The best documentary you’ll never see
On the unfinished legacy of Prince
The New York Times’ weekday podcast, “The Daily,” recently dedicated an episode to a 9-hour documentary about Prince that will never see the light of day.
Notoriously mysterious, Prince’s legacy isn’t a surprising project for a streaming behemoth like Netflix and a decorated director like Ezra Edelman (winner of an Academy Award and Primetime Emmy for “O.J.: Made in America”) to take on.
It probably also isn’t surprising that when interviews with friends and collaborators confirmed Prince to be a complicated man™, his estate employed legal skullduggery to delay and eventually shelve the film. This begs the question: What are they so afraid of?
As best as I can tell from the Times’ reporting, Prince was guilty of some unsavory behavior including abusiveness toward at least one romantic partner. That’s tough to hear about someone who inspires you, but I’d rather hear the whole truth than have someone else decide which parts are sanitized enough to pass through the censor.
That’s the beauty of a documentary. It unearths unseen footage and amplifies unheard voices. It puts the weight of judgement in the viewer’s hands. It gives us the opportunity to take in the all the information—someone’s formative experiences, their blemishes and their motivations, their reasons for making the choices they made and turning out the way they did.
And who doesn’t like to grapple with a complex character? Isn’t that why we read fiction and watch movies? Don’t we sometimes find ourselves rooting for the bad guy?
Now, there may be some for whom any transgression is too many, and the whispers about Prince are enough to put him on your do not play list. That’s ok with me. This isn’t really about whether or not I’ll continue to listen his music. It’s about not having the opportunity to make that call.
With this film we had a chance to understand more about a brilliant musician, a tortured soul, and a complicated legacy. And in doing so, we would have had a chance to learn more about ourselves.