#little richard documentary

[thequeereview]

Exclusive Interview: Little Richard I Am Everything filmmaker Lisa Cortés "it was important to give him agency to be the narrator of his journey"

Little Richard: I Am Everything, released in US theaters and on digital on Friday, April 21st, sees Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning director Lisa Cortés excavate the Black queer origins of rock ‘n’ roll with Richard Penniman, aka Little Richard, as its “architect”. The fascinating and often thrilling film, which world premiered in the US Documentary Competition section at the 2023 Sundance Film…

[sbrown82]

Karis and Mick are both nominated for NAACP Image awards this year. You think Karis will make him her date tp the show?

Oh, wow! I totally forgot that they both have documentaries in the running this year. I don't know if Mick will go, but it would be really funny to see the both of them turn up at one of the BLACKEST functions of the year...cuz her daddy is a damn mess! 😂🙈

[anarchistin]

Little Richard is widely recognized as one of the first crossover Black artists but spent years feeling his contributions to music have been overlooked in favor of white artists like Elvis Presley. His advocacy for the rights and recognition of Black artists was a lifelong project.

[mudwerks]

(via Little Richard: I Am Everything Documentary Director Interview)

the REAL king of rock and roll

[stillunusual]

Little Richard: I Am Everything @ Mooby Aribau, Barcelona 5/11/2023

[dustedmagazine]

Little Richard: I Am Everything (Magnolia)

How does one tell the story of an artist as influential as Little Richard? The same way you tell the story of the Universe, by keeping it simple: A long time ago there was the Big Bang. 

Little Richard: I Am Everything, a new documentary directed by Lisa Cortes, presents Little Richard’s existence as an analogous cosmic event. Rock ‘n’ roll as we know it exists because on December 5, 1932, Richard Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia.

Cortes isn’t the first to frame Little Richard in terms of cosmic energy. As Nick Tosches once put it, “[v]ia his pure white-energy raunch and total over-simplification, [Little Richard had] the power to make people say 'fuck it' and turn their backs on their own control conditioning and just go out and debauch and catch a glimpse of the violent, drunken, loving, dancing Universe.” I Am Everything is similarly reverential, but the power of the film stems from its focus on Little Richard’s strange, conflicted human experience. 

Growing up, Little Richard, as he would later be nicknamed, was scolded in church for singing too loud — an impressive feat for a Pentecostal. He exuded a preacher’s charisma and even as a young boy parishioners asked him to pray for them. When he started playing piano, he banged on the keys the way that Sister Rosetta Tharpe, an early influence, banged on her guitar. The idea, Little Richard said, was to drum away at your instrument until you reached “the peak.” 

The nature of that “peak,” would remain a lifelong tension. That erratic blurring of sexual and spiritual extasy, one of rock music’s central paradoxes, is what made his music both threatening and irresistible. 

Fans of Little Richard specifically and rock history in general are likely familiar with the raw information that I Am Everything offers. But in addition to the more expected talking heads —  Mick Jagger, John Waters, Billy Porter — some fresher contextualization comes from Black, queer academics and music historians. “The south is the home of all things queer” says writer and sociologist Zandria Robinson, and she means “queer” in every sense of the word. Homosexuality was illegal, as was drag (the maddeningly circular nature of culture emerges as one of I Am Everything’s subtler themes) but the edges of that reality were “soft.” Little Richard performed with minstrel shows and on the vaudeville circuit, sometimes appearing as Princess LaVonne. 

Like many raised in the church, Little Richard always suspected that rock ‘n’ roll was the Devil’s music. That persistent belief, Jagger notes, “can’t be much fun for those involved,” an observation that further emphasizes how heavy Little Richard’s baggage was in comparison to some of his imitators. 

In 1957, the story goes, Little Richard saw Sputnik in the night sky and interpreted it as a sign from God to repent. He enrolled in Bible school, hosted a buy-back/burning of his records, started making Gospel music, and married a woman. Over the course of his life, he would waffle between publicly denouncing homosexuality and embracing it. As one commentator puts it, “He was good at liberating other people by example, he was not good at liberating himself.” 

Little Richard didn’t come from nowhere: Artists like Billy Wright and Esquerita heavily informed his flamboyance. But it seems most everyone else came from him. Jimi Hendrix, of course, got his start in Little Richard’s band. The Beatles opened shows for him when, as he said, “only their mothers knew their names.” Paul McCartney developed his wild yelp by imitating Little Richard, and Jagger copped his stage moves. 

When Little Richard is given his due, he’s credited with inventing not only rock ‘n’ roll but helping to invent the teenager. Greil Marcus called it “Little Richard’s First Law of Youth Culture:  attracting kids by driving their parents up a wall.” As Waters puts it, “the first songs that you love that your parents hate are the beginning of the soundtrack to your life.” In a recent New Yorker profile Paul Schrader, another artist pulled between the spiritual and carnal, recalls his mother smashing the radio after catching him listening to rip-off artist Pat Boone. One imagines that if it had been Little Richard, she might have burned the house down. 

