Used to be, singers only had two options when it came to fame:

• Work hard, sell millions of records, develop a crippling drug addiction and die on the can; or
• Sell millions of records, act in a poorly conceived remake of A Star is Born, get ghastly plastic surgery and pretend to be half your age, and sooner or later find yourself on a nostalgia tour with Kool and half of the original Gang.

Fortunately, movies like Ray and Walk the Line have opened up a whole new career phase for performers: the reverential biopic. This serves to remind audiences of why they liked the artist in the first place, selling a few million copies of the greatest hits album and even a few thousand of that awful duets album they just released.

Still, I just don’t know how well the formula is going to play out on this generation of performers. You can wring a lot of drama out of a rural youth filled with tragedy, but growing up in the suburbs and being plucked out of the Mouseketeers by some Svengali? Not so much. Look at it this way: Janis Joplin led a short, colorful life cut short by alcoholism. Joss Stone, her supposed heir, stars in Gap commercials. Sooner or later, we’re going to run out of worthy subjects for these kind of movies.

Of course, inevitably, a few similar movies make some cash (or win some awards), and the world rushes to cash in on the “trend,” leading to a series of poorly executed knock-offs, at which point the trend crawls off to a disused video store shelf to die. Right now, we’ve got biopics in the works for Keith Moon, Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin, and even Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot, who’s not even dead!

Is it just me, or should we nip this thing in the bud before we have to endure The Greatest Love of All: The Whitney & Bobby Story?

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