For a virtuous performer the sublime efforts to entertain the masses are telegraphed to the smallest nuance: the articulated micro-movements from his franchise to the stage, the movements and tensions of his facial muscles changing with each passing second, his moan becoming thick. Tina Turner often projects a surprising attitude in a new documentary about her life: reluctance.
“The first interview we did in February 2019, we sat down to do the interview and he asked me,‘ How are you? How do you feel?’ She said, “I don’t want to do this,” Daniel Lindsay recently said via Zoom. Lindsay is one of the directors of Tina, which premieres Saturday on HBO. “I knew I didn’t mean the whole documentary, but the interview. We said, ‘Let’s start here. Let’s talk about it. “
Reluctance has been a reason throughout Turner’s public life after his divorce from Ike Turner, the pioneer of rock and roll who she said abused her horribly for years during her marriage and musical collaboration. . As Turner explains in Tina, was initially moved to tell his story Gent magazine in 1981 to definitively separate its image from that of Ike, from whom it finally escaped in 1976. It ended up happening the opposite. The story of his escape from Ike Turner to experience the greatest success of his career, ascending to the god of rock bonafide in the 80s, does not just define the public profile of Turner, but has achieved a legendary status in the annals of American pop culture.
That story gave Lindsay and her managing partner, TJ Martin, something to chew on that might have been lacking in other subjects of this realm. The couple is extremely selective about their projects, having won the Oscar for best documentary for 2012 The undefeated. (Victory made Martin the first black person to win in this category.) “Part of the reason we were so hesitant to sign up to direct the film is that these kinds of films can be — I hope ours aren’t — the Marvel films of the documentary world: budgets older and integrated audience, ”he explained. Lindsay. “We knew we would never make a traditional rock document, so to speak, where we would just dissect her music catalog and talk about Tina as a performer.”
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That’s not to say it doesn’t make any sense in Turner’s story. In fact, the film features archival footage of artistic maxims from the Ike and post-Ike eras, “River Deep, Mountain High,” Tuner’s collaboration with Phil Spector at the old camp, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” in the last)). Lindsay and Martin regularly use a montage of still images, some edited frantically, during musical moments, as if to bring together as many of an icon as possible on the screen, reminding you that you have it all, frame by frame. But to make a film worth watching, they posed a unique challenge that Turner herself expressed during her first meeting.
“I think his exact words were,‘ There’s been a book, a movie, and a musical. What the hell are we going to do a documentary about? “Martin recalled in reference to Turner ‘s 1985 memoirs Me, Tina; the 1993 film adaptation, What does this have to do with love; and the most recent Broadway production TINA – The musical by Tina Turner. “We said,‘ We had the same question. That is why we are here. To his credit, he broke the ice and this created an honest space to be. It was really in those early conversations that we recognized how the trauma of his past is still beneath the surface. He is always lurking around the corner.
The project arose as a result of the work done by Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn with Turner in promotional videos for the Broadway musical. The Chinns introduced the teaching idea to Turner and her music executive husband, Erwin Bach, and then asked Lindsay and Martin, with whom they have worked at production company Lightbox, if they would like to direct it.
“Once Simon approached us to see if we were willing to lead, our hesitation was fair, first of all, are two men the right people to be Tina’s voice, to tell her story?” Martin remembered. “And the second was that we had a lot of respect for Tina, but we weren’t necessarily fans. The latter was probably to our advantage because as we began to dive in and learn more about his narrative, we were looking at it from the lens of the narrative and it was all a fitting discovery. “
As for how they reconciled by telling Turner’s story while they were both men, the decision was ultimately Turner’s. “Over time, spending time with her, I think we established a good relationship and we trusted her so that our job was to be an empathic conduit for her to filter her narrative,” Martin said. The crew, Lindsay noted, formed almost no sausage party, with Diane Becker working as producer and Taryn Gould on the editing team.
Tina it would take about two and a half years to complete. The first interview the directors settled with Turner on their palatine estate in Zurich took place in February 2019. They conducted two three-hour interviews over two days. “Normally, with these celebrity-based documents, there is a contract as to the time they will give you. We weren’t supposed to get much more than that, but to Tina’s credit, once she started immersing herself in the process, I think she got a little excited, ”said Martin, who described Turner as“ this healthy combination of unique energy, extremely warm and extremely honest ”.
“If he doesn’t like your shoes, it will be like,‘ Why are you wearing these shoes? “, He added.” But in the most loving way, like “I think you can do better.”
“There’s a humility in her,” Lindsay said. “I’m not mistaken, he’s still a star. It’s annoying when people say celebrities are on earth, but I don’t know how to describe it anymore. It makes you feel very comfortable. ”
They based their framework on the tiredness asserted by Turner with respect to his narrative. Tina, then, it is a biography that deals with both the events that took place and the fact of sharing them. “There’s something to explore in her story, which in the end we did in this goal way, like,‘ What does Tina think about Tina Turner’s story? Lindsay said. “This was not only interesting in that world. We also thought that something said something more about the media and how to define people as symbols and ideas. This piece of meat in the world ‘os is what made us say,’ This is a real movie. ‘
But if we take Turner at his word, he crawled essentially to tell his story Gent and then to journalist Kurt Loder (who co-wrote Me, Tina) and then suffered with the release of What does this have to do with love (at a press conference, shown at Tina through the archive footage, said he could not be sitting stomach), does not the same happen again? Aren’t Lindsay and Martin guilty of making Turner spend more of the hell he spends so much of the denigrating document?
“This is a very strange line to walk: do we do the same? I know we are comfortable with the way we work with her to make sure we are not doing the same with her in our process, ”Lindsay said. “Honestly, it became too much to be able to articulate exactly and it’s like, okay, I guess that’s the weird contradiction of this movie. We were really looking forward to showing the movie to Tina and even we all talked about whether we shouldn’t show him certain parts. Ultimately, he said, “No, I want to see it all.” He really liked the movie. He told us it was accurate and he felt it was the truth of his experience. But he also said it wasn’t that hard for him to see how he thought he would be. That speaks at least in some way to what he says in the end: there’s a part of acceptance of that. “
Towards the end of filming the document, it became clear that it could be Turner’s last farewell to the audience. Of course, he had already said goodbye before: his trip to the 1990 Foreign Affair was titled The Farewell Tour. He would go on to release four more, concluding with Tina !: 50th Anniversary Tour of 2008-9. But at 81, Turner seems more than ever. In footage of attendance at the premiere of her Broadway show, she declares herself ready to bid her final farewell.
“He was palpable and was very vocal about his hesitations to attend the musical,” Martin said. “She really enjoys celebrating her life, but being really Tina Turner’s person, being the symbol of Tina Turner, is really exhausting for her. The way she expressed herself on the road to the premiere began to understand that even though we took this very particular POV in the film, it will be a little closer to his last word, possibly.That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if in five years Tina came out with a another record. This is Tina Turner “.