Billy Joel Calls Unauthorized Biopic ‘Legally Misguided’

Billy Joel’s camp has condemned the upcoming Billy & Me biopic, warning the project has no rights to his life story or music and was misguided to proceed.

Billy Joel has publicly disowned the unauthorized biopic Billy & Me a day after its existence became public, with the singer’s representative calling the project both legally and professionally misguided.

Joel’s rep issued the statement Tuesday in response to Variety’s exclusive on John Ottman’s plan to direct the film. The pushback was sharp and procedural. The filmmakers had been officially notified since 2021 that they did not possess Joel’s life rights and would not be able to secure the music rights required for the project.

The line that traveled fastest was the one labeling any forward motion legally and professionally misguided. Joel, the rep said, has not authorized or supported the film in any capacity.

Screenwriter Adam Ripp responded directly. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Ripp clarified that Billy & Me was never built around Joel’s hit catalog and never claimed rights to his original songs. The film, he said, is told through the eyes of Irwin Mazur, the manager who signed Joel in 1970 and oversaw his career until the 1972 Columbia Records deal.

Ripp’s framing matters. Without Joel’s life rights, the film can only legally tell the story by anchoring it to people who have signed away theirs. Mazur is one. Jon Small, Joel’s friend, drummer and the man who later directed his Uptown Girl video, is the other.

Small is not a passive presence. He is on as consultant, co-executive producer and second unit director, and he has publicly endorsed the script as the most honest portrayal of Joel’s early years he has read. His statement leans on the fact that he was there from the beginning, meeting Joel when the singer was 16.

The pre-fame years that Billy & Me covers are also the years in which Small and Joel’s lives became most tangled. The two played in the 1960s Long Island band the Hassles and the short-lived 1970 acid-rock duo Attila. Attila broke up in 1971 after Small’s wife, Elizabeth Weber, had an affair with Joel.

The Guardian’s summary of the dispute walked through that biography, including Weber’s later marriage to Joel in 1973, the couple’s 1982 split, and the depressive stretch that included Joel’s suicide attempts. Small was the one who got him to the hospital. The two reconciled.

John Ottman, who edited the Michael Jackson biopic Michael and won an Oscar for editing Bohemian Rhapsody, is set to direct. Casting is underway, with production scheduled for this fall in Winnipeg and New York.

What Billy & Me cannot do, by Joel’s own warning, is use his music. Whether the film can survive that limitation, or whether Joel’s camp escalates beyond a statement, is now the open question.

For Joel, the legal language is the message. For Ottman and Ripp, the message is that the cameras are still rolling.