Janis Joplin is one of the most revered and iconic rock and roll singers of all time, an often misunderstood figure who thrilled millions of listeners and blazed new creative trails before her death in 1970 at age 27. With Janis: Little Girl Blue, Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil, West of Memphis) examines Joplin’s story in depth, presenting an intimate and insightful portrait of a complicated and driven artist. Joplin’s own words tell much of the film’s story through a series of letters she wrote to her parents over the years, many of them made public here for the first time (and read by indie rock star Chan Marshall, also known as Cat Power). This correspondence is only one element of the stunning, previously unseen material Berg discovered during the seven years she has spent working on Janis: Little Girl Blue. New audio and video of Joplin in concert and in the studio (some shot by legendary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker), and even footage from her emotional return to Texas for her tenth high school reunion, add depth and texture to this remarkable story. I sat down with Amy Berg in Los Angeles to discuss this riveting documentary.
Danny Miller: I was so glad I attended the screening where you were doing a Q&A with Laura Joplin, Janis’s little sister. It was so poignant to see her now and sort of get an idea of what Janis would look like if she were still alive.
Amy Berg: Yes. But if Janis were still around, I bet she’d still be decked out in her unique way. She probably would have mellowed out at this point but I think her style would have been as original as it was back then!
Even though they clearly had their issues, it was refreshing to see how supportive her family members were and are.
It’s true. Of course, at the time Janis’s parents had a very hard time embracing her new life. They were happy for her success but hated everything that came with it.
It’s crazy how her music doesn’t seem dated today at all. I talked to Asif Kapadia earlier this year about his wonderful doc about Amy Winehouse and it’s hard not to compare the two in the sense that they were both so outrageously unique talents.
Yes, they were both unschooled, untrained musicians who were singing their guts out. Janis and Amy had very different voices but they were both equally as special and powerful. I don’t think there’s anyone you could really compare to Janis in that way other than Amy Winehouse. I know that Amy came from a more jazz background but there’s something about the way that they both delivered that was just unbelievable.
Too bad that Janis wasn’t around to mentor Amy Winehouse in some way.
Yeah, and help her get through the problems Amy had dealing with fame.
Right, because it seems that fame is what really fucked up Amy Winehouse whereas Janis reveled in it.
Amy Winehouse had so much pain around the idea of being so public and exposed, she says it right at the beginning of that film. That was definitely not Janis’s problem.
DENMARK – APRIL 19: Photo of Janis JOPLIN; Janis Joplin, posed, smoking cigarette (Photo by Jan Persson/Redferns)
One thing that always makes me bristle when people talk about Janis Joplin is when they refer to her “tragic life.” It was obviously very tragic that she died so young but, unlike Amy Winehouse, I just don’t see her that way. She certainly had her demons, but this is a very joyous film to me.
I think you’re right, I don’t think Janis’s life was tragic, either, although I do think she was often quite lonely. The ending was tragic, as you say, but Janis so enjoyed singing and being famous. When she was on, she was really on.
How did you decide on the structure of the film?
You know, I tried a lot of different methods of storytelling but ultimately I wanted to be true to Janis and the time that she was from. I think if you try to overdo the style in this case, it would have taken away from who she was. I attempted nonlinear editing, telling the story in more poetic ways, and so on, but I always came back to a simple narrative. The power of the film for me is Janis’s emotional truth that pulls you through. That old footage from the 1960s is so beautiful on its own, why mess with it? I wanted Janis to tell her own story and let everything breathe in that way.
There’s something about her completely unfiltered vulnerability that you see in the interviews and the footage of her, including that painful trip back to Port Arthur, Texas, for her high school reunion that is just amazing to see.
Totally. And that completely matched what I found in her letters and what her friends told me about her.
Were you nervous about having someone read those letters? I must say that I thought Chan Marshall was so perfect I even thought it was Janis’s own voice at first.
It took a long time to find the right person to do that but in the end I knew it had to be Chan who is also super vulnerable and very raw. I really wanted the audience to be able to understand Janis’s world from her own perspective and not just in the chaos of her on-camera life. I wanted to be in her world in a more intimate way.
Chan is so perfect it almost makes me believe in reincarnation. When was she born?
Ha! At the beginning of 1972 so that totally works!
Most of your films to date have focused on extremely heavy topics. Did working on this film feel like a breath of fresh air or is not true that a filmmaker working on a film about a very serious topic feels that kind of heaviness?
No, it’s pretty true, I gotta say! (Laughs.) Janis has been in my life since 2007, this film took a really long time to get off the ground. So every time I thought it was about to go and it didn’t, I started working on another film. I thought it was definitely a go a few years ago when it stalled again and I’m grateful for that because it was right when Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens came to me about West of Memphis and that was a very important film for me to do. Sometimes in my hippy-dippy version of myself, I felt that Janis was putting me to the test every day because the film was supposed to happen so many times and then didn’t and then it would come back again and again.
But how cool that all the time you were making these very heavy, difficult films you always had Janis as a kind of touchstone.
Exactly! And I’m so happy that the film is out now since I see it as a real celebration.
5th April 1969: Rock singer Janis Joplin (1943 – 1970). (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)
I love all the interviews in the film but the one that really surprised me was Dick Cavett. Was it already public knowledge that he and Janis were involved in that way?
I don’t think he had ever admitted it before. It was so funny, we were at a screening together the other night and Dick was trying to get the audience to ask about him and Janis. “Does anyone have any questions about my relationship to Janis Joplin?” It was hilarious, I kept making fun of him. “Oh, just tell people the truth!”
I love those Dick Cavett interviews with her back in the long-gone talk show days when people got to talk for 15 minutes at a time. So fascinating.
The only problem with those interviews is that during some of the most powerful moments on stage, the camera was never on Janis. She was on Cavett’s show one time with Raquel Welch and the cameraman could not take the camera off of Raquel. They’re all saying, “How does it feel to be so beautiful? You’re such a bombshell, how do you even walk out of the house?” The whole conversation was about Raquel Welch’s beauty and I so desperately wanted to see Janis’s face during that.
It’s true, there should have been a camera trained on her! I know you did your first narrative feature recently, too. Are you working on another one?
Yes, I’m working on a new film right now about a female survivor of Jonestown.
Ah, back to the light, easy subject matter!
(Laughs.) Right! And then I’m doing to do another documentary series that is also quite far from light or easy!
I know there’s been talk for years of a feature film about Janis Joplin but after seeing this film, I wonder how any actress could step into those shoes.
I know. But Janis’s brother and sister think that movie might finally happen now. I’ve heard that Amy Adams is interested and I think she might be able to pull it off.