Being a dork who finds herself drawn to even bad movies about music, I’m intrigued by this movie “Cadillac Records”, and by “Cadillac”, they mean “Chess”. It’s fictionalized, so they changed the name from Chess Records. I can think of another movie that does this—-”Grace of My Heart” borrowed heavily from Carol King’s life and her move from being a behind-the-scenes songwriter to up on stage. It allows you to take liberties, though from the IMDB listing, it looks like they didn’t change anyone’s name from real life.
Of course, the problem with movies like these is that your actors are trying to play people who are, in real life, usually full of verve, charisma, and of course massive talent. It seems, from the lack of success out there, that it’s really hard to embody that—-you either fall short of the real life person’s presence, or you pull a Dennis Quaid and turn in a performance that implies that charisma is a form of mental illness, the bizarre choice he made when playing Jerry Lee Lewis in “Great Balls Of Fire”. Naturally, the temptation is to bring in people who already embody the presence that the original great musicians had, i.e. to bring in today’s music icons to play yesterday’s music icons. As an added bonus, you get someone who can perform.
But that also has a massive drawback: Most iconic musicians have a signature style, and replacing one with another is disconcerting. Which is why all eyes are on Beyoncé Knowles, who has been tapped to play Etta James. No one’s laughing up their sleeve or anything. Beyoncé did a great job singing James’ signature ballad “At Last” at Fashion Rocks. But there’s a lot more to James than songs like that. Check out this 1966 performance of “Something’s Got A Hold On Me”: