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The masterpiece Prince documentary Netflix won’t let the public see. · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, y'all.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: This is Question Everything.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm Brian Reed.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Today, I want to share an interview with you that
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: I just loved. We might do this once in a
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: while here, a staff picks kind of thing. I heard
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: this interview on a podcast called Pablo Torre Finds Out,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to say very little about it because
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: you're about to hear everything you need to know, but
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: just the basics. It's an interview the host of the show,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Pablo Torre, did with an incredible documentary filmmaker who made
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: a doc series for Netflix about one of the best
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: artists ever, I get the sense it might have been
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: this filmmaker's magnum opus. But I'll never know, because the
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: estate of that artist killed the project, made sure it
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: would never see the light of day, even though the filmmaker,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: reportedly at least, had editorial control. Picture an interview with
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: a director on a press tour for a series he's
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: devoted years to that's supposed to be amazing, except in
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: this case, the series will never be released. No one,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: not you, not me, will ever see it. Anyway, here's
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: the interview.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre,
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is a gift. A nine-hour treatment about
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: an artist that, like, it was, by the way, f * * *
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: ing brilliant. Everything about who you believe he is is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: in this movie. You get to bathe in his genius. Yeah.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And yet you also have to confront his humanity.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Right after this ad.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Are we starting now? Of course. Of course.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: We're in it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And now maybe I need a shot at tequila.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Ezra Adleman, do you want to explain why you're here?
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: No. You can explain. I.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Why am I here? Yeah. Why am I here?
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a variety headline that I just want to read.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm here?
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Quote... controversial Prince Netflix documentary will not be released. Estate
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: is free to create new project. This from February 6th, 2025.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's why I'm here, right. Yes. Um, yeah. Fun.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: So when Ezra and I sat down in our studio
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: to record this episode, nobody had ever heard him talking
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: about his controversial Prince Netflix documentary, as Variety put it,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: into a microphone. Which is also completely unsurprising to anybody
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: who knows Ezra. Because the guy who won the best
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: documentary Oscar for O.J. Made in America does not love
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: talking in public in general. His whole thing is letting
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: his work, his reporting, and all of its tonnage speak
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: for itself. And so the O.J. doc made for ESPN
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: was eight hours long, you may recall. It was so long, actually,
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: and so unfairly good that it inspired the Academy Awards
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: themselves to ban multi-part series from the Best Documentary Oscar
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: category altogether. And The Book of Prince, which Ezra made
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: for Netflix, was going to be nine hours long. But
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: this time, Ezra's work cannot speak for itself. Because there is,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: I am told, reliably evidence A 0.000 repeating percent chance
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: that any of you out there will ever be allowed
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: to watch it.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: The image I've had in my head is the last
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Of just a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: huge warehouse somewhere in Netflix. A crate just like put away.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: And yes, Hollywood is a graveyard of all sorts of
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: passion projects. several of which, incidentally, we have loved chronicling
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: here on PTFO in the past. But the story behind
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: The Book of Prince does feel different to me. It
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: feels different because Ezra, who turned 50 last year, devoted
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: almost five years of his life to very quietly perfecting
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: this film.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: So then you're caught in a space of like, well,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: this is weird. I've been working really hard and there's
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: something that's really good, but no one even knows it exists.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: But then a story about this entire saga appeared on
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: the cover of the New York Times magazine last September.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And the writer, who had been following the production process
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: for a year and a half behind the scenes, declared
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: it a, quote, cursed masterpiece, end quote, citing the more
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: than 70 interviews that Ezra had conducted. And so a
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: month after that, with that seal broken now, You may
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: recall that Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris and I did
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: an episode of this very show in which we described
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: our own experiences seeing Ezra's movie at an early screening ourselves,
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: long before the documentary became, you know, The Lost Ark.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: And if you just want to know what's in the movie,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: I do recommend that you go watch that episode that
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Wesley and I did. But if you're like most other
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: people in Ezra's life, here's just a fair warning— you're
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: probably going to have the same cursed reaction.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, this is like, when can I see this?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Is this coming out? And I'm like, motherfucker, like this
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: isn't going away. And like, that was the life I've
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: been living for the last six months. And I'm like, no,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: you can't see it. I don't feel like getting sued.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Nor did the best documentarian in America feel like opening
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: up about any of this across from me in front
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: of a microphone in this studio.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Until now. Like, what do you do with the experience
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: of putting everything of yourself into something? And there's this
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: sort of like pattern of addiction that comes from like
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: taking on something big, taking on something bigger, working really hard,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: seeing if you can figure it out. Then you get
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: some sort of dopamine hit from the world, how they
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: respond to it. So what do you do when you
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: have all that? But it's five years and it was
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the most painful thing and the most difficult thing.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: But you ultimately agreed to sit here across from me,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: your friend. And why? Why did you say yes in
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: the end?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: It's somewhere between you're damned if you do, you're damned
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: if you don't. Having dealt with the mishegas that has
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: come with the fighting to try to get the film
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: out into the world. The way that the story has
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: been framed in the world by certain people. And then
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: ultimately now the finality of the news of, oh... The
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: rights to this now are in the hands of the estate.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: But yes, maybe the whole saga has officially concluded and
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: I lost. And this happens to be such a sort
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of extreme high profile episode in documentary filmmaking. Yes. That
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I'm like, OK, well, let's just get this out because
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I am after some catharsis, if not closure.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: To move the f * * * on. I'm like, dude,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: just get over yourself and f * * * ing
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: get back to work. Right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: You might have won a second Academy Award.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: No, I couldn't have. And no, I wouldn't have. And
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that was never the intention.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: I believe that this would have been worthy of.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Pablo, if you followed the news, you should know.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: I know, it's serialized, it's episodic. The point being, you
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: made something worthy of.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: To you. To me.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Correct. Instead... Please don't make me tell you all the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: flaws that exist in the film, because I can do
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that too.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: But instead, what you got is the eighth stage of grief,
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: which is podcasting.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Is that the eighth? I believe so. Yeah, I think
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: that's right. Correct. This is my reward. This is my
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: consolation prize, sitting across from you and your cardigan.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: I think people need to be caught up on what
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: the f * * * you spent that time doing. Like,
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: what does it take to make something that leaves you
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: feeling like this?
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: There was a pretty consistent immersion in this that really
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: did take this long. I mean, it's a little bit.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: A bit sadomasochistic.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But there's a sense of, like, I like challenges. And,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you know, if someone calls you up and says, hey,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: what do you think about Prince? We have his entire
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: vault that's never been accessed or seen. And then I'm like,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I also know Prince is basically this mysterious figure. And
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I know that his story in some ways hasn't really
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: ever been told.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: Here's the puzzle. And this is the puzzle solver that
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: we're going to pay to do this.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: There's a reason why Prince's story has never been told.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Prince was not someone in life that was interested in sharing.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: And he cultivated an air of mystery. And he did
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it in a pretty impressively consistent, domineering and ironclad way.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: He famously, if not notoriously, lived a life that was
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: sort of marked by pretty dramatic sort of severing of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: relationships and separations. And by the way, there have been
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: plenty of books written about Prince. But none have really
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: connected the dots of his life to really sort of go,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: how did We get from a teenage virtuoso genius who
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: was the youngest artist signed by Warner Brothers and given
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: complete creative control to a guy who died of a
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: drug overdose. in an elevator in Paisley Park, in essence,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: died in a box within a box that he built himself.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Especially the guy who, in much of the public's consciousness,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: didn't do drugs.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: The medical examiner's report says Prince died from fentanyl toxicity,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: that it was self-administered, and his death was an accident.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: Fentanyl is an opioid pain medication, usually prescribed for chronic
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: pain for patients who have grown tolerant to other pain medications.
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: Doctors say it's 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Look. There's a responsibility and obligation to me as a filmmaker,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: as a documentarian, to answer the question, well, how did
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: that happen?
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: So is that the question that you set out to
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: craft this map to answer?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I was trying to answer a question of someone who,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: he is an artist that has really helped people go
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: through the world feeling seen themselves.
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: His androgyny and his sort of being able to tap
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: into his female side his racial sort of ambiguity at times,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and his message that sort of comes from being, let's
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: just say, open to all things. By nature of him
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: being five foot two, he's like, he looks like the underdog.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And he is this sort of like pixie fairy purple genius.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: But like the guy never stopped working and really worked
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: in service of the fans. So he lived as a
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: mystery and he died as a mystery. But like the guy,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: he was a shapeshifter. And so he morphed, he changed lives.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And so The guy who became a Jehovah's Witness in,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: you know, the early aughts and, you know, all of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a sudden was like under the guidance of Larry Graham.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: That's a different dude than the dude who did the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Dirty Mind album in 1980 and was singing about, you know, head.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: That's also part of his evolution. And so in a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: lot of ways, because there's so many eras, I think
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who like, loved different parts
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of Prince, but I was really interested in trying to
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: find a through line for that person who evolved through
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: all these styles, why he did, what was going on underneath,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and trying to sort of find a roadmap and trying
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: to shed light on who this person was.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Once you realize the degree of difficulty here, I want
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: to get to your decision then to not just roll
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: up your sleeves, but to spend almost five years digging.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: It's just more like no one knows who this dude was.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try to figure it out. I'm not
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: professing to know everything that happened with this person. It's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the best I could do. This isn't, by the way,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: like R. Kelly. And like it's like we already know
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: what he's guilty of. And you're just like exposing sort
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: of really horrid truths and that people need to know
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: because this guy's got to go down. This isn't that.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: But people sort of were defensive in terms of like
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: as if he were that. The relationship to how much
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: people love Prince. And it's like, so who wants this?
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Like who wants sort of a microscopic, you know, sort
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: of accounting of someone's life when some of it is
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: going to be a little scummy at times. But the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: whole point of it is the journey. And the whole
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: point of it was actually reflecting a journey that he
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: went through. Prince's whole thing was that he's a Gemini.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And so this sort of push-pull of who he was
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: in all these facets, male, female, black, white, artist, businessman,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: it goes on and on. In terms of this binary,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: in his head was this idea of like good and evil, which, sorry,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: God and sex. And that was another basic dichotomy of
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: his art. And he's always sort of weighing his own
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: moral account of how he was going through the world.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And he believed in karma in terms of like how
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: he treated people. And I think one of the things
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that was fascinating is that Prince had a baby with
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: his wife, Maite Garcia. Maite was pregnant. There was something wrong.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: She claims Prince declined medical intervention. The faith that he
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: had just, it just made me believe that everything was
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: going to be okay. Who tragically was born with Pfeiffer syndrome.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: And they made the decision to take the baby off
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a respirator after eight days. There's multiple people who told
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: me that based on Prince's brain, he basically almost felt
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that he was being punished for his sins. People had
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: issues with how he treated people. He was emotionally abusive.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: He was physically abusive, you know, in very specific, I'll say,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: for how it was reported in one instance. The point is, like,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: this all weighed on him. And so this sort of
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: dramatic life event, he thought partially he was responsible. But
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: like the way that certain people Maybe the estate is
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: characterizing sort of, oh, the film's bad or the film's this.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: It's negative. I'm like, there's a point.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Well, allow me to quote just for the record here
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: what the estate said in that Variety article. Because the
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: line from the article says that representatives for the late
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: artist's estate previously claimed a first cut of the film
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: was filled with, quote, dramatic factual inaccuracies and, quote, sensationalized
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: renderings of certain events from his life. according to sources
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: close to the situation.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, whatever, it's a joke. I mean, the whole
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: idea is like, wait, so the estate had, here's the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: one thing they're allowed to do, check the film for
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: factual inaccuracies. Guess what? They came back with a 17-page
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: document full of editorial issues, not factual issues. Do you
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: think I have any interest in putting on a film
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that is factually inaccurate?
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: It is a question of who gets to claim that
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: they have what feels like editorial authority or less, less highfalutin,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: who has the truth on their side?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Well, that it's more like who has control. I mean, again,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: this is reflective of Prince himself, who was notoriously most
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: famous control freaks in the history of artists. The irony
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: being that Prince was somebody who fought for artistic freedom,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: who didn't want to be held down by Warner Brothers,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: who he believed was stifling sort of his output. And
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: now in this case, it's like, by the way, I'm
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: not Prince, but like I worked really hard making something
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and now my art's being stifled and thrown away.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: But the underlying tension here is what does it mean
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: when one of the greatest and most influential and significant
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Americans in pop cultural history is being cast as their
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: estate would have it as the victim of a documentarian posthumously,
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: a posthumous victim. of a story that is being told
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: for the benefit of said director.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: How old are you, Pablo?
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: I am 39.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: What was your relationship to Prince before you saw this movie?
