Pauly Shore Thinks His Richard Simmons Biopic “Could Save Lives”
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The post Pauly Shore Thinks His Richard Simmons Biopic “Could Save Lives” appeared first on Consequence.
Pauly Shore admits to Consequence that when people first started mentioning the similarities between him and fitness icon Richard Simmons, the idea of playing the man in a biopic wasn’t something he imagined. “It was more like, I don’t want to say a joke, but it was more lighthearted. And then it just started to snowball.”
Said snowball just brought the comedian and ’90s icon to a place filled with snow — the 2024 Sundance Film Festival — after making headlines with the news that he would play Simmons in two different projects: A completed short film by viral filmmaker Jake Lewis, and a feature-length biopic currently in search of writers.
Shore tracks the beginning of people’s interest in him playing Simmons to a series of YouTube videos he made in 2020 called Sweating With the Wiez: “It was me working out in my backyard with a girlfriend — basically straight to the camera ‘Hey, let’s work out, da dah, dah dah.’ That’s the thing that catapulted the online chatter, then memes started popping up [saying] ‘Pauly Shore should play Richard Simmons.’ That’s when I started digging in and putting it out there, and then that kind of took off.”
Subsequently, Shore made a deal with the Wolper Organization for a feature-length biopic about Simmons, while at the same time agreeing to star in filmmaker Jake Lewis’s short. The two projects are technically separate, but came together “simultaneously,” Shore says. “The way that it works is that everyone works together — Jake supports us, we support him. Right now in the other room, Jake is actually sitting on the lap of producer Mark Wolper. So it’s one big kumbaya story.”
(I confess to Shore that I’m not sure if he’s joking or not, about the lap-sitting. “No, I’m being serious. We all just had lunch,” he says.)
The short film, The Court Jester, is not an official Sundance selection, but played at a Park City club called The Cabin on Friday, Jan. 19th, at a party hosted by Shore during the festival. The full short is now streaming online, featuring a fictionalized appearance by Richard Simmons on Ellen Degeneres’ now-defunct talk show (with Degeneres played by impersonator Tamra Brown).
To play Simmons in the short, Shore embarked on “the typical research, which is watching all [Simmons’] stuff. And I started reading his memoir, but didn’t finish it.” The biggest challenge, he notes, wasn’t learning the dance choreography “Richard” performs on Ellen, but learning the monologue from the second half of the film, in which “Richard” gives a young producer (Jesse Heiman) a pep talk. “That was the hardest, because you gotta learn a lot of stuff. A lot of dialogue.”
The choreography also needed a lot of attention, though, because “it was very important that when I danced, I didn’t dance like Pauly, I danced like Richard. So I had a dance coach help me watch Richard and come up with the moves, like The Scoop and stuff like that, all those very ’80s aerobics moves.”
Having the short film out there, Shore says, helps support the feature project because “If I’m a buyer, I’m like, ‘Okay, well, what’s Pauly Shore going to do?’ Because I’d have the same kind of concern. But [The Court Jester] is a jumping-off point of where this could go, and it’s 10 minutes. So that’s my hope, that the buyers look at this and they are intrigued.”
For the feature version, Shore says that “every project I do, I do it the same way that I always do it, which is slowly getting into it. I think I’m on a trajectory of getting deeper with [Richard Simmons] and learning more about him. You know, finishing the memoir, and learning more about why he did certain things.”
Right now, the producers for the pending biopic are looking into writers for the feature script. “We’re gonna take some meetings at some agencies and see if CAA or UTA or any of these agents have some writers that get excited and have the same vision — that want to do something special,” Shore says. “It’s just one step at a time.”
Shore plans to be a part of the writing process, which he says will explore the kinds of questions “you ask yourself as an actor and when you’re writing a script — like, why did he all of a sudden become this workout guy? Was he teased as a kid? Was he chubby? There’s always got to be a reason. So that’s the next phase, getting deeper into who this guy is and why he did what he did and what was his message for mental health and getting people into shape, and why was he so into that?”
Once they get to the point of looking for a director, Shore says they’re hoping for “someone like a Little Miss Sunshine [directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris]. More of the dramatic side as opposed to the comedic side. I’ll bring the comedy, but we want the tone to be very real and not silly. That’s what we’re going for.”
After the initial announcement that Shore would be playing Simmons, Simmons himself did make a public statement: “You may have heard they may be doing a movie about me with Pauly Shore. I have never given my permission for this movie. So don’t believe everything you read.”
Screenshot via Facebook
While Simmons’ statement is in line with his retreat from the spotlight in recent years, Shore hasn’t given up hope that the fitness guru might change his mind about the film. “If he comes on board down the line, then he does. If not, I want him just to be proud of what it is that we’re doing here. I don’t want him to feel that we did anything that doesn’t make him feel comfortable.”
Continues Shore, “It’s a free world, and he’s allowed to not want to be a part of something. And I want to honor that and I want to respect that. But I also know that his story is huge, and that his message is even bigger. And I think now, more than ever… I mean, you know how messed up the world is right now. Things are just a mess. And I think with mental health, and I think with helping people, this movie could actually save lives. Because there are a lot of younger people that’d be like, ‘Oh my God, this is great. Like, who is this guy?’ And they’ll research him [and find out that] this guy really cared about people, and his message was about saving lives. I think that this could happen, that it could go there.”
Also, Shore notes, “He might be just saying that. I mean, people say things all the time that they don’t mean. Maybe he’s just feeling a little overwhelmed with everything, and six months from now it’ll change. I just know I’m not a vindictive guy, and that’s never been me, which is why my movies have resonated for so many years. If you know anything about my films, they all have that message and that heart. And that’s why, I think, people are rooting for me to play this guy.”
The Court Jester is available now on YouTube.
Pauly Shore Thinks His Richard Simmons Biopic “Could Save Lives”
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