Time was, if you were seeking some uplift, perhaps a smidgen of real-life inspiration, Hollywood could help you out with an ennobling film biography: Louis Pasteur finds the cure for anthrax; Glenn Miller gets the world's toes a-tapping; Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic.
More recently, however, bio- pics have essayed less heroic lives. Pampered superstar-harridan Joan Crawford traumatizes her kids; boxer Jake LaMotta beats his wife and winds up a pathetic mound of flop sweat; hopeless case Sid Vicious . . . well, Sid's just flat-out beyond hope.
One could argue they don't make role models the way they used to, but the truth is, they don't make biopics the way they used to. This season, four films will explore the darker, more personal aspects of heretofore celebrated historical heroes.
Ron Shelton's "Cobb" takes filmgoers on a dark, disturbing journey through the last few months of the life of baseball immortal Ty Cobb, as seen through the eyes of his biographer, who witnesses his propensity for violence, racism and misogyny.
Alan Rudolph's "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" bathes the famous writer Dorothy Parker in a haze of booze, botched love affairs and suicide attempts.
"Tom & Viv" examines the tormented relationship between poet T. S. Eliot and his wife, Vivienne.
And "Immortal Beloved" rummages through Beethoven's little black book, offering speculative history of the composer's possible mistresses.
("Cobb," Tom & Viv" and "Immortal Beloved" have opened in some cities nationally. "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" will open in Baltimore tomorrow.)
"The traditional Hollywood bio was predetermined entertainment with the fact grafted on afterward," says Mr. Rudolph, a writer and director. "Whether it was about an opera singer or an astro-naut, it was the same old story. Those same films today are looking a lot more closely at their subjects, like the media in general."
Larry Karaszewski, co-screenwriter of "Ed Wood" and "Larry Flynt," a portrait of the publisher of Hustler magazine, says any genre goes through an evolution. "First there were the classic biopics, and now we're deconstructing them. People don't buy that [naivete] nowadays.
"Hollywood is largely formula stuff, and the way around that is to find some weird true story or person to make a movie about, a story you could never make as a fictional work," Mr. Karaszewski says. "It helps you to break the rules -- the writer can say, 'Hey, it really happened.' A guy who was a terrible moviemaker who was also a transvestite [Wood]? A pornographer who ran for president [Mr. Flynt]? You'd be thrown out of the [studio executive's] office if you just made that up."
But have audiences become more sophisticated, or just more nosy? With the proliferation of tabloid-style journalism, talk shows designed largely to get former lovers screaming at one another, as well as quickie TV movies drawn from current headlines, has our society become addicted to dirt?
"I think we are more nosy nowadays," says Miranda Richardson, who stars in "Tom & Viv" and rose to stardom as Ruth Ellis in the docudrama "Dance with a Stranger." "People would like to hear the truth sometimes, or as near as you can get. Looking into this privileged territory helps make the story accessible to more people."
"We have grown up and we have gotten nosy -- both," says Tommy Lee Jones, star of "Cobb." "It's easier to be nosy these days. That's why public figures are no longer required by the leadership and the press to be saints. We now acknowledge people can be both heroic and . . ."
He searches for the right word. Human?
"Or worse."
Film historian Leonard Maltin calls "Cobb" a first. "I can't think of another biopic that covers such a reprehensible character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever," he says.
Mr. Maltin, of course, recalls Martin Scorsese's 1980 epic "Raging Bull," the damning saga of boxer LaMotta, one of the bellwethers of the current biopic trend and considered one of the finest films of the 1980s.
"That's an extraordinary film by any standard," he says. "It's a warts-and-all portrait that is intriguing in that regard, a turning point in the film biography."
Mr. Shelton had "Raging Bull" looming large in his mind while working on "Cobb." But he says that his film is designed to ask larger questions pertaining to the nature of celebrity in America.
