Free tickets to “Piece By Piece” are available for students this week! PA students can check Canvas for details.
Princess Anne alumni Pharrell Williams brought Virginia Beach and PA to movie screens across the country this weekend in his new biopic “Piece By Piece.” Not only will the city be remembered as a creative area bursting with musical talent, but it has been memorialized in Lego, the format in which the entire movie is told.
Just as he has done numerous times through his career, Williams broke barriers to tell the story of his life in the largely untapped style of Lego. The ease in which Williams and director Morgan Neville were able to combine the format of a documentary with the endless creativity of Lego animation truly feels like a palm to the forehead, asking “why hasn’t this been done before?”
Williams has gone into detail in recent interviews to explain how he came to the decision to make his biopic through Lego. On “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon, Williams explained that he wasn’t originally interested in a biopic at all because he is more passionate about creating in the present, and his past wasn’t that fascinating to him. But once his agent told him he could create the biopic in whatever way he wanted, his curiosity piqued and he came up with the idea to tell it through Lego.
Although I am biased growing up in a childhood where the first “Lego Movie” totally changed the standards of humor for kid movies, I wasn’t totally sold at first with Williams’ decision to use the format. The trailer seemed very busy, and for Williams’ sake, I was hoping it wouldn’t fall prey to the usual gimmicks the Lego style had fallen to before.
Minutes into the movie, though, I found my worries unfounded as the story was very grounded in elements of real life, including sights just outside my theater. The movie opens with sights of the beach, moving on to the Oceanfront, boardwalk, and King Neptune’s statue, all in Lego of course. The Blue Angels fly over the scenes set in Virginia Beach while Williams’ love of skating is shown originating at Mount Trashmore’s skatepark.
But the majority of the beginning of the story is told at Williams’ childhood home in Atlantis Apartments in Seatack, where he establishes his love for music began at a very young age. But he didn’t start playing music until he joined band in seventh grade at Independence Middle School (Independence Junior High at the time).
At Independence, Williams met Chad Hugo. The two quickly became friends and later formed the band N.E.R.D. and their group The Neptunes. Once the two were in high school at PA (yes, you see a Lego version of the school), producer Teddy Riley moved to Virginia and set up a studio on Virginia Beach Boulevard, just on the other side of Thalia Creek from PA. As aspiring musicians in high school, Williams and Hugo saw Riley’s “Future Records” as their opportunity to record their own songs. After Riley noticed him at a talent show, Williams and Hugo got their foot in the door at the studio, and the rest is history.
But the story continues to go back to Williams roots in Virginia Beach, and even ends on the boardwalk with Williams’ festival, Something in the Water. Throughout the story, I had to keep reminding myself that I was seeing the movie in Lego, not a world entirely of Williams’ design. I truly believe it was an ingenious way to tell stories while also demonstrating Williams’ creativity.
Whether you’re a fan of Williams’ extensive presence in today’s music, or just want to see Virginia Beach on the big screen, “Piece By Piece” is the latest biopic you need to go see!
