Joe Coscarelli

A muse getting left behind, perhaps.

You were also just doing Walk Hard beat for beat.

You were reading the script of Walk Hard, the er parody of a musician biopic.

Yes.

Which many thought had invalidated the need for any future biopics, and yet here we are.

I have an economic argument, which is that I think these movies that you're talking about came in a fallow period for the record business.

This was like the sort of end of the CD era, right?

Music sales peak in 1999, 2000.

File sharing comes, you know, everything is very...

Now, now, now.

And these movies are always a good way for the people who own this music to point back to the catalog, especially for a new generation, and say, hey, like, ever heard of this guy, Johnny Cash?

Like, Ray Charles?

Like, pretty cool cats.

You know, go buy these box sets.

And estates of dead musicians combined with the rights holders or licensors in the record business can sort of come together as a, you know, a conglomerate and say, how do we best sell this icon both to super fans, people who already love them, and introduce their music to new audiences?

So, you know, Ray Charles, the end of his life, he was

winning Grammy Awards that were controversial.

And I remember as a teenager at that time when Ray Charles was being fetid in this way that felt very manufactured to, you know, a cynical teenager.

And I was rejecting all of this stuff out of hand.

And I was saying, like...