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Extraordinarily minimal. He was represented in cartoons. He was the
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: guy performing with slavery on his cheek. He was a symbol,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: the artist formerly known as.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Were you a fan?
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't self-identify. But certainly I knew that this guy
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: is really good at what he does.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: What was your relationship to Prince after having seen this movie?
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: My main sensation watching it was this is one of
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the most impressive artists that has ever lived.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: This is the thing I just find galling. I mean,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I can't get past this of like the short sightedness
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of a group of people whose interest is their own
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: bottom line. They're afraid of his humanity. The lawyer who
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: runs this state essentially said he believed that this would
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: do generational harm to Prince. In essence, that the portrayal
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: of Prince in this film, what people learn about him,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: would deter younger viewers and fans, potentially, from loving Prince.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: They would be turned off. This is, I think, the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: big issue here. I'm like, this is a gift. A
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: nine-hour treatment about an artist that, like, It was, by
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the way, f * * * ing brilliant. Everything about
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: who you believe he is is in this movie. You
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: get to bathe in his genius.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And yet you also have to confront his humanity, which he,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: by the way, in some ways was trapped in not
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: being able to expose because he got trapped in his
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: own myth about who he was to the world. And he, like,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: had to maintain it. Can I read something to you?
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: I was wondering why your phone is out.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Jill Jones, who was a Prince protege, a muse, who
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: spent essentially the 80s with him and was someone who
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: was a girlfriend of Prince's, was in the film and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: to me one of the most truthful voices in the
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: film and was someone who discussed in detail an instance
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: where she was abused by Prince physically. And by the way,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that's not the totality of the story. her with Prince
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: but like you still see how much she loves him
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: even though she went through an experience with him that
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: was hard like a decade of her life wanting more
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: wanting to be an artist that was got to do
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: her own album wanting to be his exclusive girlfriend or
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the girlfriend when she always was sort of like not
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: that it was almost someone again when you talk about
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: what it means to be a kept woman or she
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: even you know she refers to him as like a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: pimp in the movie. And like, by the way, this
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: is one side. But this is what she wrote after
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the news came out about the film being canceled. Prince
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: was a man who lived under the weight of expectation,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: both his own and those of the world that adored him.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: He built a persona so larger than life that it
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: became a prison, a gilded cage, one he could never
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: fully step out of. Prince's struggle with drug addiction was
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: deeply intertwined with his relentless pursuit of perfection, an impossible
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: standard he imposed on himself to satisfy a fan base
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that craved his mystique, his eccentricity, and his ever-evolving artistry.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: At his core, he was a consummate people pleaser, trapped
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: in the expectation to remain an enigma, always surprising, always
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: beyond reach. The tragedy lies in the fact that so
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: many refused to acknowledge the truth of who he really was.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: He understood this better than anyone. He knew that revealing
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: his true self, stripped of the carefully crafted persona, would
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: lead to rejection. And in a way, he was right.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: The recent choices made by Netflix and his estate only
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: reinforced this truth. The world is unwilling to accept Prince
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: as a man, only as a myth. Without the elaborate stagecraft,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: without the veil of mystery, his raw humanity is deemed insufficient.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: His struggles, his journey, his sacrifices, all the elements that
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: shaped him will remain obscured. Instead, the world will likely
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: receive a sanitized, polished version of Prince, a carefully curated
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: illusion that erases the depth of his reality.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I should have interviewed her.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you should have.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: But I mean, I want to address what she's saying there,
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: which is an argument on behalf of not merely this
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: film coming out, but of how we should approach people
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: with the aforementioned significance that is both cultural and also profound.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: How do we tell the story that same idol does
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: not want to be told about themselves?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: With O.J.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Simpson and with Prince, it's been here is The best
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: attempt that I have, I, Ezra Edelman, at cracking a safe.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: How have those two safes, O.J. and Prince, for people
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: who will never see the Prince film, how are they different?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think these are similar exercises. O.J., by dint
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: of what he had gone through, had been one of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the more picked over Americans in our society. recent cultural history.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: So like, I didn't expect there to be that much
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: revelatory intimately that I was going to find about OJ
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: that hasn't already in some ways been reported on. I
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: was more interested in taking a larger view of a
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: story that sort of ended up being so fixated around,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: you know, a year period and a night and what
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: happened and all this stuff that I didn't frankly care
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: about to understand the greater sort of sociological, historical context
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: that led us to this moment and why everyone sort
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of lost their minds in this the way they did.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: I want to point out, by the way, that when
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: OJ died, I think bothered you more than I ever
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: have in my life.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so did a lot of people.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: You did zero interviews.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Like, I already did it in my mind. So the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: other thing is, this is, by the way, this is
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the first time I ever thought about this, is I
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: guess I'm a little like Prince in that way. I
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: just want to move on.
