Pink Floyd fans have suggested Timothée Chalamet could be a perfect casting choice for a biopic of the band.
Seemingly impressed by his work in Dune and fresh off the back of Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, fans of Pink Floyd think he would be a brilliant face for Syd Barrett in a potential movie adaptation. One user asked the Pink Floyd subreddit: “Timothée Chalamet as Syd Barrett? Was watching Dune and it struck me in this scene that Timothée Chalamet looks a lot like Syd. Let’s get that biopic in the works!” Fans are now suggesting a few other familiar faces for other members of the band.
One user suggested: “Adam Driver for Roger [Waters].” Another joked: “Jack Black as David Gilmour.” A more serious suggestion tipped Nicholas Hoult to play guitarist Gilmour. Other fans have said a Barrett-based biopic would be in bad taste and should be avoided.
They wrote: “He’s a very good actor, but, IMHO, there should never be a Syd Barrett biopic. People sensationalize his life as it is and he was an extremely private person. I think it would be disrespectful. Not to mention the fact that we don’t even know the extent of his mental illness – it could very well be that there isn’t really much of a story there.”
Another wrote: “I’m not for a purely Syd-centered biopic, but a Pink Floyd movie with Syd making an appearance in two or three scenes would be cool. Like the beginning is them losing Syd, then the Wish You Were Here sessions being the final act, with everything else in between as the main story.” Other users have agreed with Syd at least appearing in the biopic, but felt it would be in bad taste to have it centre on his life.
Timothée Chalamet as Syd Barrett?
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One wrote: “Not putting anyone else down, but to me personally a Syd biopic would at best feel distasteful, and I always end up wondering how accurate/romanticised the films are. I also think inevitably a biopic about Syd would focus on his mental health struggles and I don’t see any way Hollywood would portray that sensitively or meaningfully.
“He was an incredibly interesting guy but he chose to remove himself from the public eye for a reason and I feel like a whole film about him kinda reduces that agency massively. But I didn’t know him so that’s entirely just my own opinion based on very little, and I’m sure plenty of people disagree.”
Another added: “It’s disappointing so many people want a Syd biopic. For what? To disrespect the man even more than people did when he was alive? To paint a false image of him? To fictionalize the truth? It’s bad enough that people called him crazy most of his life and never stopped calling him Syd when he asked them to.”
Barrett left Pink Floyd in 1968 after one last act of “mad genius,” as Waters called it. Presenting the band with Have You Got It Yet? the song was initially tipped as a simple piece but Gilmour and Waters found Barrett was changing the arrangement as they played it. He went on to make The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, though withdrew to Cambridge from 1978 until his death in 2006.
I wish there was a biopic about Cass Elliot. I know it would be an accurate depiction, because her daughter wouldn’t sign off on it if it was sensationalized.
yeah i feel like a syd barrett centered biopic should absolutely not happen. i love syd, but that’s just not what he would’ve wanted at all. maybe roger waters should be the center of the biopic? he’s definitely had some interesting stuff happen in his life. i think they should show the story from how they formed/maybe a bit of roger’s childhood (assuming he’s the center of the biopic) to the wall and that’s it. i imagine it would be interesting to watch roger become a self centered egomaniac. i assume that would be much more accurate to depict instead of making a mockery of syd by buying into all the rumors of him being “totally insane”, which from my investigation mostly doesn’t even seem to be true.
Not sure a film of the band, no matter how big they are/have been, would have the same impact as Elvis and Elton films have but no doubt you would have to get 5 lots of opinions from all the members from 1967-1994. That in itself would be difficult with Waters no doubt disagreeing on most things.