Get Back, Honky Cat – Rocketwoman

Before having Rocketman recommended to me by a workmate who had seen it at a screening for the press and loved it dearly and told me she thought I would, too, I mostly associated Elton John with my sister.

When I was little, she would make these mixtapes for me from whatever songs were big hits just then mixed with some classics, using special Japanese cassette tapes, pink and transparent and adorable. I would examine the hand-written song lists carefully in my Lanzarote novelty fringe top, wearing my neon-colored shades bought from the only punk shop in town, while listening to the tapes over and over in my silver boombox. I knew Crocodile Rock like the back of my hand, because it was on one of those tapes, a special Summer Mix tape. I remember staying at my sister’s place and listening to her vinyl copy of Elton John’s Greatest Hits, the blue-tinted album with the man in his Sacrifice look on the cover I think every teenager and young adult back then had in their collection. I kind of knew about who Elton John was and what he had done, how can anyone who has even the slightest bit of interest in music not know, but being an Eighties kid, I mostly knew his work from Music Television.

To kids my age, Elton John was the nice middle-aged man with the string of power ballad hits. Growing up a Beatles fan, I knew he had been friends with John Lennon and played on Whatever Gets You thru the Night. He was the flashy dresser with the wild eyewear, the Lion King composer, the singer of the godawful hit song Nikita that I’ll be thankful if I never ever have to hear again, and also yes, the maker of the MTV era’s favorite crazy music videos such as the eternally lovable I’m Still Standing, a song I adored along with Sad Songs (Say So Much), but mostly, during when I grew up and was in my late teens, what I remember about him is the image of a mature man uniting the world in sorrow as he performed a revised version of Candle in the Wind at Lady Diana’s funeral.

Growing up, it’s mostly about what's new and what’s hip at the moment, so mine and Elton’s paths didn’t cross on a deeper level again for many years.

So, I was the perfect audience for this film, and yep, you honky cats, let’s indeed get back from our hiatus to examine just exactly why I’m going to kick everybody’s ass who has the arrogance to say Rocketman is a disaster, paint-by-numbers yawnfest of a movie.

When I was in my pompous, superior, know-it-all twenties, I am afraid I might have been one of those people who would tenderly adjust their nerdy glasses further up their ass I mean nose, and begin a rambling monologue concerning all that was factually wrong with a given work - I might have added a humorous anecdote to soften my criticism about how, for instance, in Casablanca the famous line is not in fact “Play it again, Sam”, but “Play it, Sam”, and how very important it is to extinguish real facts from mythology and blah biddy blah.

You get the drift, and even more so, since that is exactly what a lot of critics and columnists are doing to Dexter Fletcher’s musical fantasy on Elton John’s soaring rise to stardom right now. Music magazines are doing ten-minute specials on their YouTube channels on what is real and what is not on Rocketman – yes I’m looking at you, Mojo, and while it is all good and fun to find the faults and things overlooked, I still have a question for you.

What is wrong with you!? If you want mere facts, stone-cold, wooden, checked-out, stripped from all possible romanticism and story-telling – well why were you watching an Elton John biopic clearly categorized as “musical fantasy” in the first place? Get out of the theater, you bummers, and let those who enjoy a deeply felt, emotionally honest, gorgeously photographed story come to life onscreen dance and sing along Taron Egerton and the rest until they drop.

And here’s the thing: from the point of view of the artistically inclined, it’s all true. The violent outbursts of Elton John’s first great love and manager John Reid are well-documented, even if it wasn’t Elton himself on the receiving end, and who’s to say it wasn’t? Furthermore, were you at the Troubadour then? Who are you to say he didn’t levitate during an especially powerful number, even if it wasn’t exactly *adjusts glasses further up the nose* during Crocodile Rock which-would-not-be-composed-for-another-two-years yes we get it already? It’s Elton John, for christ’s sake, would it be so unbelievable? There was a hilarious article on this after the movie opened, in Variety by Chris Willman, called Rocketman Fact-Check: What It Gets Right And Wrong About Rehab, Disco and Levitation, and even there, in the Comments field, a bunch of gits responded like the humorless fact-checking maniacs they were.

By the way, the Rocket Man sequence? It’s all true. The day before Elton John’s career-defining two-day engagement at the enormous Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, a rarity in itself to be able to perform there, two sold out dates of pinballing the wizardry around the huge, packed auditorium, he did swallow a huge bunch of pills and hurled himself into the swimming pool outside his house, in front of his family and other guests, was fished out by paramedics and had his stomach pumped. So yeah, that is what happened, and the fact that the man himself is here today to tell the story instead of having contracted HIV or od’d himself to death in the Eighties is such a random act of heavenly benevolence it does resemble a miracle. He himself has stated that with all that he was doing to himself then he should in all likelihood have died.

Only, he didn’t. Instead, he was alive to tell the film makers and the man representing him to go ahead and take liberties, to make the story their own, to use artistic freedom to become their own works of art instead of mimicking him to the letter.

Which brings me to the main reason why I’m already furious at the Academy Awards still far away in the future. I think there is simply no way another Leading Male Oscar will go to a music biopic and that is just wrong. Wrong. I mean, hello.

Taron Egerton probably gives the defining performance of his entire career in Rocketman, and I know it may be a bit presumptuous to say this given the fact that the actor is twenty-nine years old, but I have a strong feeling that the way Susan Sarandon will always be remembered from The Rocky Horror Picture Show instead of, say, Dead Man Walking, because that is just how life goes, I think the same thing is going to be happening here.