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm not interested in being a person who
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: gets on TV and all of a sudden adds my
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: two cents about O.J., I don't care.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: But with Prince, it felt like you were drilling into
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: something as opposed.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: To zooming out. That's correct. I had this conversation with
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: a couple people who saw the film and they thought
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: it was going to be more like O.J. They thought
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it was going to be what Prince means to people
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. And I'm like, no, this is
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: about this person who no one ever knew about. I
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: was after the truth about this person's existence. Some of which,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: by the way, is his effect on others in terms
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of him as an artist and his popularity. But a
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: lot of it was trying to be ironically told from
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: his perspective of what he was doing and his own
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: thrust going through his life.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: I also want to establish that there are lots of films,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: lots of documentaries categorized as such in which access is
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: integral to the task at hand and they can be excellent.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: And they also could be fraught with issues.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: And you are taking an approach that is... deliberately different.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: And now I just wonder if it also feels like
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: it's endangered. Because the question of who wants this is
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: a good one.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I do believe a lot of people want this. Look,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I've gone through the journey with however few people have
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: seen this movie. It's in six chapters. And their relationship
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: to who Prince is, like, changes throughout the course of it.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: But by the end of it, you know, everyone loves
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: him or everyone's more curious about him and his music. than,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: for instance, before, even if they didn't know anything about him.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: It's what the estate, to me, has always gotten backwards,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: which is that we live in a time at which
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: it's harder than ever to cancel, quote-unquote, somebody. And this
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: is not a film that your takeaway ends up being,
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: as a viewer, get this guy the f * * *
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: out of here.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: No, it's like the problem is, it's kind of what
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Jill said, it's like, man, he struggled so much. He
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: was so, like, insecure, and he was had so much trauma,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and his unwillingness and his insecurity prevented him from being
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: open about said trauma because he had to present himself
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: as this perfect genius. And his inability to share his
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: truth was one of the reasons why he suffered his
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: addiction in silence. And you would argue that but for
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the way he was, other people in his position might
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: have been more able to get help. And I think
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that's one of the tragedies about his story. But it's
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: connected to who he always was. He created a mystery.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: He obfuscated the truth of who he was to become
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: famous as an artist. And then we were complicit in
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: how we absorbed said artist and we loved it. But
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: then you get trapped in that. You keep having to change.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: You keep having to evolve. But your true self is
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: always hidden. And so when the true self is then
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: laid bare, you know, having died of an overdose, it's like,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: what do you do with that? That can't be hidden.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: That's stark. That's the truth.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: There is a thing on Prince's Twitter account that the
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: estate seems to have posted when that variety story came out.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: And it was kind of like a mini trailer for
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: a forthcoming other project that is deliberately not the Ezra
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Edelman project. But the quote from Prince posthumously is, despite everything,
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: no one can dictate who you are to other people.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: By the way, I don't disagree with that.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: But I think the question we are left with as
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: a media industry is, what are we trying to do
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: when it comes to people who don't want their own
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: story told?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Right now, we live in a culture and in a
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: documentary universe, and in some ways in a journalistic universe,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: where the subject gets to dictate who they are to everybody.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And that is not the way that The Fourth Estate
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: was set up. So my issue is that in trading
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: for access, you now have a lot of companies and
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: filmmakers making deals with the subject, sanitizing their story and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: or their image, that to me, it's like, of course,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: it serves them. You don't have to put in what
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: you don't want put in, but it is truthful.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: But that editorial power of decision-making, what deserves to be
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: in what feels like an authoritative treatment of someone's story,
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Why should it be you?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not saying it should be me. I'm just
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: saying because I take the responsibility seriously and I try
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: very hard and I have integrity as a person, as
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a filmmaker. I'm not here, by the way, to give
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: you like to prove why I should be worthy of
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: doing anything. I think the exercise is very hard. I
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: think the danger and the problem I'm finding is that
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: what's the compromise? Of course, there are movies being made
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: with subjects that like have some say in how the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: story is told or are getting paid for the access,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: which to me is a no-no, and gets to be
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: a producer of their own story. And what happens is
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that these streamers or whoever the distributors are, they get
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: a film about whomever, you know?
