Making a movie about an iconic musician can be perilous – there are so many stakeholders with differing versions of events, and so many diehard fans looking for a perfect representation of their hero, that many music biopics end up being sanitised and glib. Look no further than Back to Black, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic, for a perfect example of a film that attempts to satisfy every involved party and ended up offending a lot of fans and critics instead.
Movies about fake musicians, on the other hand, tend to have a lot more to say about making art, the struggles of fame and the music industry than most biopics. Although many of them are thinly veiled studies of real celebrities, the freedom offered by creating a character – such as Blake, the Kurt Cobain stand-in in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days – can allow for endless interrogation into the mindsets and motivations of artists. Rock mockumentaries, on the other hand, allow for the kind of true-to-life skewering of ludicrous music industry practices that could never really be shown on tape. From pop industry satires to elliptical, occasionally outright frustrating art films, here are some of the best films about fake musicians.
