Talking Truth and Fiction in 'Frank' with Jon Ronson

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A surreal film about a bandleader who wears a fake head on top of his own doesn't necessarily scream "true story," but for co-screenwriter Jon Ronson Frank has one major  element of reality. Ronson performed with the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey Big Band, lead by the inscrutable Frank Sidebottom—yes, a man in a big fake head—the alter ego of Chris Sievey. Years later, Ronson's experiences with Chris and Frank, became the heavily-fictionalized film, which goes beyond Frank Sidebottom, who had a following in Britain, to explore the world of outsider art and the myth of the troubled genius. Ronson, however, also chronicled his experiences with the real Frank in a small volume entitled Frank: The True Story That Inspired the movie. 

Frank, the film, is often charming, with Domhnall Gleeson's Ronson stand-in gazing in wonderment at Fassbender's mysteriously be-headed leader of The Soronprfbs. (The band's name is quite literally a random jumble of letters, Ronson told us.) But the film isn't just twee, and takes the inner life of its titular character very seriously. As Sam Adams wrote at Criticwire there's a timeliness to the fact that movie is a "lesson in why equating creativity and mental illness is dangerous and deadly."  

The Wire talked with Ronson about the portrayal of mental illness in the film and the parallels between fiction and reality. Here are excerpts of our conversation.  

How connected do you want the film to be with Frank Sidebottom’s own legacy?

Right. That’s a really good question, and having read the book you can see that the film is totally different than the real story. Remembering how amazing the real story is, I didn’t want it to