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Oh, the incentives align.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Right. And by the way, at this point, the public
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem to somewhere between care or know the difference.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And that's the sad thing. It's like they're being served
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: slop and they're getting used to the fact that this
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: is like, oh, I guess this is like f * * *
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: ing short rib. And I'm like, it's not, it's slop.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the bigger issue. This film about
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Prince to me, it's a full meal. And it's not
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: something you can just like tear through. It's tough at times.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: It's not meant to be clipped. It's not meant for
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: the algorithm to Well, in.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: The sum, it's greater than its parts. That's the point.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: There's hopefully an experience you've gone through. By the way,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about this as if anyone's going to see it.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: They won't. So it's like, it's amazing.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: What does it feel like to catch yourself doing that, though?
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, because it's still, but that's, you know, we've
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: talked about this. It's the tree falling in the forest thing.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: It's like, it still exists.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: But look, part of the whole thing with Prince, right,
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: is that his genius was validated over and over again
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: by his output. And you are somebody in a very
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: different way whose swings are so big. recently that when
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: no one gets to see it.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: It's an indescribable feeling that one I've been wrestling with
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and dealing with for a while. I mean, like, I
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: don't want to make this like, you know, that's the
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: reason I don't want to do this because I don't
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: this is not like woe is me. It's like people's
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: films get shelved all the time. All the time. And
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: like there have been examples of this in the feature
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: space and the documentary space. There's no guarantee of anything.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Ever.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: This is just unique because of the subject, the time,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the high profile nature, all of these things, the public
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: interest in some ways.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: But the genre in which a documentarian is holding to
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: account a celebrity in service of what feels like the
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: public interest is.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: But yet the way you just described that are holding
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: our public figures to account. I'm like, I wasn't making
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: a film about Richard Nixon after Watergate. I was telling
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: someone's story. And it's more like once you see certain things,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you can't unsee them. There are things I might be
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: interested as topics to pursue that those come from me.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: But when someone tells me about a harrowing incident that
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: she experienced, here are my two choices. Oh, why did
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: this happen? Was this something consistent within this man's behavior?
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Can I contextualize what that meant to him in his head?
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Where did this come from? Or I can just be like, oh,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: they're not going to like that. That might change people's
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: image of Prince, so I better not put that in.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Those are my choices. And then I am committing documentary malpractice.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: I should point out that the Variety story does have
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: a quote from Netflix. which says that the Prince estate
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: and Netflix have come to a mutual agreement that will
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: allow the estate to develop and produce a new documentary
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: featuring exclusive content from Prince's archive. As a result, the
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Netflix documentary will not be released.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I read something, there was some article that had, I
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: think it was the Times London, and said, like, some
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: fans are happy with the decision because they believe that
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: this film would have been an invasion of his privacy.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, and? Of course it's an invasion
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: of his privacy. Like, I don't know what to do
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: with that argument. That's not an argument.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: But isn't that the fundamental disconnect when it comes to—
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: He's a public figure. But what that means, right?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: What it means— He's a public figure. I don't understand. Like,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: what's the— like, he's an historical and historically important subject. He's
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: one of the great artists of the last hundred years.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: We need to understand who these people are, how they
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: made their art, what drove them. how they lived, how
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: they died. It's part of how we go through the
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: world and improve as humans. It's like, what are we
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: talking about here?
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: There are Richard Nixons, and then there are our favorite... musicians,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: the people who bring us comfort because they're in the
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: toy department of music or sports, as opposed to what
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: legislation did Prince pass?
