Joe Coscarelli

made or not successful i think it's probably the obvious answer which is that hip-hop has long been underrated for its uh commercial abilities uh and you know there's white executives uh in charge of largely white companies and i think that the you know that's just uh there's just there's just less um appetite uh you know i think the reason we get a lot of

movies about boomer icons is because a lot of boomers are making these decisions of what gets made.

And it stems all the way back to publishing.

A lot of these movies are based on books.

There are way more books about Bob Dylan than there are probably about all rappers put together.

So, you know, the source material is also severely lacking.

Well, I think you really put your finger on the fulcrum here, which is, is the musician or the musician's estate participating in the film?

I think if something is authorized, if something is collaborative, which is often the way that they get the rights to use the music, you know, to have a music biopic.

You need the big songs.

To have the big songs, you need the participation of whoever wrote and performed them.

And that often means they're going to have approval over the script.

They're going to have approval over the marketing.

Someone is going to be keeping a very close eye on this IP.

The workaround is to sort of fudge it.

Either you don't use the music.

There's a little scene, Jimi Hendrix biopic, in which Andre 3000 of Outkast plays him.

with no Jimi Hendrix music.

Instead, it has him covering the Beatles in front of the Beatles, which is something that really happened, but that's the sort of climactic moment because they don't have access to any actual Jimi songs.

I think movies that are really inspired by musicians or their stories but can composite a bunch of different acts from that same era and sort of skirt the rules of authorization...

with the understanding that that means they won't have the songs you know and love, can be really successful.