Eternally offered a kind of ambient credit by musicians and critics, the lion’s share of the specific attention (and money) is paid to the (often white) artists Little Richard inspired, or who arguable just straight up stole his shit. (In terms of respectful homage, there’s a chasm between McCartney’s “Long Tall Sally” and Boone’s “Tutti Frutti.”) It’s as if the man is at once too bright to look at directly, and too Black and queer and alien to fully acknowledge. 

He often made his rightful frustration known. In one clip, Little Richard and David Johansen, fully in his Buster Poindexter era, present the 1988 Grammy for Best New Artist. Little Richard, usually unpredictable on live TV, says of Johansen’s pompadour, “I used to wear my hair like that. They take everything I get. They take it from me.” He opens the envelope and declares himself the winner. It’s a joke but it isn’t. “I have never received nothing,” he continues. “Y’all ain’t never gave me no Grammy and I been singing for years. I am the architect of rock ‘n’ roll and they never gave me nothing. And I am the originator!” He gets a standing ovation, which is something, but it isn’t enough. 

Almost every review of the film mentions this moving, uncomfortable scene, because it teases out one of Little Richard’s most powerful realities. He didn’t always seem to know what he was supposed to be doing, or even who he should be, but he always knew what he was worth. 

Margaret Welsh

[travsd]

Little Richard: I Am Everything

We first posted on “Little Richard” Penniman (1932-2020) back in 2012, and have had occasion to mention the long, tall shadow he cast on American music over 50 times on Travalanche. As a teenager I used to play his already ancient records for hours. He was very much still alive then (the early ’80s) and still a frequent sight on television and even in films, although for the most part, his…

[cherrygeek]

Discover Houston's history of the blues

Houston has the Blues in the new documentary premiering September 24th on VOD Platforms

Houston has soul and is part of American Blues History that story hasn’t been told until this documentary premiers September 24th on VOD platforms including Tubi, Apple TV & iTunes When people think of the Blues the cities that come to mind are Memphis, Chicago, New Orleans, and other cities but Houston has been forgotten in history. ‘When Houston Had the Blues‘ tells the story of the city’s…

[delightfullyatomicfest]

Little Richard:

[randomrichards]

THE BARBER OF LITTLE ROCK:

Head of barber school

Offers loans for poor locals

Building others up

[greensparty]

BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF 2023

Documentary as a genre can encompass any medium: feature film, TV mini-series, or even podcasts. Here are my picks for the best Docs of the Year:

Honorable Mentions:          

Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bassists Human Too?  Sam Dunn

A Compassionate Spy  Steve James

10. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life Rob Reiner

9. Personality Crisis: One Night Only  Martin Scorsese / David Tedeschi

8. Little Richard: I Am Everything  Lisa Cortes

7. Lynch/Oz  Alexandre O. Philippe

6. The Lost Weekend: A Love Story Eve Brandstein / Richard Kaufman / Stuart Samuels

5. A Disturbance in the Force Jeremy Coon / Steve Kozak

Who would have thought a deep dive into The Star Wars Holiday Special could be so fascinating?

4. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie Davis Guggenheim

Guggenheim has made a pop culture-soaked doc that is also delving deep into a man facing the realities of a debilitating disease. About time Michael J. Fox got the doc treatment!

3. Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with Dave Letterman Morgan Neville

David Letterman visits Dublin and learns about Ireland from the locals while also talking with Bono and The Edge about U2’s history and it’s every bit as engaging as it sounds!

2. Chasing Chasing Amy  Sav Rodgers

This is really two docs: one about Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy from the perspective of 2023 and one about director Sav Rodgers’ own trajectory and the influence the film had on them!

1. 20 Days in Mariupol  Mstyslav Chernov

Filmed from the front lines in the besieged city of Mariupol after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, this doc is at times hard to watch, but it’s one of the most powerful docs ever made about the brutal impact of war.

[thequeereview]

Sundance 2023 Film Review: Little Richard I Am Everything ★★★★

If you’re going to make a film about Little Richard, it’d better be electrifying, complex, and queer. That’s exactly what Oscar-nominated director Lisa Cortés delivers with Little Richard: I Am Everything, executive produced by Dee Rees, which world premiered in the US Documentary Competition section at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and has been acquired for distribution by Magnolia…

[awardseasonblog]

(via Oscar 2024: i 12 migliori documentari da tenere d'occhio (previsioni novembre))

[o-the-mts]

Movie Review: Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023)

Title: Little Richard: I Am Everything Release Date: April 21, 2023 Director: Lisa Cortés Production Company: CNN Films | HBO Max | Rolling Stone Films | Bungalow Media + Entertainment Summary/Review: Little Richard lived a life of contradictions.  In the 1950s, when it was hard for Black person to become a celebrity with white audiences without de-emphasizing their Blackness and being “safe,”…

[lenbryant]

He was the old-school, OG Q-word.