“Weird Al” Yankovic Explains Why You Want to Win His “Biopic” on Blu-ray

Liz Shannon Miller
·5 min read

The post “Weird Al” Yankovic Explains Why You Want to Win His “Biopic” on Blu-ray appeared first on Consequence.

Exciting news: Consequence is giving away 4K UHD/Blu-ray copies of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story to three lucky readers! To enter, use the widget below or click here. Entries will be closed January 6th, 2024. 

“Weird Al” Yankovic is aware that there are some folks who, after watching Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, will think it’s 100% true. “They think I got assassinated in 1985. I mean, there are those people out there,” he laughs while speaking to Consequence.

Yankovic has been working in the realm of parody for long enough to know that that’s just the way some humans are. “The problem with doing any kind of irony or satire is there are going to be some people that just take it at face value. I learned that on social media; no matter how sarcastic I’m being or how obviously ironic, somebody will think I’m being completely honest — that I’m telling it just like it is. So I know that there’s some people that watch the whole movie and think the whole thing’s true.”

Complicating things is the fact that Weird, which is now available for on Blu-ray and DVD thanks to Shout! Factory, does include a few kernels of truth about the life of our finest creator of spoof songs (played in the film by Daniel Radcliffe). “We wanted people to ideally watch the movie not knowing what kind of movie it was, thinking that maybe it’s a real honest-to-goodness biopic,” Yankovic says. “So we start off fairly normal and semi-believable… And then it gets crazier and crazier and by Act 3, I’m fighting off the drug cartels singlehandedly.”

Yankovic does hope that the events of the film don’t “become my Wikipedia entry somewhere down the line, where they change all the real facts to make it like the movie. But I think there’s enough people that know the real story that I’m not that concerned.”

However, Yankovic notes, “We also thought it would be good to throw in things that seem like we made them up, but they’re actually true. Like, the door-to-door salesman [who sold my parents an accordion] is one example. And also the fact that I recorded my first single in a public restroom, that is also actually true. There are a few things like that, that seem like they could have been fiction, but they’re actually part of my real story. We just thought that was important, to further confuse people.”

Win Weird: The Al Yankovic Story on 4K UHD/Blu-ray

What will definitely confuse the people who think Yankovic died in 1985 is that the movie’s physical release includes an audio commentary track featuring him and director Eric Appel. These sorts of audio commentaries feel like they occur increasingly rarely these days, but as Yankovic says, both he and Appel “love DVD commentaries — we’re old school, and we really miss not being able to hear them on our favorite movies. So that was something we both always really wanted to make happen. I remember back in the days when Netflix would send DVDs in the mail, I would always listen to the commentary, because I just found it fascinating. That should be something that they offer digitally as well.”

Yankovic says that he’s re-listened to the commentary since its original recording a few months ago: “It was fun. Eric and I both had a lot to say, and we tried to cram so much into the commentary… We could have done two separate commentaries. We both had so many things we wanted to get off our chests.”

The film’s physical release means that viewers will be able to appreciate all the better the film’s wild cameos, including a pool party sequence featuring what feels like every famous comedian working in Los Angeles and Yankovic’s own appearance as a mean record executive.

“I enjoy doing cameos,” he says. “For me, the more random, the better. When I do it, I really like it when it’s like, ‘What’s Weird Al doing here?’ Like, The Naked Gun, when I walk off the plane, that to me is the perfect cameo — I’m the last person you expect to be walking off that plane. So when we were coming up with the the pool party scene, I just enjoyed all the cognitive dissonance — like, that’s Conan O’Brien, but it’s Andy Warhol. It’s all these competing things happening in your brain, which really amused me.”

When Weird was first greenlit by The Roku Channel, Yankovic says “there was no guarantee there was ever going to be a physical product, because making original movies was pretty new for Roku. So we’re going through a lot of firsts with them.”

Yankovic notes that the home video release “is great for people who don’t want to watch the movie with commercial interruptions, because up until now, that was really the only way you could see the movie.” More importantly, though, “It’s permanent. So when our power grid goes out entirely, you’ll still be able to sit in your cave and turn your generator on and watch the movie.”

Adds Yankovic, imagining that future: “‘Gather around the fire friends, and learn the true story.'”

Thanks to Shout! Factory, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is available now on 4K UHD/Blu-ray. You can also stream it with ads on The Roku Channel. Click here or use the widget above for your chance to win a copy of the film.

“Weird Al” Yankovic Explains Why You Want to Win His “Biopic” on Blu-ray
Liz Shannon Miller

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