"Weird Al" Yankovic Explains How They Chose Which Songs Would Get In Weird

The king of parody songs told ComicBook.com there were a few he knew he couldn't leave out of his totally-accurate life story.

By Russ Burlingame

The Emmy-nominated film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, originally released exclusively on The Roku Channel, is out on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra UHD today. The film, which stars Daniel Radcliffe as "Weird Al" Yankovic, parodies the tropes of biopic movies, creating a hilariously fictionalized version of Yankovic's life. But, as with all music biopics, the filmmakers -- here director Eric Appel in consultation with Yankovic, who serves as a writer and producer -- had to boil down the artist's entire library into a handful of songs that they could squeeze into the movie's runtime. In the case of Yankovic, there were some other wrinkles, too -- like paying for clearances to songs that he parodied.

In the commentary track for the film, Yankovic and Appel mention at least a few ideas they had, which went unproduced due to the cost of music licensing...including a kind of brilliant idea for the closing credits. So when we had a chance to speak with Yankovic last week in support of Weird, we had to ask: which were the songs that were non-optional?

"There are a few key songs on the movie, like the production pieces," Yankovic explained. "We needed 'Eat It.' We needed 'I Love Rocky Road.' We needed 'Like a Surgeon.' 'Amish Paradise,' certainly. So there were a handful of performance pieces that we obviously knew that we needed, and a few that would have been nice...but needle drops from established artists are pretty expensive. I know the guys on The Knack, and they were nice enough to give us a pretty good rate on "My Sharona," but by and large, anytime you want to use a master recording that's not your own, it's a bit pricey. And we were a fairly low budget movie, and we couldn't afford anything that wasn't fairly cheap."

Yankovic had some help narrowing down the scope, simply because the movie technically ends in 1985. That means most songs -- other than "Amish Paradise," which was included toward the very end of the movie -- had to be based on songs Yankovic made in the early- to mid-1980s.

Here's the official synopsis for the film:

In Weird, Daniel Radcliffe is "Weird Al" Yankovic in the unexaggerated true story about the greatest musician and sex symbol of our time. With Evan Rachel Wood and Rainn Wilson.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story was originally released by Roku on The Roku Channel on November 4, 2022. It was embraced by critics and audiences alike and has since received numerous accolades including eight Primetime Emmy nominations. Winners will be announced at the 75th Primetime Emmy™ Awards in January 2024.

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Nominated for eight Primetime Emmy Awards and beloved by fans worldwide, the acclaimed biopic/parody mash-up stars Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, and an A-list cast of thousands. 

https://comicbook.com/movies/news/weird-the-al-yankovic-story-coming-to-blu-ray-and-dvd-in-december/#

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