What’s going on…

… with Frank Sidebottom’s head? And why is he standing next to Maggie Gyllenhaal and a lad who was in the Harry Potter films? These are the questions in everyone’s gobs after the emergence of this picture:

This is the photograph that’s being parade as the “first look at Michael Fassbender as Frank Sidebottom”, from an upcoming film that is to some degree (there’s some mystery here) “about” the late Chris Sievey’s comic alter-ego. Of course, we have to accept it’s true that it’s Fassbender under the papier mache head; it could be Ed Miliband for all I know. But what about that head?

As fans will know, this is what Frank Sidebottom really looks like:

The version played by Fassbender is eerily “off”, to the extent that I reckon the wrongness must be intentional. My favourite suggestion is that an actor playing a role in a biopic never looks exactly like the film’s subject, and a Michael Sheen-ish almostness is being created. The gormless, lipless mouth and untwinkling eyes are certainly unsettling. In the real Sidebottom’s eyes, of course, there’s a light that never…