From Johnny Cash to Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan to Freddie Mercury, Bruce Springsteen and most recently Michael Jackson. The musical biopic has become a staple of the yearly film release calendar to the point that anyone will a handful of Grammys and enough hits to fill out a soundtrack seems poised for their own eventual movie treatment.
With a laundry list of memorable songs and a long, dramatic career, Billy Joel is an obvious potential subject for a musical biopic, but the producers of a proposed film, titled Billy & Me, have run into a major snag.
The actual Billy Joel wants nothing to do with them.
The “Piano Man” singer has made clear that Billy & Me doesn’t have the rights to any of Joel’s iconic songs and thus can’t include them in the film. “Since 2021, the parties involved have been officially notified that they do not possess Billy Joel’s life rights and will not be able to secure the music rights required for this project,” reps for Joel said in a statement to Variety. “Billy Joel has not authorized or supported this project in any capacity, and any attempt to move forward without it would be both legally and professionally misguided.”
Legally speaking, Billy & Me director John Ottman and producer Adam Ripp could make a movie about Billy Joel, since there’s plenty of his life and career that’s part of the public record — and thus not protectable, even by Joel himself. The situation would be similar to what happened with the Jimi Hendrix movie starring André 3000, Jimi: All Is by My Side, and the David Bowie biopic Stardust, neither of which got permission from the respective estates to include the artist’s music.
So what’s a Billy Joel movie without Billy Joel music?
Ottman and Ripp have a work-around for that. While they haven’t secured the life rights for Joel, they do have the participation and life rights of two prominent figures from early in the singer’s career. The “Me” of the title refers to Joel’s first manager, Irwin Mazur, who is credited with discovering Joel. And then there’s Jon Small, who was two bands with Joel — The Hassles and Attila — before the singer hit it big. Small is on board the project as a consultant, co-executive producer and second unit director.
Ripp stated that Billy & Me would focus on the singer’s time in The Hassles and feature the cover songs that the band played. Whether that’s something fans have an interest in seeing is an unanswered question, but for the moment, the filmmakers seem confident that they can make a Billy Joel movie without the help of Billy Joel.
