![janis joplin american masters janis joplin american masters](https://media.vogue.fr/photos/5c3629ca3b3b29747dfa703e/16:9/w_2580,c_limit/le_documentaire_janis_joplin_par_amy_berg_6266.jpeg)
“And when I look at what she’s done for women, for women in music, and for me as a woman, I felt kind of a responsibility to show her life,” Berg said during TCA. And I think to do a good movie, you’re challenging someone to find the depth.”įor her part, Berg said that as a woman, she felt compelled to tell Joplin’s story because her legacy had become more about how she died - joining the infamous “27 Club,” which includes Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain - than how she lived. And we, as a culture, you know, we’re kind of hung up on the simple image. “And I’m eager to see someone come forth and be able to give us the kind of Janis that Amy gave us, the real person with the complexity, the drama of the music, and the real soulful sense and the humor. And to make it interesting, I think you really have to get into her,” said Laura Joplin during a winter TCA presentation about the documentary. “I think that Janis has a larger-than-life story. Over the past few decades, there have been many attempts to capture Joplin’s story on film, with some of Hollywood’s biggest names attached. And then there’s the bonus of Cat invoking the perfect intonation.” They really shaped the narrative of the film and brought a new depth to it. ”They showed a side of Janis not seen in public. “The letters were always part of how I wanted to tell the story,” Berg said in a phone interview from New York. Most of the correspondence was saved by Joplin’s mother. While many had been previously published, others are revealed for the first time and often expose Joplin’s naivety, fears and sadness. For Janis, it was about becoming a caricature of herself and not being able to set boundaries and turn off being the performer.”īerg began working with the Joplin estate in 2007 - the singer’s siblings Laura and Michael are interviewed in the film - dealing with rights issues, financing, finding previously unseen footage and culling video from Joplin’s iconic performances at the Monterey Pop Festival and at Woodstock.Īmong its most gripping elements are the letters Joplin wrote to family, friends and lovers, which are read by Chan Marshall, an indie rocker better known as Cat Power. “I’ve been watching a lot of Prince, but they both put so much into their shows it became who they were in life as well. “You do see a lot of similarity in the intensity of performances with Prince and Janis,” said Berg, whose documentary is set to air as part of the “American Masters” 30th anniversary season on PBS. Less than three weeks after Jimi Hendrix died, the world mourned another drug overdose death of a larger-than-life musician, the 27-year-old Joplin, whose career had burnt white-hot for the four previous years before her tragic, untimely passing. The recent death of Prince sparked a revelation for director Amy Berg, who just spent eight years immersed in the life of another musical legend, Janis Joplin, culminating in the feature documentary “Janis: Little Girl Blue” which she also wrote and produced along with Alex Gibney, Jeff Jampol and Katherine LeBlond.įlash back to the fall of 1970.