Trivia / Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

• Ability over Appearance: Despite Daniel Radcliffe being significantly shorter than Al and not having much facial resemblance to him, Al personally chose him because he thought he had the perfect energy and right sensibilities for the role. This was largely thanks in part to when Radcliffe was on The Graham Norton Show and sang Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" from memory. Of course, the fact that the movie's star is at least a foot shorter than the person he's portraying doesn't exactly hurt the film's overall ridiculous and parodic nature either.
• All-Star Cast: The Latin American Spanish dub is quite full of well-known veteran voice actors in the cast, especially considering the film's status as a Roku Original and the fact "Weird Al" Yankovic isn't well-known outside the U.S.: Víctor Ugarte ("Weird Al" Yankovic), Humberto Solórzano (Nick Yankovic), Romina Marroquín Payró (Madonna), Arturo Mercado Jr. (Ben Scotti), Raúl Anaya (Tony Scotti), Edson Matus (Steve), Alejandro Orozco (Bermuda), Javier Rivero (Wolfman Jack), Moises Ivan Mora (Pablo Escobar and Pee-Wee Herman). Eduardo Garza (Johnny Barf), Jesse Conde (The manager), Alejandra de la Rosa (Mama Bear) and others.
• Absurdly Short Production Time: Roku only budgeted for 18 days of principal production (Daniel Radcliffe noted that it took longer to shoot single scenes for the Harry Potter movies). As a result, everything needed to be scripted out in detail and rehearsed extensively beforehand to make sure no time was wasted during filming.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Daniel Radcliffe, as a fan of "Weird Al" himself, needed almost no convincing to take the part, and is incredibly proud of the fact that he got to have accordion lessons from Al, as mentioned below, to make his playing convincing on film.
  • All of the Celebrity Cameos in the movie fall under this trope. For the pool party scene, Al simply sent an email to his friends asking if they'd want to spend a day shooting it, and the results speak for themselves.
  • Lin-Manuel Miranda didn't even bother to wait for an invite — minutes after Al publicly announced the movie, Lin texted Al and asked for a role in the film. They ended up with one day when Lin would be in Los Angeles and arranged to shoot his part then, giving him the role of the doctor seen at the beginning of the film.
• Cut Song: Al re-recorded a snippet of "I Lost On Jeopardy" for the scene where Al flips through stations on the radio while driving drunk. Al and Eric Appel decided to cut the song since it hadn't already been featured in the movie and would cost them extra money to license than was available in their budget. Al would later upload the re-recording to his YouTube channel.
• The Danza: Jack Black plays Wolfman Jack.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Daniel Radcliffe took accordion lessons from Al to look convincing on camera. Radcliffe also buffed up as he realized the script called for him to spend much of the film shirtless, and grew a real mustache for the role.
• Fake American: Daniel Radcliffe trades in his English accent for an American one to play Al.
• Fake Brit: American David Dastmalchian has a cameo as the English John Deacon (the bassist for Queen).
• Inspiration for the Work: "Weird Al" Yankovic came up with the idea of a completely inaccurate biopic after becoming annoyed at the amount of Artistic License other music biopics were taking despite claiming to tell the "true" story of their subjects.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As the Roku Channel isn't available in every country, Al advised one fan in Australia, using (thinly veiled) coded language, to outright pirate the movie.
• Missing Trailer Scene:
  • The teaser trailer ends with Al at the pool party asking "Anybody got an accordion?", prompting three accordions to appear from out of frame. The final movie has Al saying "Where's my accordion?" instead.
  • The full trailer includes a very brief shot of Al (after sending his tape to Captain Buffoon) high-fiving a passerby.
• Non-Singing Voice: As a further parody of music biopics where actors go to great lengths to learn how to sing, Daniel Radcliffe, who's had acclaimed runs in musicals, doesn't do his own singing and is very blatantly dubbed over by the real Weird Al instead.
• The Other Darrin: All the roles are recast from the 2010 Funny Or Die fake trailer, which had Aaron Paul as Al, Gary Cole and Mary Steenburgen as his parents, Patton Oswalt as Dr. Demento^note Rainn Wilson taking over the role is ironic, since Wilson had previously beaten out Oswalt for the role of Dwight Schrute. That said, Oswalt does make a cameo appearance in the movie anyway and Olivia Wilde as Madonna.
• Promoted Fanboy: Daniel Radcliffe was already a long-time "Weird Al" Yankovic fan and didn't need much convincing when he was approached for the part.
• Starring a Star as a Star: Like you wouldn't believe. Let's see...
  • In the main cast, there's Daniel Radcliffe as "Weird Al" Yankovic, Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento.
  • As for the cameos, there's Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey, Nina West as Divine, Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol, Jack Black as Wolfman Jack, Demetri Martin as Tiny Tim, Emo Phillips as Salvador Dalí, Paul F. Tompkins as Gallagher, David Dastmalchian as John Deacon, and The Lonely Island members Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer as Paul Reubens (in character as Pee-Wee Herman) and Alice Cooper respectively. Damn.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Aaron Paul, who played Al in the original Funny or Die fake trailer, was originally planned to make a cameo in the film. However, he ended up coming down with COVID by the time filming was happening and couldn't participate.
  • At one point, Al had intended to incorporate "Smells Like Nirvana" into the movie, but had to scrap it when Nirvana's publishing company charged them a triple digit figure to license it, which was well over the film's budget.
  • Al originally intended to have Freddie Mercury appear in the pool party scene to confront Al into parodying "Another One Bites the Dust". However, when clearing the rights to use the song, the only stipulation Al got from the surviving members of Queen was that Freddie Mercury would not be depicted or mentioned in the movie. Al then attempted to work around this by having the members of The Lonely Island appear as the other three members of Queen, but Andy Samberg was unavailable. ^note  Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer do appear in the film as Pee-Wee Herman and Alice Cooper, respectively. Ultimately, the film only features Queen's bassist John Deacon, played by David Dastmalchian — which manages to work out perfectly from a logical standpoint, as Deacon alone wrote "Another One Bites the Dust". Since Deacon is the least famous member of Queen (thanks to him being The Quiet One of the band, to the point of retiring in 1997), the script also had to be adjusted to play into his relative obscurity compared to his bandmates.
  • Patton Oswalt was supposed to reprise the role of Dr. Demento for this film. Unfortunately, Oswalt broke his foot a week before production was supposed to start. There were brief talks of working around the injury, but it was decided to recast the role with Rainn Wilson because the role required the character to actually walk around. He eventually took what would've been Aaron Paul's cameo role as a heckler as listed earlier.
• You Look Familiar: Patton Oswalt, who played Dr. Demento in the original Funny or Die fake trailer, plays a heckler at Al's first public performance.

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