Mr. Egerton shines more brightly than anyone, he is The Shining of this piece, even with emotionally flawless and extremely beautiful performances from Jamie Bell and Richard Madden just to mention a couple, because he embodies Elton John the way I never thought possible. He isn’t merely Elton John par excellence, he becomes a fully formed embodiment of a man so wild and yet so constricted, a delicate balance of earth-shattering insecurities and incredible bravado, a supreme star in his own right, practically unrecognizable from his normal hunky British man appearance, with the crazy Seventies hair and the slightly neglected physical appearance and, oh oh oh oh, the unbelievably sensual, gorgeous gap between his teeth (created using a special ink so no, it isn’t computer generated) and personally, I think you should just keep wearing it, my good man. I believe I am speaking for quite a few others when I tell you just how beautiful you are as Reggie and then Elton John, I mean I for one am dying here, and the gap might be the ultimate finishing touch to make this woman’s lusty heatwave just keep on flaring.

Interesting point apropos the much-debated sex scene between Elton and John Reid, played exquisitely and to the point by none other than Richard Madden - at Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show Taron Egerton actually complained about how no one seemed to be at all interested in asking Mr. Madden what it was like to make out with him, but the question was asked poor Taron at every interview, including Kimmel’s. Well, no worries there, Mr. Egerton, Richard Madden may be hot as a skillet and oozing dangerous sexuality, but Elton’s vulnerability and sheer need to be finally seen and touched makes the sex scene, honestly, the hottest one I have seen since the famous long sequence in Blue Is the Warmest Color. 

If we contrast with the obvious here, in the year before last’s lovely, instant classic Call Me by Your Name, the hot sex scene was, in the end, when Elio and Oliver kiss for the first time while on their biking trip in the countryside. Even with more explicit stuff coming later, for me at least, that was the scene. Other than that, the entire story is more a sweet rendition of first love, so powerful and life-changing, but sweet.

In Rocketman, it isn’t exactly sweet. It is raw and energetic, unfamiliar and intoxicating, even if it lasts only a fragment of the abovementioned ten-minute down-and-dirty between Adèle and Emma. And yes, it is so hot. So I’m telling you Taron, having to choose with whom to have sex between you and Mr. Madden, I would have to say you, even if you are eleven years my junior and the gap, the gap that unleashed this erotic fantasy land on earth for me to dwell in for a few days at least, a figment made by a makeup artist. Man, I could rhapsodize the imaginary gap between your teeth for hours on end. Let the rest of the world worry about Richard’s hotness and meet me after the show in the back and I will show you just how smoking I think you are.

And while we are on the topic of Call Me by Your Name, I find it an interesting detail and yet another steamy, sensual segue straight from the Seventies to modern times to hear Elton John sing about young love in a song featured in the movie as well, Amoreena, from his third studio album titled Tumbleweed Connection. Here’s what I mean: I can see you sitting eating apples in the evening/The fruit juice flowing slowly, slowly, slowly/Down the bronze of your body. Perhaps Andre Aciman was just listening to this song while writing the peach scene.

Having just rambled on for pages on how Taron Egerton becomes a wholly self-reliant, well-rounded, flesh-and-blood personality or character in his own right in this film, I do want to mention the one moment where he does resemble Elton John in a way that is frightening. It is the scene where, during a harrowing, haunted version of Bennie and the Jets, right before the song and the scene itself succumbs into a massive orgy on the dance floor of the club, Elton John stands on the stairwell in his famous white piano-fur-coat, a hat with a huge feather on it, and some shades. The moment is lighted in such a way that one sees only a dark shadow of him in semi-profile as he is about to descend, standing there with his entourage, a lovelorn mess of a man in search of validation and instant gratification, a fast, animal fuck with whomever, high as a kite by then, again. There. There one can, for the briefest moment, see the real person superimposed on this young, marvelous actor crushing the scene with immense withheld sorrow and not giving a damn about what happens to him anymore.

So, in conclusion, for the Fact-Check Police out there: I understand the need to have things neat and organized, I do. As mentioned above, I was once one of those people. But I’m not anymore. It has been a painful journey at times to learn what is really important and what can be overlooked for the sake of the story turning out well, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. 

And, if you examine the film carefully, it’s all there. The most important relationship of the movie, the friendship between Bernie Taupin and Elton John, is presented in a way that made me lose my breath. Jamie Bell gives such command and sensitivity to the character of Taupin the screen seems to hum with integrity and joy and the kind of love for his friend that everyone who has had the good fortune to make that kind of friends will know instantly what it’s about. What was done to the chronological order of the songs is, in this movie, both extremely important and pivotal from the story-telling point of view, and totally insignificant and unnecessary to start splitting hairs over. 

So please stop bitching about it right now. Enjoy the magic. I even forgive the occasional cheese factor, because in pics like these you can’t escape having a bit of sugar on the side, and hey, if you felt Elton John’s story has been sugarcoated in this movie, you would be sorely mistaken. Because I know better. After seeing the film three times in a little over a week’s time, I myself have become the embodiment of Taron Egerton embodying Elton John’s essence, and I know things now. I have the feather boa and the straw hat to prove it. I may even develop the gap between my teeth just by adoring these two men so much. I have been, as the man himself puts it, taken to the pilot of their soul and what I found there is, along with pain and tears and heartache, utter, naked beauty.

Dexter Fletcher, Rocketman 2019.