Culture

Weird Al Yankovic Wants Australians To Pirate His Epic Biopic

The movie, starring Daniel Radcliffe as the icon, is not currently available in Australia.

by Merryana Salem  7 November 2022
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Once again, piracy proves it is winning the war on piracy after Weird Al Yankovic himself suggested people should pirate his biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Over the weekend, Weird Al Yankovic’s biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story was released. Starring Daniel Radcliffe as the titular iconic parody performer and composer, the film is true to its subject and is not just a parody of Weird Al’s life, but a parody of every celebrity biopic ever.

From a bombastic portrayal of a six-hour love affair with Madonna, drug cartel stand-offs, and pool parties attended by Salvador Dali — Weird is unbelievable, which is unabashedly the point.

The film was released on Roku’s streaming service last Friday. Sadly, however, it is not available to Australians, due to Roku’s originals being unavailable here.

But fear not, weirdos! Weird Al Yankovic himself has basically given Aussies permission to pirate the movie. On Twitter, a fan asked Yankovic how they could watch the movie here in Australia to which he replied,

“Roku’s working on it. In the meantime, there’s VPN (Very Probably No) way to watch it legally. I’m sure you have a TORRENT of other questions, but I have to move along, sorry,” he said.

Obviously, we here at Junkee would never partake in, condone, or promote piracy. But if we did, we’d interpret this as Weird Al letting Australians know that they can watch Weird: The Al Yankovic Story by using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to torrent it.

Yankovic is far from the first creator to promote piracy as a way to access their work. In fact, he joins the ranks of filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Everything Everywhere All At Once directors the Daniels, and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins.

People should pay for the arts where they can. But the fragmented, over-saturated reality of too many streaming services has pushed more and more people back toward piracy to access media that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is out now, not in Australia … But you know what to do.