on our First Amendment right to free speech by fighting a lawsuit by televangelist Jerry Falwell all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. The Court’s ruling in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell allows most of our great satire, which we most certainly need today. Woody Harrelson showed serious depth and acting chops playing Flynt, while both Ed Norton and Courtney Love also shone as Flynt’s attorney and fourth wife, respectively.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
