In February, Ezra Edelman’s documentary project about Prince was killed by Netflix in favor of a new doc made in collaboration with the artist’s estate. Edelman had worked on the docuseries for five years, and now it’ll never be released to the public. In a new interview on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, Edelman had sharp words to say about the subject and about the future of documentary filmmaking at large.
“Right now, we live in a culture and in a documentary universe, and in some ways in a journalistic universe, where the subject gets to dictate who they are to everybody. And that is not the way that the Fourth Estate was set up. So, my issue is that in trading for access, you now have a lot of companies and filmmakers making deals with the subject, sanitizing their story and or their image, that to me, it’s like, of course, it serves them,” he said (via Deadline). “I think the exercise is very hard. I think the danger and the problem I’m finding is that what’s the compromise? Of course, there are movies being made with subjects that have some say in how the story is told or are getting paid for the access, which to me is a no-no, and gets to be a producer of their own story. What happens that these streamers or whoever the distributors are, they get a film about whomever.”
The Prince project that Netflix has replaced Edelman’s work with will be “a hagiographic propaganda love letter to Prince the artist,” the director warned. “Are you going to learn anything about Prince? I doubt it. Are you going to learn anything dark about Prince? I doubt it. Are you going to learn anything complicating about Prince? I doubt it.”
Edelman specified that he didn’t make a Surviving R. Kelly-style exposé, but his docuseries did delve into the complicated and at times problematic aspects of Prince’s life, including instances of physical and emotional abuse. But Edelman said it would be “a joke” for Prince’s estate to characterize the doc as negative, and they certainly couldn’t write it off as false. When the estate reviewed the project, “They came back with a 17-page document full of editorial issues, not factual issues. Do you think I have any interest in putting on a film that is factually inaccurate?” he said. “This is the thing I just find galling. I mean, I can’t get past this, of the short-sightedness of a group of people whose interest is their own bottom line. They’re afraid of his humanity. The lawyer who runs this estate essentially said he believed that this would do generational harm to Prince. In essence, that the portrayal of Prince in this film, what people learn about him, would deter younger viewers and fans, potentially, from loving Prince. They would be turned off.”
Edelman sees irony in the fact that Prince fought Warner Bros. over artistic freedom, and now his own art is “being stifled and thrown away.” But in his opinion, the situation illuminates something more troubling about the current state of documentary, and the public “doesn’t seem to care or know the difference.” “It’s like they’re being served slop, and they’re getting used to the fact that this is like, oh, I guess this is like fucking short rib. And I’m like, it’s not. It’s slop,” he said. “I think that’s the bigger issue. This film about Prince, to me, it’s a full meal. And it’s not something you can just tear through. It’s tough at times.” Unfortunately, it’s a meal in which most people will never be able to partake. You can watch the full interview below.
