How Weird: The Al Yankovic Story pulled off its cameo-crammed pool party

Think back to 1980s when you became famous and immediately recognized for one look. It was a Hawaiian shirt, bushy mustache and long, curled hair. Now imagine it’s the present, and you’re watching someone else famous dress up in that outfit for a movie that re-creates every fashion choice you made 40 years ago. That’s something “Weird Al” Yankovic faced with Strange: The Al Yankovic Story, the Roku Channel’s faux biopic about his life and work, expanding on a Funny or Die joke trailer, and starring the Harry Potter movies’ Daniel Radcliffe in the title role. Is it possible to do that?

If you’re actually Weird Al, you don’t sweat it, because your ’80s look never really went away. “It’s a look I’m still familiar with,” Yankovic told Polygon in an interview ahead of Weird’s release. “Because it’s the look that, like, a thousand people dress up as for Halloween. I see it on my Twitter feed every year, little kids still dressing up like ’80s Al. So that’s something I am continually bombarded with.”

Still, he says it was “very odd to revisit this point in my career,” even though he knew it was coming — he and director Eric Appel co-wrote the script together, so there weren’t a lot of surprises in how he was portrayed. He just found it strange “to see some of these moments re-created, even though some of them are obviously very heightened.”

His biggest mistake was re-recording the songs he had recorded in his early days and putting them into a studio instead of performing at home or on radio. “I mean, to go back in the studio and record ‘Another One Rides the Bus’ — that was never recorded in a studio,” Yankovic says. “The master recording of that was from a live performance on the Dr. Demento radio show, so I’d never actually gone into a studio to record that until I did it for this movie.”

Polygon recently sat down with Yankovic, Daniel Radcliffe, and director Eric Appel to talk about the movie — how it was conceived, what went into the pool scene featuring Jack Black, Conan O’Brien, Emo Philips, and Paul F. Tompkins in cameos as familiar celebrities, and how much they’re hoping Madonna can take a joke.

The interview was edited to be concise and clear.

Image: The Roku Channel

Polygon: The question of comedy is funny.

Eric Appel I think it’s instinctual. I don’t really think much about it. This movie is an example of how I see it. [we had]Dramatize it: Let the drama unfold, and let comedy emerge from the absurdity that something bizarre is being done completely straight.

“Weird Al” Yankovic: I’ll co-sign that I don’t want to dissect the frog. I can’t define what makes comedy funny. But in this particular case, like Eric said, the comedy is still coming from surprise, but it’s rooted in doing something very grounded and real, and having it take certain directions that you wouldn’t expect.

Daniel Radcliffe: And I definitely think I’m the least qualified out of the three here to make a strong opinion on why something is funny. When I was growing up, comedy was what interested me the most. This was what I watched the most. And I think I’ve just been really lucky to get to work with a bunch of really, really funny people in different ways, and just try and learn from them.

Appel: I’ve described this film as feeling like a Weird Al song: You think you’re gonna hear the song, but the words are different. A dramatic biopic, one of the award-season films that we wanted to be like. However, the words may be different.

Yankovic: That’s a good comparison. Because that’s the tack I take for a lot of my parodies — we try to re-create it as closely as possible, and emulate the original production, so if you weren’t paying attention, you might think it was the actual song. Then it takes a sharp left turn, and you’re going, Wait a minute. That’s not right.

Was there any creative value in adhering to biopic patterns so closely?

Appel: It was a fun idea that I thought at the beginning. But I think the approach to this one in particular — I wanted to do something a little more unexpected. I didn’t just want to do a straight, down-the-middle parody of a specific biopic. I wanted to take the entire genre —And not even just musical biopics, I wanted to draw from fictional biopics like Forrest Gump and Boogie NightsThen, of course all the rock biopics. All of them have the same story beats. [the subject]It is inevitable that you will hit rock bottom and rise from the ashes. There was an appeal to all of those beats but in surprising and unexpected ways. So you’re not just watching a parody of a biopic, you’re just watching a bizarre biopic.

Image: The Roku Channel

What went into the decision to build it so much around parental disapproval, and Weird Al’s relationship with Madonna?

Yankovic: Eric and me had many conversations about the best tropes to use in our movie. The parent theme kept coming up in biopic after biopic. Even though I had supportive parents who were very kind and loving in real life, it was necessary to portray a parent that didn’t approve of my son. So that became the main dramatic beat of the movie — I’m trying to gain my father’s approval. That kind of drama tension is essential for the film to succeed. So we made a decision: FewYou have the right to take liberties wherever you are.

