When celebrities authorize an official story of their life, you might expect a whitewash, glossing over blemishes or unsavory details.

Elton John’s authorized biopic Rocketman had been in development for 15 years or more because the artist wanted the film to openly and honestly explore his character, particularly his homosexuality and substance abuse. Coming to terms with both was an important part of his life story.

John first conceived of the film when David LaChapelle shot a music video of “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” for John’s The Red Piano live show in Vegas. It was “based, very loosely, on my life”, John recalled, depicting real events blended with fantasy. He had an epiphany: “If you were going to make a film about me, that would be the way to do it.”

The studios told him they wanted a PG-13 film of his life, which would almost certainly have censored his substance abuse and sex life. 

According to the 2010 Classification and Rating Rules of the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners, while a PG-13 film can portray “drug use”, “drug abuse” requires an R rating.

The final film is a cross between an old-style musical and a modern jukebox revue. All the songs are from the Elton John catalog but re-purposed to tell the story of his life. For example, in one scene, John as a young boy speaking with his family trades verses from the 2001 song “I Want Love”, which John recalls was by and about lyricist Bernie Taupin, “a middle-aged man with a few divorces, wondering if he’s ever going to fall in love again.”

John finally found a simpatico filmmaker while filming a bit part as himself in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Director Matthew Vaughn asked John about the dormant biopic project. He ended up as one of the producers of Rocketman, with Kingsman lead Taron Egerton starring and singing as Elton John.

In Kingsman, John relapses into drug use after being kidnapped by a drug lord. Considering that he has nearly 30 years of sobriety now, I wonder if that disturbed him. In his 2012 book Love is the Cure: On Life, Loss and the End of AIDS, John wrote of his years of addiction: “I was consumed by cocaine, booze, and who knows what else.”

John’s addictions weren’t due to an inability to perform on stage sober; that was no problem. Where he had trouble was interacting with other people in social situations. When he started using cocaine, John said, it allowed him to “talk to everyone” but, as he became addicted, he became increasingly isolated. “The last two weeks of my use of cocaine I spent in a room in London” –  alone.

In the film’s first scene, John, in full stage regalia, walks out of Madison Square Garden and into an unspecified support group meeting. Apparently, it is a 12-step program of some kind, because he introduces himself with a variation on the Alcoholics Anonymous model: “My name is Elton and I’m …”, followed by a litany of his addictions and other problems, including drugs, alcohol, and bulimia.

The drug use is pretty well represented in the film, but the bulimia doesn’t get as much attention. That’s a shame because it affected John’s substance abuse treatment.

Like anorexia, bulimia is an eating disorder that can be a life-threatening and a symptom of an undiagnosed mental health disorder. Almost 4 percent of people with bulimia are known to die because of the disorder, though the rate may be higher; not every case is identified as such.  Bulimia often involves binge-eating massive amounts of food and then purging (regurgitating) so as not to gain weight.

Photo by David Appleby/Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (10242448j) Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman

It turns out that 50 percent of people with bulimia or other eating disorders also abuse other substances at times, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. When both disorders occur at the same time – or any mental health problem and substance use disorder – it’s known as a dual diagnosis.

Unfortunately, dual diagnosis isn’t always diagnosed and facilities aren’t always equipped to treat both substance use and mental health disorders. Historically, therapists have treated only one disorder at a time or at all. Because one disorder can cause or lead to the other (sometimes people “self-medicate” with drugs or alcohol to “treat” a mental health problem), this led to many relapses. 

Although John was mainly living in Los Angeles, in 1990 no rehab facilities in California would accept a client with both drug addiction and mental or behavioral disorders, such as bulimia. He had to go to Chicago to find one that would take him.

The timeline in Rocketman seems deliberately vague, with songs and events rearranged for dramatic purposes, but no one could say it goes out of its way to make John look good or avoids events that make him look bad.

Despite or because of that, Rocketman seems very honest and, well, truthful. It hits all the right notes: the child prodigy, the friendship with lyricist Bernie Taupin, the growing fame, the ever-flashier wardrobe, the concealment and later acceptance of his homosexuality, the disastrous straight marriage, the excessive spending, and the substance abuse.

The film has already undergone a painstaking postmortem on numerous websites to sort out which events really happened, which ones sort of happened, and which didn’t happen at all.

Two or three relationships may not entirely match the facts.

• His father is depicted as uninterested in or hostile to his firstborn (and his career) but much more loving and engaged with the children from his second marriage. His father’s second wife and at least one of his half-brothers dispute this, but it seems to be how John remembers events. If not literally true, it’s psychologically true in understanding how it affected John.
• His mother, too, is shown as mostly uncaring about her child. Actress Bryce Dallas Howard said that her research for the role found that John and his mum had a “profoundly dysfunctional relationship.”
• His manager-lover John Reid is portrayed as a money-grubbing manipulator who physically and mentally abused his star client gravy train. Reid hasn’t spoken publicly about this portrayal – though years after their split he said he was still “fond” of John – but at least one musician who knew Reid questioned its veracity.

John himself (who avoided micromanaging the project because “I figured it would be uncomfortable for everyone to have the person the film was about lurking around” and “I’ve never been very comfortable with seeing myself on a big screen”) says the film was “like my life: chaotic, funny, mad, horrible, brilliant and dark. It’s obviously not all true, but it’s the truth.”

Then again, another characteristic of authorized biographies is settling scores. Maybe we’ll get what John considers the absolute truth, without fantasy or narrative devices, when his autobiography Me comes out in October.