For a virtuous artist whose sublime efforts to entertain the masses are wired even in the smallest of nuances – the articulated micromovements from his jump across the stage, the contractions and tension in the muscles of his face changing with each passing second, his wailing that reduces to a growl – Tina Turner often projects a surprising attitude in a new documentary about her life: reluctance.
“The first interview we did in February 2019, we were sitting down to do the interview and I thought, ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling?’ She was like, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ ”said Daniel Lindsay via Zoom recently. Lindsay is one of the directors of Tina, which debuts Saturday on HBO. “I knew that she didn’t mean the entire documentary, but the interview. We were like, ‘Let’s start there. Let’s talk about this. ‘”
Reluctance has been a topic throughout Turner’s public life after her divorce from Ike Turner, the rock and roll pioneer she says has abused her terribly for years during her marriage and musical collaboration. As Turner recounts in Tina, she was initially moved to tell her story to People revised in 1981 to separate once and for all her image from that of Ike, from whom she finally escaped in 1976. The opposite happened. The story of his escape from Ike Turner to experience the greatest success of his career, ascending to the true god of rock in the 1980s, not only defined Turner’s public profile, but achieved legendary status in the annals of American pop culture.
This story gave Lindsay and her managing partner, TJ Martin, something to reflect on the lack of other issues in this realm. The duo is extremely selective in relation to their projects, having won the 2012 Oscar for Best Documentary for The unbeaten. (The victory made Martin the first black man to win in that category.) “Part of the reason we are so hesitant to sign to direct the film is that this type of film can be – I hope ours is not – Marvel films from the documentary world: larger budgets and integrated audiences,” explained Lindsay . “We knew we would never make traditional rock, so to speak, where we would just dissect her music catalog and talk about Tina as an artist.”
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This is not to say that there is no point in Turner’s historical career. In fact, the film is stocked with archival footage of artistic heights from the Ike and post-Ike eras (“River Deep, Mountain High”, Tuner’s collaboration with Phil Spector in the first field, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” on last) Lindsay and Martin regularly employ photo montages, some of which are frantically edited, during musical moments, as if to stick as much of an icon on the screen as possible while being reminded to absorb everything, frame by frame. But in order to make a film worth watching, they faced a unique challenge that Turner herself expressed during her first meeting.
“I think his exact words were: ‘There was a book, a movie and a musical. What the hell are we going to do a documentary for? ” ”Recalled Martin in reference to Turner’s 1985 memoir Me, tina; his 1993 film adaptation, What does love have to do with it; and the most recent Broadway production TINA – The Tina Turner Musical. “We thought, ‘We had the same question. That’s why we’re here. ‘To her credit, she broke the ice and it created an honest space for us to be. It was really in those first conversations that we recognized how the trauma of his past is still well below the surface. It is always lurking around the corner. “
The project came about as a result of the work that Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn did with Turner in promotional videos for the Broadway musical. The Chinns presented the doc idea to Turner and her musical executive husband, Erwin Bach, and then asked Lindsay and Martin, with whom they worked at Lightbox, if they would be interested in running it.
“As soon as Simon approached us to see if we were willing to drive, our hesitation was, first of all, are two men the right people to be Tina’s voice, to tell their story?” recalled Martin. “And the second was that we respected Tina immensely, but we weren’t necessarily fans. The latter was probably an advantage because, as we started to dive in and learn more about her narrative, we were looking at her through the lens of the narrative and everything was an appropriate discovery. “
As to how they reconciled by telling Turner’s story while they were both men, the choice ultimately depended on Turner. “Over time, spending time with her, I think we have built a good relationship and trust with her so that our job would be an empathetic channel for her to filter her narrative,” said Martin. The team, Lindsay pointed out, hardly included a sausage party, with people like Diane Becker working as a producer and Taryn Gould on the editing team.
Tina in the end it would take about two and a half years to complete. The directors’ first interview with Turner in his palace in Zurich took place in February 2019. They conducted two three-hour interviews over two days. “Usually, with these celebrity-based documents, there is a contract in terms of how long they are going to give you. We shouldn’t be getting much more than that, but to Tina’s credit, once she started dipping her toe in the process, I think she got a little excited, “said Martin, who described Turner as” this healthy combination unique energy, extremely warm and extremely honest. ”
“If she doesn’t like your shoes, she’ll be like, ‘Why are you wearing these shoes?'”, He added. “But in the most loving way, like, ‘I think you can do better.'”
“There is humility in it,” said Lindsay. “Don’t get me wrong, she is still a star. It’s annoying when people say celebrities are down to earth, but I don’t know how to describe it anymore. It makes you feel very comfortable. “
They based their structure on Turner’s often-declared fatigue in relation to his narrative. Tina, then, is a biography that deals with both the events that took place and the act of sharing them. “There’s something to explore in her story, what we ended up doing in this kind of metamorphosis, like, ‘What does Tina think about Tina Turner’s story ?,'” said Lindsay. “It wasn’t just interesting in that world. We also thought it said something more about the media and the way we define people as symbols and ideas. That piece of bone-in meat is what made us think, ‘This is a real movie.’ “
But if we accept Turner’s word, that she essentially dragged on telling her story to People and then to journalist Kurt Loder (who co-wrote Me, tina) and then suffered from the release of What does love have to do with it (at a press conference, shown at Tina through archival footage, she said she didn’t have the stomach to watch), isn’t the same thing happening again? Aren’t Lindsay and Martin guilty of making Turner suffer more for the hell she spends so much with the doctor criticizing?
“This is a very strange line to follow: are we doing the same thing? I know that we feel comfortable with the way we work with her to make sure we don’t do the same thing in our process with her, ”said Lindsay. “Honestly, it became too much to be able to articulate exactly and it’s like, ok, I think that’s the odd contradiction in this film. We were very anxious to show the film to Tina, and we even talked about whether we should show her certain roles. In the end, she said, ‘No, I want to see everything.’ She really liked the movie. She told us that it was accurate and that she felt it was the truth of her experience. But she also said that it was not as difficult for her to watch as she thought it would be. This speaks at least in some ways to what she says at the end: there is an acceptance for some things ”.
Toward the end of the doc’s filming, it became clear that it could be Turner’s final farewell to the audience. Okay, she said goodbye before – her 1990 Foreign Affair journey was titled The Farewell Tour. She was going to release four more, concluding with Tina !: 50-year tour from 2008-9. But at 81, Turner looks more outdated than ever. In a footage of her watching the premiere of her Broadway show, she declares herself ready to say her final goodbye.
“It was palpable and she talked a lot about her hesitation to go to the musical,” said Martin. “She really appreciates the celebration of her life, but being the persona of Tina Turner – being the symbol of Tina Turner – is really exhausting for her. The way she was expressing herself on the way to the premiere started to make it clear to us that, although we considered that point of view very particular in the film, it will be a little closer to her last word, possibly. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if in five years from now, Tina releases another album. This is Tina Turner. “