Before writing a music blog, I taught and wrote about movies. I did that for close to thirty years, but COVID kind of killed my passion. The reasons aren’t important right now, but suffice to say, the American film production system stopped making enough quality films to hold my interest while the distribution and exhibition systems made it harder to see foreign language movies in actual theaters.
Still, every so often, I do get excited by a new movie project. Over the past five years, I don’t think I have ever been more excited by film news than I was on Wednesday when the story broke about Finn Wolfhard’s involvement in a planned feature film adaptation of Bob Mehr’s sensational biography of the Replacements.
Mehr published Trouble Boys in 2016, and it quickly gained a reputation for being one of the best band biographies ever penned. It had all the necessary ingredients for a compelling story. The Replacements – or Mats, to their fans – were a poster child for the post-hardcore punk era of the 1980s.
They had larger-than-life personalities, top-flight artistry, as well as attitude, chaos, and tragedy. Mehr, who established impressive relationships with just about all the major players in the story, gathered a remarkable amount of inside material.
Finn Wolfhard is the ideal filmmaker to tackle the messy story of the Replacements
All that we know as of now is that Wolfhard, the 22-year-old actor who became known to the public at large for portraying Mike Wheeler in the television series Stranger Things, will be writing the screenplay with his father, Eric Wolfhard. Their producing partner is Rich Peete, who helped bring Jeremy Saulnier’s sensational crime story Blue Ruin to life in 2013.
Wolfhard has not disclosed whether he intends to either direct or act in the film, but both roles are a distinct possibility. He made his directorial debut alongside Billy Bryk with the cross-genre slasher/comedy Hell of a Summer in 2023. The movie drew mixed reviews but had obvious flair and fun.
That’s not a bad way to describe the Mats. Flair and fun. And alcohol abuse and an inferiority complex that drove them to extreme acts of self-destruction. They may be most famous for their 1986 appearance on Saturday Night Live where their overall drunken rambunctiousness and frontman Paul Westerberg’s blatant use of profanity on live TV angered producer Lorne Michaels so much that he banned them for life.
But really, that was just another Saturday for the Mats.
The Wolfhards will have a ton of material from which to select when crafting their screenplay. The entire story of the Mats will not fit into a standard two-hour biopic so they may well center things around that infamous SNL moment, or perhaps on any one of the many other conflicts they experienced.
Focusing on a particular event, as opposed to tracing the entire history of the band, will help address one potential production challenge. How will bassist Tommy Stinson be portrayed on screen?
Tommy, who later served as the bass player in Guns N’ Roses for about ten years, began playing with his stepbrother Bob Stinson, drummer Chris Mars, and eventually Westerberg when he was 12 years old. He developed into the band's second most recognizable figure over time.
But to take him from an onscreen child to an adult would likely require two actors, which is always a challenge.
Casting Westerberg shouldn’t be too hard. I find it almost impossible to believe that Wolfhard will not take on the role himself. He was more or less created for the part. He has the goofy good looks and the sharp underlying intelligence. And, of course, he is also a musician.
His first album, Happy Birthday, was released earlier this year. It may be somewhat more jangly than classic Mats, but the music is not that far removed from the songs Westerberg would eventually write for the band.
The Wolfhards will also have to navigate another typical challenge in translating the story into a movie. The Mats were not sweet kids. I suppose a film could be done that would treat them as lovable misfits, like the Beatles in their ‘60’s feature films. But it would be a disservice. “Trouble Boys” is an apt title. They could be mindlessly cruel and were always juvenile. They went out of their way to hurt those that loved them.
Bob Stinson’s story is the stuff of tear-inducing tragedy. It involves horrific child abuse, which led to violence, addiction, and an early death. There is triumph and great music to be sure, but the story has plenty of darkness.
Balancing that on screen will be hard, especially if we assume that Wolfhard is a fan of Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, both of whom are still at least somewhat public figures. There has been no mention of whether any of the surviving Mats or their families will have any role in the production.
No timeline was announced for the film so we will have to wait on further news about scripting, casting, and production. But all music fans should be happy that Trouble Boys is coming to the screen, and it appears to be coming in the hands of talented artists who care deeply about the story.