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Woody Allen, Picasso, Michael Jackson, all of these people are Kelly.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's up to everyone's personal code about how
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: they choose to be affected by the understanding of who
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: that person was and their ability to still revel in
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and enjoy said person's art. For me, And I'm just, like,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not even going to, like, go deep with this, but, like,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I think it would be a little weird if, like,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: when you know what R. Kelly was doing and what
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: he's singing about, it's a little like, I can't do this.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: It's just like, it's like right in front of me.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: That's a little different for me than Michael Jackson, which
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not, like, again, I'm not talking in any way
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: on a moral level. But, like, I can listen to
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Michael Jackson's music and have a certain understanding about. And
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: yet I could also go to The Michael Jackson Broadway show.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: And by the way, the estate's working on a Broadway
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: show about Purple Rain. And like everyone's seen Purple Rain.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: And this is a movie that while Prince didn't officially
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: get a screenplay credit and write it, it's a fictionalized
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: but sort of veiled fictionalized story of Prince's life. Prince
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: in his first motion picture. Before he created the music,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: he lived every bit of it. And in it, Morris
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Day throws a woman into a dumpster and he slaps Apollonia.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Who Prince is in that movie, you know, in some
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: ways is revealed, though it was always couched as fiction.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: And now they're doing this adaptation of Purple Rain for Broadway.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: And from my understanding, it's like they're changing Prince's character
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: to make it more palatable or to at least tidy
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: up the gender politics. And I think that's literally a
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: phrase I read in the New Yorker piece about the playwright.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: about who the character is to ostensibly make it more
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: palatable for an audience in 2025. This is exactly my issue.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: The guy made a movie that's about himself. And by
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the way, warts and all in many ways, he could
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: always hide behind the fact that it was quote fiction,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't fiction. And in our film, by the way,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: we use that to basically sort of play with the
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: truthiness of his existence. There's so much in that that
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: is real. And now the fact that we've arrived 40
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: years later, And rather than just like, oh, it's the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: 40th anniversary of Purple Rain, which was last year, and
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: celebrating that, no, we're going to revisit it and revamp
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: it and sanitize it and in turn sanitize Prince's image
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: for current audiences, for younger audiences, to make him a
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: less troubling figure. That is f * * * ed up.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Removing the complexity from a.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Deliberately complicated person.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not surprising. It's Broadway. But, like, again,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: this is what we're dealing with. I don't think my
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: documentary stood much of a chance if this is what's happening.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: It's just sad.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: That seems like an exercise that can make someone not
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: want to try and take a swing like this again.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, again, it was a tenth of my life,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: if you look at it that way.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: I hadn't until now.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Like, why would I? I think probably... affects you differently
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: physically mentally when you get older and like it affected
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: me so like i don't think i need to do
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: that anymore.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: But the reason i say that is because the reason
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: that you deserve to have swings like this the reason
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: you deserve to take these swings the reason you deserve
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: to have this editorial authority in which i want that
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: guy trying to crack this safe i want that guy
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: making the decisions is because what the media broadly speaking
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: what journalists really need more than ever are people who
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: take that task so seriously that it makes them unhappy.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Because we're going to test it, right? We're going to
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: throw estates at that. We're going to throw cease and
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: desist letters at that. We're going to throw the business,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the money at other people. If it's this painful, it
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: tells me I want that guy to try.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: But I also... It is that painful. Look, here's the thing.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting here doing your podcast. But like, you know,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Caroline Waterlow, Tamara Rosenberg, Nina Kristic, Brett Granato, Gabe Rhodes,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Ben Cizanski.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: The people who made the film with you.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Marlee Cogan, Dan Hinton, you know, Jenny Troyer, Deja Lee Carroll.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: They made the film. They were also putting themselves on
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the line and investing so much of themselves to make
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: this thing. As a PA or, you know, an archival
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: assistant or as a producer or as an editor. And
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the way you go through the world is to amass credits.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: People see what you do and they go, oh, wow,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that was really good. You worked on that. And right
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: now this doesn't exist in the world. It's a big zero.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: It's a negative space. I mean, why can't there be,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: as Brett Cardano, one of my editors said, be nice
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: if there were something on IMDb that said the book
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of Prince unreleased. And then the people who worked on it.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And, and I don't think it is changing anytime soon.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: No, I think the problem is this is a runaway
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: train or has it already hit us and we don't
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: know it.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the most depressing thought in a very depressing
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: series of thoughts that have been uttered.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Okay. Do you feel right now though, that like one
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of the things I love about you is your, your
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: earnest ambition to create a podcast that is trying to
