Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Almost Parodied Black Widow and Back to the Future

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, the award-nominated biopic of parody music king "Weird Al" Yankovic, almost featured nods to both Back to the Future and Black Widow in its final few minutes. Each of the two didn't happen for a slightly different reason, but both of them were discussed briefly on the commentary track for the film, which is now out on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD. While it was a creative decision to bail on the Back to the Future joke, the Black Widow nod might have happened if not for how expensive it is to actually get music clearances for a song as popular as "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

The movie ends with the performance of "Amish Paradise," Yankovic's 1996 parody of Coolio's "Gansta's Paradise." While Yankovic always seeks permission from the artists he is going to parody, Coolio went on to say after the song's release that he was unhappy with the way it trivialized the serious issues in "Gansta's Paradise." The beef was blown out of proportion by the media, and for years it was believed by the general public that Coolio "hated" both the song and Yankovic. In reality, the pair spoke privately about it shortly after Coolio's comments and it was fine. We asked Yankovic whether he considered playing up the urban legend of the feud for the purposes of the movie, and he said it was never really in the cards, but that there was a different Coolio joke that almost made it in.

"We could have gone that direction, but seeing as how the whole idea of having 'Amish Paradise' in the movie was a stretch -- I mean, Amish Paradise came out in 1996 and ostensibly the movie ends in 1985 -- we thought that was enough of breaking the verisimilitude already. We didn't want to extend that too much; we just wanted to have a little nod to having Coolio in the audience. And you probably heard in the commentary session that there was talk about doing the joke about [Coolio's cousin calling him during the performance and saying], 'Hey Coolio, you know that new sound you're looking for? Listen to this!'"

The "Listen to this" joke would have been an homage to a moment in Back to the Future, where Chuck Berry's cousin Marvin called him to play Marty McFly covering Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."

As far as the Marvel nod? On the commentary track, while the closing credits roll, Yankovic reveals that he had originally wanted a slow, emotionally-charged cover of his Nirvana parody "Smells Like Nirvana," parodying the Malia J cover of the original that played in Black Widow. The idea was to get somebody with a really impressive voice -- Yankovic recently name-dropped Adele in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter -- but it's over $100,000 just to get the license, even before the song is recorded.

"There are a few key songs on the movie, like the production pieces," Yankovic told ComicBook.com. "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."

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. The film is now available on digital and disc.