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“I didn’t want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the 70s and 80s,” John writes.
Elton John wants you to know he's had sex. Like, a lot of it.
In an essay penned for The Guardian, Elton John talks about adapting his life for screen in the film Rocketman and why he wouldn't allow it to get straight-washed like ... a certain other musical biopic that came out last year that I won't even name!
"Some studios wanted to tone down the sex and drugs so the film would get a PG-13 rating," John wrote of the film, which took years to make. "But I just haven't led a PG-13 rated life. I didn't want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the 70s and 80s, so there didn't seem to be much point in making a movie that implied that after every gig, I'd quietly gone back to my hotel room with only a glass of warm milk and the Gideon's Bible for company."
John also mentioned that David LaChapelle was originally attached to direct and that Justin Timberlake was in talks to star before Taron Egerton came along.
John said some studios weren't on board with the film's fantastical elements and wanted more of a straightforward biopic.
"That was missing the point," John says. "Like I said, I lived in my own head a lot as a kid. And when my career took off, it took off in such a way that it almost didn't seem real to me. I wasn't an overnight success by any means -- I'd been slogging around the clubs, making records, writing songs with Bernie and trying to sell them to people who weren't interested for four or five years before anything big happened. But when it happened, it went off like a missile."
Rocketman was the subject of intense speculation after the film Bohemian Rhapsody (OK, I said the name) presented a version of Freddie Mercury that was not exactly like the original. Rumors swirled online that the studio cut a gay sex scene from the Elton biopic, which director Dexter Fletcher later denied. Now, Rocketman, which opens in theatres in the U.S. on May 31, has the very first gay sex scene in a major studio film.
And, according to Egerton, John is the top in the scene.
