Bohemian Rhapsody stars, from left, Gwilym Lee, Rami Malek and Joe Mazzello. The film is nominated for a best picture Oscar and Malek is up for best actor. Photo / AP
Bohemian Rhapsody stars, from left, Gwilym Lee, Rami Malek and Joe Mazzello. The film is nominated for a best picture Oscar and Malek is up for best actor. Photo / AP
Kiwi writer Anthony McCarten is on the cusp of an Oscar hat-trick on the eve of today's awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
McCarten, 57, from New Plymouth, has written Oscar-winning roles for Eddie Redmayne and Gary Oldman, who both picked up the best actor award. McCarten's latest film, Bohemian Rhapsody, has earned a best actor nomination for Rami Malek, who played Queen singer Freddie Mercury.
"Not there yet, let's see how Rami does on the night, but it will be a nice achievement," McCarten said, perhaps understating things a little.
He's the king of the Hollywood biopic. His past two films — The Theory of Everything (starring Redmayne as Stephen Hawking) and Darkest Hour (featuring Oldman as Winston Churchill) — were nominated as best picture. Bohemian Rhapsody is also nominated.
"It's a nice little run." Yes, very. Bohemian Rhapsody is now the most successful biopic of all time, earning more than US$600 million ($877m) at the box office.
The film was critically slated, which is often the case with exhilarating movies, and featured a spectacular, teeth-sucking performance by Malek as Mercury.
"Rami went all-in, from the first day, and it was a privilege to watch an actor commit 100 per cent, body and soul," said McCarten. "He had this in common with Eddie Redmayne and Gary Oldman."
Hawking, Churchill and Mercury were all English, all larger than life.
McCarten said, "All wrote their will across the sky and stars. Each perceived a grand destiny for themselves and, from the first, refused to be daunted by the world or to succumb to self-doubt and instead moved through their lives measuring the power of the world to resist them ... Every actor needs a role to hit the heights."
McCarten worked briefly as a journalist. He turned his back on an unpromising career, and enrolled in the first year of the now-famous creative writing programme school initiated by Bill Manhire at Victoria University. He came to prominence as the co-writer of the successful 1987 stage play Ladies Night. He later wrote and directed two New Zealand films, but had no credits in Hollywood until he persuaded Stephen Hawking's widow to allow him to tell her husband's story.
Anthony McCarten's next project is another biopic, this time one about Sun Records genius Sam Phillips.
After The Theory of Everything (2014) and Darkest Hour (2017), he was brought in to work on Bohemian Rhapsody.
The film seemed dead in the water until McCarten came along. Numerous writers had been hired to try to bring the Queen story alive, but none had succeeded.
"One of the film's producers, Denis O'Sullivan, rang me and told me about the film's troubled history and the many attempts to get a script they could film, and he asked me if I was interested in trying to pull the sword from the stone. "I remember asking him to tell me the story of Freddie and Queen. When he'd finished I remember saying, 'What's the problem?' It was all there — diamonds lying there on the ground. All I had to do was pick them up."
McCarten won't be at the Oscars. He's busy in Memphis, working on his next biopic — of Sam Phillips, the Sun Records genius who discovered and produced Elvis Presley. It's set to star Leonardo diCaprio and is being produced by millionaire investor Steve Bing, and Mick Jagger. McCarten has recently been mooching around Los Angeles and Memphis with Jagger to discuss the film. Asked what it was like hanging with His Mickness, McCarten replied, "Really nice."
For full Oscars coverage, go to nzherald.co.nz/entertainment from 2pm.
