Star Struck: Emmy Voters Have An Abundance Of Celebrity-Focused Documentaries To Cast Their Ballots For
02.06.2024 - 18:43
/ deadline.com
One was born with partial facial paralysis. The other grew up speaking Austrian-accented German, eventually transitioning to German-accented English.
If you were trying to concoct the archetypal Hollywood star in a lab, it wouldn’t be Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet for more than 20 years they dominated the box office, their wattage rivaled only by the klieg lights of a movie premiere.
The improbable origins and unlikely rise of these two action icons are told in a couple of documentaries in Emmy contention: the feature Sly, directed by Thom Zimny, and the docuseries Arnold, directed by Lesley Chilcott.
“[EP] Allen Hughes brought the Arnold project to me,” Chilcott explains. “At first I said, ‘What don’t we already know?’ And he said, ‘I said the same thing myself.’ But then I started thinking about how weird and unusual it is that Arnold’s been successful in so many completely different areas.” That would be bodybuilding, acting, and governating — as the chief executive of California (or Cal-LEE-fornia, as he famously pronounces it) from 2003-2011.
For his portrait of Stallone, Zimny says, “I didn’t want to just go down a traditional road where we cover every beat of his life and every film and every chapter. I wanted to really find the details that make up the man, the family man, the artist, and give you a sense of Sly that goes beyond just the iconic portrayal, beyond being a movie star, and get to the core of his childhood, his expression as a young artist in New York and his journey.”
Sly and Arnold, both Netflix titles, are part of a slew of celebrity-oriented docs with Emmy ambitions. The lengthy list extends to Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces and The Super Models (both from Apple