It should be noted that “Weird” was adapted from the trailer for the fake film Appel released by Funny or Die in 2010. The fake trailer, starring Aaron Paul, uses all the drug-fueled benders commonly seen in Hollywood biopics but juxtaposed with Yankovic’s career, not just a quirky comedic musician, but also a very good human being. In developing his short into an actual feature, Appel wanted all of the whoppers left intact, and, indeed, gave himself plenty of creative license to make whatever he wanted about Yankovic’s life. The story he was about to tell was fake. Only the names are not changed to protect the innocent.
“Starting working on that trailer, we tried to reverse engineer a staring film with a fake trailer that was made 10 years earlier. And then we deviated from that and… Really, we were totally exposed, and the story took us to a different place. Obviously, we had a song we wanted to highlight. Dr. Demento’s relationship. But the way we described things wasn’t really what happened. I think I’m the first director in biographical history to not do any research on my subject at all.”
It would be hard for even the most puritanical of Yankovic to be angry at Al’s real-life changes, given how ridiculous they are. When the film states that Al wrote his 1996 hit “Amish Paradise” in 1984, it’s easy to turn a blind eye.
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