CINE OF THE TIMES PRESENTS

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)

INCL. PRE-SHOW

For the next Cine of the Times, film critic Hugo Emmerzael and academic Dan Hassler-Forest turn to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Jake Kasdan’s 2007 satire that took apart the music biopic so thoroughly it should have killed the genre for good.

Instead, Hollywood doubled down. What began as a parody of films like Ray and Walk the Line now feels strangely prophetic. From Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis to Bob Marley: One Love, the music biopic has become one of Hollywood’s safest formulas: turning cultural icons into recognisable IP and complicated lives into increasingly familiar stories. Hugo and Dan ask how a genre Walk Hard exposed almost twenty years ago became more dominant than ever — and what that tells us about a film industry increasingly built around selling us what we already know.

The screening opens with an extended introduction from Hugo and Dan, with curated clips and context before the film. They’ll continue the conversation in a special supplementary episode of LAB111’s Celebrating Cinema podcast, recorded to accompany the screening.

About the speakers:

Hugo Emmerzael is an Amsterdam-based film critic and curator, editor at Filmkrant and Deputy Digital Editor of the Locarno Pardo.

Dan Hassler-Forest is a media studies professor at Utrecht University whose work examines popular culture through a political lens.