What the world needs now is a biopic or Netflix series about Adolf Hitler that’s really nice about him. You know, fully authorised and endorsed by the family. Though, come to think of it, I’m not sure how pro-Hitler the rest of the Hitlers currently are. Or if there are any of them around. My suspicion is that any remaining Hitlers have probably gone the way of the Dahls in terms of disassociating themselves from their famous relative’s discreditable antics.
I felt a bit sorry for the Dahl family last month when they issued their apology for Roald’s antisemitic statements. The fact that they have so much financially riding on preventing Roald Dahl from being posthumously cancelled doesn’t mean that they don’t sincerely abhor his antisemitism. Statistically speaking, it’s quite unlikely that they’re secret Jew-haters only claiming to disagree with Roald for reasons of financial self-interest. It’s overwhelmingly probable that their consciences and financial self-interest are in serendipitous alignment, like when people don’t give money to tramps in case they spend it on drink.
Unfortunately though, whatever the family think or say, the guy who wrote the books didn’t apologise. It’s a pisser for the Dahls that the only Dahl who’s an antisemite is also the only Dahl to have left a hugely lucrative literary inheritance. Personally, I’m happy to buy and read Roald Dahl’s books – the stories don’t seem antisemitic – but I’m not sure I’d be so sanguine about personally funding a new multimillion-pound screen adaptation of one of those books and that would be primarily a financial self-interest rather than a conscience thing. But I suppose I could always cast Johnny Depp in the lead and hope that he and Dahl cancel each other out.
Obviously the Hitlers are in a very different situation. I don’t know what revenues there are, but I doubt they’re reputationally dependent in the same way. More in the opposite way. You’d have to be a neo-Nazi to want one of Adolf’s paintings on the wall. Frankly, the fact that he painted them is the only good thing about them. Do I mean good? Notable. The paintings are very shit, but Hitler is very famous, is what I’m saying. For the record, I don’t think Hitler is good.
Nevertheless, a biopic that made him look good might be instructive, particularly if it contained nothing that was provably false. You could just make him look good by omission: so he’s painting in Vienna, he’s fighting bravely in the first world war, he’s having a beer in a jolly beer hall (no need to see the actual putsch), he’s written a book (gloss over the details, but it sells well), he’s kind to animals, he’s predominantly veggie, he commissions the autobahns and then cut to the bunker where it looks like he’s getting Parkinson’s. Poor guy.
The reason I’m so keen on this truth-packed misrepresentation is that I’m absolutely sick of people asking whether dramas based on real events are “the truth” or not – as if it’s binary, like whether or not you’ve got Covid. The topic was in the news again last week because of the furore over the forthcoming David Bowie biopic, Stardust, which Bowie’s friends, family and devotees don’t like and didn’t authorise. As music journalist Michael Oberman, whose brother was Bowie’s American publicist, told a newspaper: “I am portrayed in this film. My brother Ron is portrayed in this film. My mother is portrayed in this film. None of the portrayals are accurate. In fact, they are demeaning.”
But the fact that they’re demeaning doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not accurate. They could easily be both! Is it the inaccuracies or the accuracies that the Bowie loyalists primarily object to, I wonder? Johnny Flynn, who pretends to be Bowie in the film (and he isn’t Bowie, which surely proves that the film is all lies!), has defended it, saying it’s “journalistic in tone” and attains an “objectivity” by virtue of “not being in bed with the estate”. Arguable.
He also defends the fact that the film hasn’t been allowed to use any of Bowie’s music: “Nobody’s interested in me singing David Bowie songs, just like I’m not interested in Rami Malek singing Queen songs.” Rami Malek played Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody and made it interesting enough to win the best actor Oscar. But maybe Flynn has higher aspirations.
Anyway, Flynn’s going to be doing other things that Bowie did that are much more interesting than singing his songs. Admin and meetings and… singing other people’s songs, maybe? Abba or George Formby. Or TV themes! That would be an interesting juxtaposition. I’d love to hear Flynn’s Bowie perform some Dennis Waterman classics or a hummed approximation of Ski Sunday. Still, it’s ironic that the Bowie estate itself has prevented the film from representing Bowie doing the one thing he unquestionably did: singing his own songs.
It was the recent series of The Crown that kicked off this whole round of stupid discussion and gave the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, the chance to show that it’s not just the departments of housing, health, international trade, foreign affairs, home affairs and education that are led by complete idiots. “[The Crown] is a beautifully produced work of fiction, so as with other TV productions, Netflix should be very clear at the beginning it is just that,” he told a newspaper.
I hardly know where to begin. Do “other TV productions” do that? Does EastEnders or Midsomer Murders? I was in a sitcom called Peep Show – I don’t think we ever specified that it was fictional. And The Crown isn’t primarily fictional. Obviously it can’t all be true; no one can know what those people really said to one another in those private rooms. So it’s bound to involve speculation and invention and dramatic licence and therefore it’s inevitably informed by the opinions and perspectives of the writers. But that’s different from wholly invented fiction and it’s different from raw CCTV footage.
It’s all a bit complicated. But it isn’t new – Shakespeare did it loads. But perhaps my fond biopic of Hitler will help the culture secretary and others realise that, in drama, truth is more than just the absence of lies.
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