Every film nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary was excellent but I was happy to see Asif Kapadia win on Sunday night for his moving film about six-time Grammy winner Amy Winehouse. Featuring unseen archival footage and previously unheard tracks, the film shines a spotlight on Winehouse’s incredible talent as it examines the pitfalls of our fame-based culture. Amy Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse, who doesn’t come off well in the documentary, criticized Kapadia following the Oscar win for painting a “negative, spiteful, and misleading” portrayal of his daughter who died in 2011 at the age of 27. I couldn’t disagree more with that assessment of the film. “This film is about Amy and showing the world who she really was, not the tabloid persona,” Kapadia said as he accepted his Oscar on Sunday. I remember being shocked when Asif Kapadia’s brilliant 2010 documentary, Senna, about the life and death of motor-racing champion Aryton Senna, failed to even make the shortlist that year so I was happy to see Kapadia’s work finally recognized by the Academy. When I sat down with Asif Kapadia in Los Angeles just prior to the film’s theatrical release, we talked about how his view of Amy Winehouse changed over the course of making the film and what he thought about her father’s criticism of the documentary.
Danny Miller: I had always admired Amy Winehouse’s music but I completely fell in love with her while watching this film. I feel bad that toward the end of her life I used to think, with lots of judgment, “Get it together! What’s your problem?”
Asif Kapadia: But that’s what a lot of people on the outside thought, including me. “Oh, sort it out already!” Few people knew what was really going on with her.
I knew she was talented but now I think she was a genius — and the footage you’ve gathered here is just incredible. Did you know when you started that you were going to have access to all of that stuff?
No, not at all. What happened was that my producer, James Gay-Rees, who also worked on Senna, called up and said he met David Joseph, the CEO of Universal Music, at a dinner party. Joseph had really loved Senna and wanted to know if I was interested in making a film about Amy. I was making a film about the London Olympics at the time so I was thinking about the city. I was kind of a fan of Amy, I liked her music, but I had a lot of questions about what happened to her. I live very close to where she lived so she was a local girl to me, I could have bumped into her on a bus. I thought there was something there that I wanted to find out about.
Did you have access to the people who were close to her right from the get-go?
For the most part, yes. With Amy there was nobody who knew everything, no one person to connect the dots. Everyone thought they knew the story but they only knew her during a specific period. One of the first people I spoke to was Nick Shymansky, her first manager. He showed me some stuff on his laptop and I thought, “Who knew she was so funny and intelligent?” Amy was ordinary but extraordinary. And her lyrics were incredible. We all fell in love with her.
Were you worried about making a film about her when a big part of her problem was the constant attention from the press? Did you think some people might say, “Oh God, leave her alone already?”
Yes — and some people did say that! Even I felt that at the beginning since we started working on the film pretty soon after she died. It was all pretty fresh and at the beginning a lot of people weren’t that comfortable talking about her. But then fairly soon something else took over. Remember that she was just a kid when she started. She wrote her first album when she was 17, and she was only 21 when she put out her second one. She was only 14 in that footage you see at the beginning of the film. Two years after that she’s having this intense relationship with an older guy that she writes about and that becomes “Stronger Than Me.”
That song blew me away. I have to admit that I didn’t know much about her until she won all those Grammys in 2008. I happened to be at that show and her performance that was shown to us live from Europe was electrifying.
It’s interesting because people in the UK knew of her a lot earlier. Most Americans became aware of her at a much later stage when she was already in a bad way.
Is it a gross overstatement to say that fame played a major role in her demise?
No, but it was everything — the choices she made, the choices people around her made, family, relationships, money, everything. And she had the misfortune of becoming so successful just when newspapers were going from print to digital. People were consuming more and more media and all the outlets were competing with each other. Who can get the best picture of Amy looking bad? It was relentless.
Do you think it’s harder to be famous in the UK than here?
I think that was the worst time to be famous. You could constantly be mentally and even physically attacked by reporters and photographers and no one seemed to care. I thought it was a little better there now, but some journalists told me that it’s just as bad as it always was. But once she became famous, Amy never had a moment’s peace in London.
Your interviews with Amy’s ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, were fascinating, as were the ones with her father and other family members. I admired their candor but was shocked that they were willing to say those things since some don’t come across very well. What do you think about her father’s criticisms of the film?
There was a point early on where we realized that people would not necessarily be over the moon about the film. But I thought, either we do it properly or there’s no reason to do it at all. And by then we were in very deep — we know too much, and I felt that we had to do right by Amy and show who she really was. The project became more and more important to me. I was grateful to have the access that we had as well as permission to use her songs. I knew we just had to do it and just be grown-ups about it.
Do you think the people who are now complaining about the film are worried that people will think they somehow played a role in Amy’s tragic end?
I think with a little bit of time we’ll realize that you can’t place the blame on any individual people. Yes, there were decisions made at the time that may not have been in Amy’s best interest, but a lot of people just got carried away by all the fame and money. Of course, I don’t think anyone who knew her wanted what happened to take place — some people just got a bit lost.
Watching the film, I felt that her parents loved her and did the best that they knew how to do, but I have to admit I cast some blame on her ex-husband, Blake. Not to take away from her own responsibility for her life, but it seemed like Blake led her down some pretty destructive paths.
And yet he’s seen the film and hasn’t come out against it. He’s able to see and admit to his role in what happened with Amy.
I can see why her father would cringe at certain moments in the film but his statements are so unfounded since this is such a loving portrait of Amy Winehouse.
Interesting, isn’t it? Here’s the thing: this is a film about Amy. I think some people were a little upset that it wasn’t a film about them.