Is the Weird Al Movie Based on a True Story? How Al Yankovic Spun His Past Into A Not-So-True Biopic

It won’t take audiences long to realize that Weird: The Al Yankovic Story—which is now streaming for free on The Roku Channel—is not interested in telling the “Weird Al true story.” Instead, it’s interested in capturing the wacky, warm-hearted humor that the parody musician is known for, while also mercilessly mocking the tired Hollywood biopic formula. As it turns out, that adds up to a movie where Weird Al becomes an abusive, alcoholic mess enabled by his conniving, self-centered girlfriend, who also happens to be the queen of pop herself, Madonna.

In case you still weren’t sure how serious this all is, the movie is based on the 2013 Funny or Die trailer for a fake Weird Al biopic, which was written and directed by comedian Eric Appel. (Appel also directed Weird, and co-wrote the script with Yankovic.) It also comes with a brand new original Weird Al song, “Now You Know,” which plays over the credits and gleefully declares, “If it happens in a movie, it must be true,” and, “We only changed one thing—I really did play Live Aid with Queen!”

Hopefully, you recognize Weird: The Al Yankovic Story for the hilariously absurd and absolutely untrue joke that is. That said, there are nuggets of truth in the movie, and Yankovic himself recently spoke to Decider to help clear up some of the confusion as to how accurate the Weird Al movie is. Read on to learn more about the Weird: The Al Yankovic Story true story.

Warning: This article contains mild Weird: The Al Yankovic Story spoilers. Save this to read until after you’ve seen the movie.

Is Weird: The Al Yankovic Story based on a true story?

Kind of… but not really. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a parody of “based on true story biopics,” much like the songs that made the musician famous in the first place. While some of the details are true to Yankovic’s real career as a parody songwriter, many more are changed or fabricated to poke fun at the biopic format.

How accurate is the Weird Al movie?

It’s not accurate at all. Hopefully, if you’ve seen the movie, you started to cotton on to the fact that Weird is not an accurate Weird Al movie pretty quickly.

That said, for Yankovic—who co-wrote the script with director Eric Appel—confusing people is all part of the fun. “Obviously, I have to promote the movie, and we all have to talk about it,” Yankovic told Decider in a recent interview. “But part of me wishes that people could go into this movie not knowing anything about it and will believe, at least at the beginning, that it’s a really serious biopic. Because it starts out fairly normally. And then it gets progressively more and more off the rails. I hope that, at some point in the movie, people go, ‘Wait a minute… did this really happen?'”

While some details—particularly those involving Madonna (played by Evan Rachel Wood) and a certain infamous drug lord—are obviously over-the-top and invented, even some small details were changed, just for the hell of it. This was— Yankovic told The New York Times in a separate interview—in part because the comedian wanted to make fun of how fast-and-loose real biopics tend to be with the facts. He was particularly annoyed by a detail in the recent Elton John biopic, Rocketman, in which the rockstar is shown changing his name after seeing a photo of John Lennon.

“Everybody who’s an Elton John fan knows it was inspired by Long John Baldry. I guess they thought nobody knows who Long John Baldry is,” Yankovic told the Times. He went on to say this inspired him to tweak tiny details of his own story—like recording his first hit, “My Bologna,” in a bus station bathroom. “I did record it in a bathroom but not in a bus station. Why did we change it? Just ’cause that’s what biopics do.” (He added that song was also not born out of an inspirational, out-of-body experience, as depicted in the movie.)

Is anything in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story movie true?

Yes! While much of Weird was made up, there are some bits that are true. Perhaps the most notable example is the moment in the movie when a young Al receives his first accordion via a traveling, door-to-door salesman. While Yankovic’s father did not violently beat up that salesman, as happens in the movie, that really is how Yankovic acquired his first accordion when he was just 7 years old.

“This would have been 1966, maybe,” Yankovic told Decider in his interview. “That gentleman was welcomed into our home, and my parents were offered either guitar lessons or accordion lessons for a young child. My parents made the life-altering decision that I should take accordion lessons. Because they figured when you played the accordion, you’re a one-man band, you’re the life of any party. Who wouldn’t want an accordion player hanging around? They thought if I learned the accordion, I would never be lonely!”

Yankovic went on to say that, jokes aside, the accordion was a good decision on his parents’ part, because the instrument made him stand out to Dr. Demento, the radio broadcaster who hosted a show of novelty and comedy music. As you see in the movie, the real Al really did spend much of his childhood secretly listening to Dr. Demento while hiding under a blanket. In 1976, a teenage Yankovic submitted a song to the show— “Belvedere Cruising,” a song about the Yankovic family’s rundown car—and Dr. Demento played it on the air.

“Dr. Demento told me after the fact that if I had sent him a tape in the mail of me playing guitar, he probably wouldn’t have given it a second listen because there’s nothing unusual or novel about that,” Yankovic told Decider. “But a kid playing the accordion and thinking he was cool—he said that made his ears perk up and that that gave him the impetus to give me some airplay.”

Dr. Demento, whose real name is Barry Hansen, was not exactly the father/manager figure that Rainn Wilson portrayed him to be in the movie. The real Hansen told the crowd at the New York premiere of Weird that he did not host epic, celebrity-laden pool parties, and he did not give Weird Al his iconic name. (That came from a mean-spirited college nickname, according to a 2020 New York Times Magazine profile.) But he was, Yankovic said, an extremely vital person in launching the Weird Al career.

“When I was a teenager, there was nobody in the world that would have given me airplay other than Dr. Demento,” Yankovic told Decider. “And he gave me support and encouragement very early on that I can’t imagine I would have received from anybody else in that position.”

Did Weird Al and Madonna date or know each other?

No. Weird Al and Madonna were never in a romantic relationship. Weird Al, by his own admission, doesn’t even really know Madonna. In a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Yankovic said he met Madonna exactly one time, in 1985. “I talked to her for maybe like 45 seconds backstage. So that’s the extent of the relationship.”

Yankovic told Decider that no one from his team warned Madonna ahead of the film’s release, but he hopes she takes it in stride. “I don’t know if Madonna’s seen it yet,” he said. “I kind of doubt that she has. We didn’t get her blessing ahead of time, so we’re hoping that she’s cool with it and that she understands it’s a joke.” He added that came at the advice of the movie’s lawyers. “Our lawyers told us it would be best not to red-flag it with anybody because they’ve said they’re public figures, so it’s fair game. I took their word for it!”

That said, it is true that Madonna was the one who came up with the idea for Weird Al to parody her song, “Like A Virgin.” According to the 2020 New York Times Magazine profile of Yankovic, “Madonna wondered aloud to a friend when Weird Al would turn ‘Like a Virgin’ into ‘Like a Surgeon,’ and word got back to Weird Al, and he did.”

But it’s safe to say it was never a romance. Yankovic has been married to his wife, Suzanne Yankovic—whom he met when she was a marketing executive at 20th Century Fox—since 2001. The two have a 19-year-old daughter, Nina.

Maybe someday we’ll get the super serious, super accurate Weird Al biopic, but personally, I hope this version of events becomes canon.