"What should we know about celebrities? My concern is not that we know too much, but that we get confused about what we know; that we pretend that because this man is a very good right fielder or point guard that he is, therefore, a role model," Mr. Shelton says.
The director also brought the story of former Louisiana Gov. Earl Long and his lover, Blaze Starr, to the big screen in "Blaze." That film, like "Cobb," meditated on the role of the media in bringing public figures' private lives into public purview.
Still, despite the wealth of public knowledge about Cobb's epic unpleasantness, Mr. Shelton is sensitive to the idea that he has publicly excoriated a living legend, and that some will find his film off-putting.
"Cobb's grandchildren are not gonna like this movie, or his children," he says. "I had to make peace with the fact that the family probably wouldn't approve of the movie. And so be it. As a storyteller, I have to stay true to what is the heart and the essence of these people."
Mr. Shelton poses the question bedeviling every maker of a film biography: "If you're going to write about someone in the spotlight, does that mean you are in the spotlight, too? If you accept that responsibility, are you willing to expose yourself the way you're exposing your subject? I'd suggest the answer is 'No' in almost every case."
The crux of "Cobb" is an issue that filmmakers always face: What do you leave in a biography? What do you omit? More to the point, when does artistic license become flat-out misrepresentation?
"The danger is, when these films are good, you do believe them," Mr. Maltin says. "You don't get a study guide when you walk into the theater. . . . For many in the audience, this will be their only exposure to a subject, and when something says it's a biography, when it says it's based on a true story, that's a certain cross to bear. You leave yourself open for attack if you take liberties with the facts."
This fall saw "Ed Wood," the misadventures of America's most inept moviemaker, and "Quiz Show," based on the memoirs of Richard Goodwin, which revealed the fast-and-loose attitudes of some executives in television's early days.
Each came under attack -- the former for its depiction of Bela Lugosi as a profane lech, the latter for its misrepresentation of major players in the game-show scandals.
"One has to make distinctions," Mr. Shelton says. "We're in an age of television and tabloids and newspapers are all kind of going mad. I don't think the rules are very clear and I think they need to be clarified."
Mr. Shelton's star disagrees.
"Bottom line is, you're making a movie; movies are, at their best, works of art," Mr. Jones says. "They have no responsibility to anything, other than themselves, so it's OK to exaggerate or change history, to fit your story. And it's even OK to claim that it's history. And that's the approach I take."
Mr. Rudolph admits that in "Mrs. Parker" he takes some artistic liberties. But he insists that they're necessary to evoke the essence of his characters' lives in a two-hour movie.
"I didn't want to do the headlines of Dorothy Parker's life, or compile a list of her greatest hits or quips," Mr. Rudolph says. "When you do that, you get brief scenes that don't go beneath the surface. Truth doesn't come out of the content of a life. I'm interested in the context, not just the content."
Mr. Rudolph doesn't think he has done Parker's memory a disservice by revealing her inner torment.
"I think it's a loving portrait of survival," he says. "I call her a 'self-destructive survivor.' "
Whether exalting or criticizing the subject, Mr. Shelton has long pondered what is ethical when turning the lives of real people into slick entertainments.
"What is discretion?" he muses. "If a man is a womanizer, is that an issue? It's only an issue if he's Gary Hart and dares to you to prove he's not. If a man is a wife-beater, is that an issue? Of course: It's criminal, felonious behavior. There's a distinction."
For Mr. Shelton, his film biographies must have intellectual and his torical honesty -- and it certainly doesn't hurt if they're entertaining.
"Why does 'Raging Bull' stick in people's minds?" he asks. "Because it's well-made and we feel something of the essence of this man, LaMotta, captured. Artistic license [was] taken everywhere, and I don't care, because Scorsese captured something about human behavior.
"No one lives their lives in three neat acts. My job is to shape it. That's a matter of trust. Either I'm talented and honorable at it, or I'm not.
"There's no rules, I guess, no rules. It's all discretion and we're not living in an age of discretion."