Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Teaser: Someone Get Daniel Radcliffe An Accordion
We've waited one more minute at the hardware store, our couch potato hearts thumbing through cable TV reruns of "George of the Jungle," idly watching "Porky's" for the 27th time this week, all in anticipation of the trailer for The Roku Channel's "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story," and our patience, dear friends, had paid off. The teaser for the upcoming biopic is finally here, and audiences can now see actor Daniel Radcliffe in full Yankovic regalia (glasses, mustache, full poofy hair, Hawaiian shirts) playing the biggest star to emerge from the comedy/music scene since the heyday of Spike Jones through the days of Tom Lehrer.
While "Weird Al" Yankovic certainly warrants a biography — his decades-long body of work has never dipped in quality, and he has become the measuring stick by which all future comedy/parody music will be measured — there was some question among Yankovic's many fans as to how serious "Weird" would be. Would it tell a straightforward tale of a nerdy kid from Lynwood, CA whose parents bought him an accordion for his birthday from a door-to-door salesman? Would it dramatize, documentary style, his first recordings of "My Bologna" in the men's bathroom at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo? Would it trace his rise to fame via recordings submitted to KMET's "The Dr. Demento Show?" Would it show a behind-the-scenes montage of Yankovic operating as a guest VJ in the early days of MTV? Would it trace the hardship of "Polka Party's" bad reception by fans and critics? His famous visit to Michael Jackson to ask permission to write and perform "Eat It?" His phone conversation with Kurt Cobain about "Smells Like Nirvana?" The heartbreaks of "UHF's" crappy box office, or the rejection of "The Weird Al Show" on NBC?
From the trailer, it looks like "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" will more resemble — at least in parts — a parody of the artist's life along the lines of the jokey fake preview "Weird" that ran on Funny or Die in 2013; less an exposé of the Yankovic's life, and more a parody of music biopics.
The trailer
"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" was partly overseen by Funny or Die, and this trailer appears to be the joke from the 2013 short taken to feature-length. Radcliffe plays Yankovic, with Rainn Wilson as Barrett "Dr. Demento" Hansen, Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, and Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson as Nick and Mary, Al's parents.
This isn't the first time Yankovic has been involved in a jokey, semi-real documentary version of his life. In 1985, CBS Home Video put out the film "The Compleat Al" on VHS, telling the story of Al's upbringing, the auditions to be in his bad, and fictionalized versions as to how his "look" was discovered, and how he met Jackson at his mansion (in Al's version of things, Jackson actually is a werewolf). Since that mockumentary was made 37 years ago, however, there is a lot more ground to cover, as Al continued to work until the present day.
"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" will be released on The Roku Channel later this fall.