capture some key traits that contributed to his downfall as a musician.

New film "Killing Bono" is a tragi-comic tribute to rock'n'roll's countless flops, and tells the true story of two brothers who began as U2's friends and rivals but ended up on the scrapheap of musical history.

The movie, which has a gala screening in London on Monday and hits theatres on Friday, is based on music journalist Neil McCormick's memoirs of the same name, although its makers took considerable liberties with the source material.

Unlike in the movie, for example, McCormick never did pull a gun on his school friend and nemesis Bono, even if much of his youth was consumed with an unhealthy obsession for U2's staggering success and his own failure as a singer.

"The script takes whatever liberties it wants from the book," McCormick, rock critic of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, told Reuters. "The beginning is quite similar to mine and then it launches into its own version in a kind of parallel universe."

Another fictional twist in the film, directed by Nick Hamm, is how Neil hid the fact that U2 had asked his bandmate and brother Ivan to join them, so sure was he that his group Shook Up! would eventually eclipse its rivals.

He said he was less dogmatic than his character in the movie, but actor Ben Barnes, best known for his lead role in Narnia blockbuster "Prince Caspian," did capture some key traits that contributed to his downfall as a musician.

"Back in the 1980s I counted all my chickens before they hatched and none of them actually hatched," he said.

"I messed a lot of things up. We made a lot of mistakes and I was driven by the kind of ambition that leads to mistakes."

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