“Tina”, a new documentary about rock superstar Tina Turner, tells a story in two acts. The first is a tragic portrait of childhood neglect, horrible marital abuse and private suffering. The second is a joyous celebration of personal liberation, creative success and public worship.
The film, which premiered on March 27 on HBO, required an act of tonal balance for Oscar-winning filmmakers Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin. Previously, they co-directed the documentaries “Undefeated” (2011), a touching look at a downtown soccer team, and “LA 92” (2017), an insightful account of the Los Angeles riots drawn mainly from images of file.
Lindsay and Martin spent time interviewing Turner, who reflected on the long and often difficult process of reconciling the ups and downs of his life, from the abuse he suffered at the hands of ex-husband and former collaborator Ike Turner to surprising popularity that he achieved in the 1980s as a solo artist – and one of the few black women in rock.
The documentary features interviews with actor Angela Bassett (who played Turner in the 1993 film “What does love have to do with it”); journalist Kurt Loder; playwright Katori Hall; Turner’s husband, Erwin Bach; and Oprah Winfrey. The film also includes audio recordings of an interview with People magazine in 1981, in which Turner, who now lives in Switzerland, recounted his harrowing escape from Ike’s abuses.
“Tina” – and a Broadway musical about Turner’s life that debuted just a few months before the closed cinema pandemic – was heralded as his farewell to public life. In an interview with Zoom this week, Lindsay and Martin discussed the feeling of responsibility to do justice to Turner’s story. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for greater length and clarity.
You co-directed films about football and the Los Angeles riots. What attracted you to Tina Turner as a documentary theme?
Lindsay: We were somewhat reluctant to do this as our next film. We have been asked to make various biopics and musical documents for celebrities, and we always refuse because – and it will sound so pretentious – we approach documentary form as a means of creating cinema. Musical documents are often a catalog of songs in search of a story.
But what Tina’s life story offers is a real journey, a real saga. It turns out that the hero at the center is an iconic musical artist.
Simon Chin, the producer, had already made a deal with Tina and her husband, Erwin, to make the documentary, and when he approached us to do it, we had these concerns. We were also concerned that two men would take the lead. But in the end, talking to Tina and getting a better understanding of her life – especially her point of view about her own story – gave us direction.
Martin: We had an immense respect for Tina Turner and knew the general features of her story, but we were not superfans at all. It was exactly when we immersed ourselves in that that we recognized that we could make a suitable film, and we didn’t necessarily need to do something that would suit the fans. We could really be faithful to Tina’s narrative, and that was really liberating.
The film shows how Tina’s survival story inspired millions of people. But she also explores how painful it was when reporters constantly asked her about domestic violence instead of her solo career. How did you find a balance between recognizing your trauma and celebrating your success?
Lindsay: Was hard. How do we position ourselves so that we don’t do the same thing? I think we managed to find a balance by using archival materials to tell some of the disturbing stories in her life in more detail, using interviews she had already done, so we don’t need to ask her to come back and give us the details of her life with Ike.
We gave her an idea of our point of view before interviewing her, so she knew that we would cover the abuse, but not ask her to give specific details. We tried to tell his story in a way that was as respectful as possible – not exploitative, not sensationalistic.
Martin: We learned in initial conversations with Tina that the pain of her past is always lurking. She will say it herself. She doesn’t mind talking about it [the abuse], but she knows that if she does, it comes back in dreams, which is a form of PTSD.
The narrative has always been that she “got over” these things. But she is actively suing, and this is a lifelong journey of making the decision to wake up every day and decide that you will be a survivor.
In the film, Tina’s husband says the documentary and the Broadway musical are meant to be his farewell to his American fans and, potentially, his public life. Is this a context that you were aware of while making the film, and did you feel any greater responsibility knowing that this could be her goodbye?
Lindsay: “That’s it. Don’t screw it up.” [Laughs.] This became increasingly clear to us as we went along.
In our interview with Tina, she said, “How do you get out slowly, are you leaving? I appreciate all this love for me, but I am tired, I am tired, I just want to live in retirement ”. We understood that desire and I think that, as time went by, we realized what it really meant.
But look, it’s Tina. Maybe in two years she will record a new album and play stadiums again. I think our feeling is that she retired from the stage in 2009, and is now doing the musical [and the film] it was perhaps a final way of saying, “I also want to stop being Tina Turner.”
It occurred to me that young people in their teens and 20s are probably not familiar with the body of her work, certainly with the music she recorded in the 60s and 70s. What do you expect them to get out of this film?
Martin: We thought about it a lot when making the film. I think an older generation has the following feeling: “We already know the Ike days. We don’t need to redo this. ”But the younger generation has a clear palette. We wanted to make sure that we were giving the full length of Tina Turner’s story so that viewers reached a point of understanding.
The film has two great lessons for me. The first is that, for some people, the process of dealing with trauma is just that: a process. The second is in a totally different vein: the art of Tina Turner. The film is not populated by a lot of musicians talking about how great it is, but we guarantee space for the presentations.
The hope is that the younger generations will see this and appreciate how unique she was as a performer, choreographer and vocalist. She was way, way ahead of her time.