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: find out to tell the truth, to be journalistically rigorous.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: And you have found an audience for that. And so
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I think you should feel good about that.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: The whole trick of what you do, what I do,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: what anybody who wants to do this thing that is
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: not being incentivized by the algorithm, the whole trick of
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: it is, hey, guess what? It's surprising how many people
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: want this delicious piece of broccoli with cheese melted on it. Right.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: It's still entertaining. It's still tasty.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: That is what I want people to remember when they
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: are deciding whether this is just vegetables, whether this is
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: the thing that people did not ask for, but they
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: got because some guy feels like morally scolding them into
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: caring about journalism. The whole point is that it can
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: still be entertainment. if you do it right.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And that gets back to the general breakdown that's always
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: been between like there are documentaries and there's a Hollywood movie.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: And so in essence, that's what we're talking about here.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: There's a Hollywood movie, which is a play on Broadway.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, inspired by true events.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: And so the issue is that now the estate is
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: going to put out its own documentary, but that's not
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: a documentary.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: By definition.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: By definition, it's going to be a hagiographic propaganda love
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: letter to Prince the Artist. Are you going to learn
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: anything about Prince? I doubt it. Are you going to
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: learn anything dark about Prince? I doubt it. Are you
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: going to learn anything complicating about Prince? I doubt it.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: The troubling thing, of course, is that it may very
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: well be wildly popular.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, it will be wildly popular. You know why? Because
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: people want to see Prince and deservedly so. The guy
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: was one of the great entertainers, performers, musicians of all time.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: And that's what's really sad. You know, like you see
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: him perform in our film. You're like, I mean, I
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: cried watching him, you know, in his 1982 performance, like
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: during the Controversy Tour when he was singing When We
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Were Mines. He is a magnetic performer.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: There are scenes in your film that feel like great
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: scenes in sports movies where the music is a payoff
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: because you went through the journey of pain and suffering
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: and you do tear up and you are in awe
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: as you would be with a great athlete. The difference
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: here is that that pain and that suffering really only
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: pays off if you actually depict the pain and the suffering. Man,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: I wish someone made a movie that had all that
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: stuff in it.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: Welp.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: It's been fun talking to you, Pablo. Welp. In some ways,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: that's like, what are you going to do? Welp. I mean,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: at a certain point, well, I don't know. Welp. Welp.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: So what I'm left thinking at the end here, what
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: I want to find out is now with the benefit
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: of hindsight, would you do this over again?
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: And have it turn out the same way?
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: No. Absolutely not. For what's happened?
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: No.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Would I have done anything differently in the process that
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: led to this result? No. I feel like I honestly,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: earnestly tried my hardest to make the best film and
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: reacted to the circumstances I was presented with as... truthfully
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and honestly to who I am and my belief system
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: as possible. And at no point did I ever think
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: it was okay if this were going to be the result.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't like, well, I'm going to do this.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: And if this was happening, I'm going to live with it.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: It's just more like in the same way, you just like,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: you make the choices that are in front of you
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: based on who you are. And I think based on
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: the circumstances I was presented with at every point, I
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: did what I believe to be the correct thing. And
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: that I'll live with. There's nothing about this that I
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: will get over though. It's just not really possible. So
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: I actually, in a way that won't surprise you, but
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's, it's like when you end up with
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: circumstances that are sort of so dramatic and so in
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: sort of an unforeseen way, the basic need for vengeance
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: and the basic desire to channel your anger. I have
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: had those impulses and things. But I'm like, this happened.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: It's like if I allow this thing to consume me
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and eat me up from the inside in a way,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: then that's kind of on me. So I've had to
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: figure out a way to get sort of beyond those
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: feelings because I can't win that. I lose. So why
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: it happened, I don't know. And I just feel like
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: I comported myself correctly throughout the entire exercise. That's the
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: only thing I can control.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: I think I have good news for you at the
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: end here.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: What?
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: I just found out what closure sounds like for Ezra Edelman.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Anything for you, Pablo.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Ark
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Brian here.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Pablo Torre and his team for giving our
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: audience the pleasure of hearing his interview with Ezra Edelman.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Question Everything will be back next week with a story
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: about somebody who's had a big change of heart about
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: the First Amendment.
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: I think he feels like his stature as a well-regarded
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: Harvard professor, constitutional lawyer who summers on Martha's Vineyard has
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: been really harmed by his association with Trump. And he
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: resents the blowback that people on Martha's Vineyard don't like him.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: We'll see you then.