Obituaries as film
I started this blog entry reflecting upon an interview I did with an old high school friend who is studying film at New York University.
I have known Dan since the seventh grade, and I don’t think a school day went by that he didn’t make some sort of movie reference to whatever it was that we happened to be studying—French grammar, U.S. history, the stock market in economics. You name it, Dan referenced it.
So it was no surprise that he brought up the film Citizen Kane when discussing obituaries.
“Citizen Kane is basically an obituary about this Charles Foster Kane character that’s lived and died, warts and all. That’s an interesting text to me and I would look for something similar in obituaries.”
For a while there at the beginning of the decade, the biopic was as prevalent in theaters as celebrity-dancing competitions are on television. The Aviator, Ray, Walk the Line, Ali, Kinsey, Cinderella Man and a slew of other biographical films all came out before 2005.
This research project has us thinking about what would attract a younger, more diverse audience to Legacy.com, and to obituaries in general. Are movies the answer?
The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens with a young Howard Hughes being warned of germs by his mother, which we can assume leads to his obsession with germs and other compulsions. The audience also sees Hughes’ triumphs as a movie director and a man about town.
Jamie Foxx’s starring role as Ray Charles in the 2004 film, Ray, tells the story of the great musician, his fight against segregation and his battle with drug addiction.
Walk the Line follows a similar plot, chronicling the life of Johnny Cash, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, and the Oscar-winning performance of Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash.
There are always inconsistencies between real-life and the film version of a person’s history. However, these are three examples of well-received, popular obituaries, produced by Hollywood, instead of newspapers.
© 1941 RKO/Turner Entertainment, via Wikipedia