Fact, fiction and folk horror: a cross-genre experiment in music biopic screenwriting

The biopic, as George Custen suggests, is perhaps "the most maligned of all film genres" (2010, p. 11), routinely criticised for its formal impoverishment, predictability and, paradoxically, either rigid adherence to or deviation from historical fact. Many of these criticisms arise from the form's tendency to reiterate and reinforce standardised, conventional narrative myths about fame. Dennis Bingham (2010) cites contemporary efforts to creatively "interrogate, de-construct, reinvent and reinvigorate" the biopic, suggesting that the genre's charge should be to enter its subjects "into the pantheon of cultural mythology, one way or another" (p. 10), while Robert Rosenstone (1995) asserts that "On the screen, history must be fictional in order to be true!" (p. 70). This creative practice-based project thus re-visions the subgenre of the music biopic through the mythic, fictive lens of folk horror, an emerging genre that has proven highly versatile as a story form in an increasingly eclectic range of narrative contexts. The research asks: How might the fictional tropes of folk horror be harnessed to reimagine factual historical events in the music biopic screenplay? It takes as its test subject my 2004 screenplay Race With the Devil, a conventional music biopic based on the life of rock-and-roll icon Gene Vincent and his tragic association with fellow musician Eddie Cochran. The revised iteration of the screenplay resulting from this cross-genre research presents a counter-mythic reinterpretation of this factual story, that aims to deliver a more subjective, psychologically complex and 'truthful' portrait of its subject than the objective, 'historically accurate' depictions to which the genre often defaults. By creating a model for expanding the narrative potential of both the music biopic and folk horror genres through the disruption of their conventions and their respective audiences' expectations, this project opens up opportunities for future exploration by screenwriting practitioners working in both forms.