Appel: The process involved making the film feel unexpected, while giving the audience payoffs early on. Like when you start a sequence, you’re like, Was it happening? And by the end of it, you’re like, This was the only way it could happen.All of this was challenging, but it ended up being a lot of fun and very rewarding.

Radcliffe: This film seems very well planned. Pablo Escobar’s seeding is very prominent in this film. You will find little moments like this in every movie. It’s really well-written.

Yankovic: I’ll tell you a secret — one of the reasons Eric wanted to put those seeds in is so the studio wouldn’t make us cut out the whole Colombia sequence. He said, “That’s the first thing they’re gonna want to lose. They’ll take out that whole section. So we’ll put it through the whole movie, so they can’t take it out.”

Appel: So it’d still be unexpected, but they’d be like, “Oh, yeah, OK, they were building to that.”

Was there ever any question about having Daniel sing Al’s songs, instead of lip-syncing?

Yankovic: It was an issue we pondered for a long time. Eric and myself felt an ounce of regret when we first heard Daniel sing. I mean, we knew he was a great singer — he’s a Broadway star. But [on the set], he would sing along with the pre-recorded tracks, and Eric and I would look at each other and go, “Did we make a mistake here?” The trouble always was that it’s a biopic thing for people to be lip-syncing, because it’s good. Rami Malek famously performed it in Bohemian Rhapsody, and we just thought, “That’s kind of the joke here. That’s part of the joke.” But man, Daniel would have killed it either way.

Radcliffe: That’s really, really kind. But I think it’s very funny — I get a kick every time I start “My Bologna,” and my mouth opens, and I see your voice coming out of it. This is what I love.

Appel: And people still ask, “Is that Daniel? Is he singing?”

Radcliffe: I think it’s so obviously Al. But I have been asked by a few people, “Is that you? I thought it was!” And I’m like, “No!”

Yankovic: What I’ve seen online from people reacting to the trailers is a lot of “That is totally auto-tuned!” No, actually, just lip-sync.

I noticed even The New York Times couldn’t get anybody from Madonna’s camp to comment on her role as the film’s biggest villain. Are you aware of her reaction to this character or any other information?

Yankovic: Nope! [laughs]

Appel: Absolutely nothing! It’s just that I really hope she enjoys it. She will, I believe. It’s pretty funny.

Radcliffe: It’s not like we made a really serious movie in which she is this character. This film has insane people. Evan, in my opinion, is insane. [Rachel Wood]Madonna is an extraordinary artist. Madonna may have seen it, and she might just feel the same. Yeah, cool. I can’t wait to see what she does with my life. That’s great.

How did Al know he was being cast?

Yankovic: This was a part of my original Funny or Die role. I can’t remember why.

Appel: I think the most fun thing about it is that Al gets to play a character who’s mean to the movie version of himself.

Yankovic: It’s a very self-aware thing, because in the movie, there are actually jokes about it being me playing Tony Scotti. It’s also sort of an oblique reference to like — wasn’t Mike Myers in Bohemian RhapsodyIs he a more self-aware version than he is?

Appel: It was a little confusing on set, directing Al, and not knowing — I’m like, “I have a note for Al,” and two people look up. They were called Al Junior and Al Senior by our editor. “You want to see different takes of Al Senior here?”

Image via The Roku Channel

How did you put it together? Boogie Nights parody scene at Dr. Demento’s house? How did you decide who would be there, and who they’d play?

Yankovic: We had the script so that we could know the character roles. That scene was cast by me. After going through my contacts, I made a list with all the people I knew who might be interested in it. I then sent some emails. Thankfully, we were shooting in LA — originally, the plan was to shoot in Atlanta, because of the tax breaks, I think. Roku was able to increase the budget so we could shoot in LA. This meant that many of my friends, who might have had an hour or two that afternoon, could travel into the Valley to be part of the crazy pool scene.

Radcliffe: In terms of those references — I found out on this press tour that the pool-party scene is from Boogie Nights. So there’ve definitely been some references I fully did not get until right now.

So you started off with “We’re going to have Salvador Dalí and Frank Zappa at the same party”? The discussion wasn’t ever “What ’80s art-world celebrity does Conan O’Brien look like?”

Yankovic: It was not at first. That was the only thing that mattered. Once we got the green signal, we started playing mix-and match. Like, “Oh, who works? Here’s the people we need, who’s gonna play what?”

Appel: However, it was fun. When we were writing it, coming up with all those personalities at the party, we were like, “Let’s pack it with people.” I think there was a version of the script that probably had like two dozen more characters referenced, but then we were like, “All right, we only have six hours to shoot this.” I think we had a version with Steve Martin in a white suit with an arrow through his head, and Cheech and Chong having a conversation.