Noel Murray unpacks why so many biographers of artists tend to depict their subjects at their worst:
Maybe biographies and biopics about artists dwell on the shady side because creative inspiration is hard to explain, and hard to dramatize. I’ve interviewed enough artsy folks over the years to know that when I ask about their process, the answers are usually either “hell if I know” or mundane and technical. And while I actually like the mundane and technical stuff, I know that doesn’t sell books or tickets. …
[I]t could just be that biographers go overboard in trying to humanize people who are seen as untouchable icons. If so, I get it. There’s an aspirational aspect to a lot of biographies and biopics: Here’s how a great person made it, and here’s why you the reader or viewer aren’t so different. But too often, the fascination with weakness doesn’t come off as it may have been intended. “Flawed” too easily becomes “fatally flawed,” even when the real evidence—the movies, the novels, the paintings, the plays, the performances, the music—suggests otherwise.
The Dish 