Des Barres cycled through different groups after that while still acting, going through two marriages, and fighting a drug habit. The height of his career was probably in the mid-1980s, when he co-wrote the song "Obsession," which became a hit for Animotion
(and which gives the film its subtitle), and toured with supergroup The Power Station after original lead singer Robert Palmer backed out, starting with a widely watched gig at Live Aid. Shortly after that, he played one of his better-known roles as a recurring villain on MacGyver (1985).
Some of the famous friends he picked up along the way are featured as Talking Heads in the film, including actors Don Johnson, Gabriel Byrne, and Ed Begley Jr., director Allison Anders, and members of Duran Duran and The Sex Pistols.
Michael Des Barres: Who Do You Want Me to Be? includes examples of:
- Addled Addict: By everyone's account, Michael had become this before he quit drugs in 1981. Second wife Pamela says that she'd basically resigned herself to the fact that he would sometimes just disappear for days or weeks. Michael says that what drove him to quit was when he looked in the mirror and realized "I looked like Iggy Pop's mother."
- Amicable Exes: Michael and Pamela Des Barres. At one point, she calls him "the best ex-husband."
- Boarding School of Horrors: Michael's aristocratic lineage gets him into some prestigious English boarding schools, but according to him, all the nasty stories you've heard about them are true — including the pederasty.
- Book Ends: The first time we see Michael in the film, he's in a fancy picture frame identifying him as the 26th Marquis Des Barres. The film ends with his son Nicholas similarly framed and identified as the 27th Marquis Des Barres.
- Casting Couch: Michael says that when he was an aspiring actor in the '60s it was fairly well known that some of the powerful men in the industry were gay, so this trope applied to aspiring actors as well as actresses. (He doesn't name names.)
- Covered Up: In-universe example. Des Barres and his musical partner Holly Knight recorded "Obsession" for the soundtrack of A Night In Heaven, but the film flopped and the song went unnoticed until Animotion turned it into an international hit.
- Distant Prologue: The film starts with an animated prologue showing the 12th-century French battle that started the noble Des Barres lineage.
- Drugs Are Bad: Des Barres and his friend Steve Jones (of The Sex Pistols) both appeared in PSAs for Rock Against Drugs, an organization that urged young people to stay clean by emphasizing the heavy toll that drugs had taken on the rock community.
- Family Portrait of Characterization: Played with. After the medieval prologue, the film fast-forwards in time by moving through a (also animated) hall of ancestral portraits before landing on a frame with a picture of Michael in full rock-star mode.
- Groupie: Pamela Des Barres was this at the time she met Michael, although she gave it up when they moved in together. During their marriage, she wrote a best-selling memoir about her groupie life called I'm With the Band, which is discussed briefly in the film.
- Impoverished Patrician: Des Barres says his father was a marquis of an 800-year-old lineage, but he blew his fortune with his decadent habits.
- Junkie Parent: Michael's father meets up with him after years of absence bringing a couple teenage girls and a bag of coke along with him. Michael says it gave him a strong sense that he was destined to become the same, and indeed, he was a Junkie Parent for the first few years of his son's life.
- Manchild: Pamela says that after their son was born, she felt like she was parenting two children, the other being Michael. After they divorced, however, Michael realized he needed to be more responsible and learned how to pay bills and the like.
- May–December Romance: Michael's current wife Britta is clearly much younger than he is.
- Obsession Song: "Obsession" has it right there in the title, and formally it's a perfect example of a Stalker with a Crush song. But Des Barres says that he was really thinking about drug addiction when he wrote it, since he was going to AA meetings at the time and kept hearing about how obsessed everyone was with their favorite substances.
- Parental Neglect: Michael was raised partly by his mother's friends because neither of his parents was around much, though in his mother's case it was due to her mental illness.
- Really Gets Around: Michael Des Barres' constant philandering ended his first two marriages, but he's not the only one in the movie with this habit. His father had a seemingly insatiable appetite for teenage girls, and even his second wife Pamela had a busy sex life as a Groupie before she met him.
- Recovered Addict: Michael says he hasn't done drugs or alcohol since he decided to quit in 1981. Steve Jones had a somewhat longer struggle, but he also appears to be successfully recovered.
- Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Des Barres admits that the sex and drugs were a lot of what drew him to become a rock singer in the first place, and he wildly indulged for years (though he stopped using drugs in 1981).
- Title Drop: We see a clip for the original video of "Obsession," with its chorus "You're my obsession/What do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?"
