Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Cut A Hilarious Dating Montage Between Weird Al And Madonna [Exclusive]
One of the funniest inventions of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" is the notion of Madonna, played wonderfully by Evan Rachel Wood, romantically glomming onto Daniel Radcliffe's Weird Al to try and get him to parody one of her songs, thus raising her level of fame to the stratosphere. This version of Madonna serves as several archetypes that appear throughout the majority of music biopics. She is simultaneously the intense first love that ends up turning sour, the bad influence who introduces Al to the destructive vices of show business, and the parasitic user of a celebrity to further herself. Some could see it as a bit of anti-Madonna hate, but Wood's portrayal of Madonna doesn't resemble the real woman in any way. It's all just a bit of fun.
Something I love about how the relationship is dramatized is how quickly the two become inseparable. Al immediately falls for her and is ready to give everything he has to satisfy her. They meet, they have sex, and they are an item. Well, as it turns out, the initial plan was to see more of their courtship. We were meant to see a sprawling, sure-to-be hilarious montage of the two falling in love. However, that did not end up in the final film. In fact, when it came time to make the movie, director Eric Appel had to jettison the entire sequence before shooting began.
Not enough time or money
"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" had a minuscule budget and was shot in just 18 days. The shoot was so short that Aaron Paul, who played Weird Al in the Funny or Die short the film is based on, was set to make a cameo but contracted COVID and could not recover in time to shoot. Because of this crunch, the elaborate Weird Al and Madonna love montage ended up on the chopping block. Director and co-writer Eric Appel told /Film's Ethan Anderton about the tough decision to abandon the sequence:
"There was a fun dating montage between Al and Madonna that we ended up, just for time and budget purposes, we had to lose, which was like, they're on tandem bikes, they're feeding bread to ducks, they're drinking a milkshake together in a diner, and Al puts a dollop of whipped cream on Madonna's nose, and she cold cocks him. Then he's got a steak on his eye, they're at a butcher shop laughing about it. But it was just too much. It would've taken a whole day, a day and change probably, to shoot a sequence that would've ended up being one minute long, so we had to lose it."
The montage may have been incredibly funny, as the rest of the movie is, but I am actually a little glad it didn't come to fruition. The absurd dating montage was already perfected back in 1988 with "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" between Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley, which included the brilliant joke of them walking out of Oliver Stone's "Platoon" cackling. It's a comedic beat we know and expect, and the familiar beats here should be from the biopic, not other comedies. Ultimately, the right path prevailed.