A biographical film, or biopic, dramatises the life of a real person. Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine is a biographical film about MMA fighter Mark Kerr, starring Dwayne Johnson in a performance that redefined his career and opened the door to riskier work. Its follow-up collaboration, Lizard Music, is not a biopic but a fantasy adaptation — yet it carries the same commitment to transformation, with Johnson buried under prosthetics as the elderly Chicken Man in Brooklyn.
(Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0))
Mentioned in: From Mark Kerr to the Chicken Man: Why Dwayne Johnson Keeps Choosing Benny Safdie’s Strangest Roles