WHEN I was a kid, my father who had my best interests at heart, and my brother who didn’t, made me watch “The Pride of The Yankees,” and “The Babe Ruth Story” on TV so often that it became a form of child abuse.
In fact, to this day, I immediately begin to slobber whenever I hear anyone say, “Today I am the luckiest man-man-man on the face of the earth-earth-earth.”
Decades after the speech and the movie, Gehrig’s speech has remained so famous that no one even dares say anything even remotely like it even when picking up a Nobel Prize.
My father told my brother and me that watching the lives of great people on the screen would inspire us. And while I never did point to the outfield when hitting a ball, these biopics did, in fact inspire me – to write well.
It inspired my brother to shoot apples off my head with his B-B gun.
Call me a miserable jaded witch (don’t even think about it!), but really, the life of Greg Brady (aka Barry Williams) just isn’t up there with say, the lives of The Babe, Gehrig, Edison, Madam Curie, or yes, even Ghandi.
You know, the lives deemed worthy of recreating before TV got into the act and allowed the genre (pretend I didn’t say that word, I beg you), to deteriorate into this season’s spate of idiot biopics.
For one thing, TV biopics never get it right. They use so much freaking bleach and detergent, these TV movies could have been created out of studio and personal PR press releases.
Remember the insanely boring “The Audrey Hepburn Story” where Hepburn didn’t have an affair with William Holden or anyone else?
I mean the woman didn’t even have sex before she gave birth according to them. “The Audrey Hepburn Story” was like what someone said about Doris Day: “I knew her before she was a virgin.”
At least Hepburn ostensibly was a great choice for a biopic. I mean, she was a kid resistance fighter during WWII who went on to become one of the great actresses, and then a fighter for children.
But what in God’s name was the possible justification for recreating the lives of Linda McCartney, John Denver, Barry Williams and – please, help me here – David Cassidy.
I mean, we’ve now degenerated into recreating the lives of celebrities! And then worse-white washing them.
Now you just need to be a celebrity or even just marry one.
Maybe the producers live in fear of being sued, because who believes this goody-goody nonsense?
I mean, did you really buy Linda McCartney sleeping with all those rock stars and still being the world’s best mom? Please! Do I look like I was born in Iowa?
My worst fear is that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The next generation of TV biopics promises to be the scariest yet.
Do we really need, 1) The life story of Natalie Cole and 2) does she really need to play herself?
Think of the doors this kind of thing opens. I live in fear of “The Drew Carey Story,” “The Lives of David Hyde-Pierce,” “Growing Thin: The Nanny Years,” “An Apple a Day: Our Lives as Starving ‘Friends.'”
Well, maybe a movie about anorexic TV stars that doesn’t star Meredeth Baxter as the mother might be worth an hour or two of my time.