BEFORE: If I've got time tonight after this Janis Joplin-based film, I'm going to speed through "Monterey Pop", which I'm fairly sure I've seen before. Just as a refresher - I can skip the Hendrix performances, because I've seen them several times over the last few days, and I can skip the 20-minute Ravi Shankar performance at the end. But re-immersing myself in this San Francisco music scene of 1967 could be very helpful as a background for the Joplin story. More on this later.
Remember about 4 or 5 years ago, it seemed like three different movie studios had Janis Joplin biopics in the works, whatever happened with that? There seemed to be a race to get one on the screen, and we're still waiting. More on this later, too, if my research turns anything up.
I've accidentally re-created a line-up from the famous Whiskey-a-Go-Go club in L.A., with Jimi Hendrix, Chicago and Janis on the same bill. Janis Joplin carries over via archive footage from "Now More Than Ever" but just to be on the safe side, two other people carry over, both interviewed here in live human form.
I suppose this was bound to happen, with so many of my music docs coming to me from Netflix, but today's film WAS available on Netflix when I designed this chain, and now it's not. Fortunately there's iTunes, where it's available for rent for just 99 cents, so that's not too bad of a punishment for my delays. But I wish things could stay available on Netflix longer, so I could be sure of getting to them without paying extra.
THE PLOT: Musician Cat Power narrates this documentary on Janis Joplin's evolution into a star from letters that Janis wrote over the years to her friends, family and collaborators.
AFTER: This film sort of takes the same approach as "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child", by hiring another person with a similar voice to read letters written by its subject, and then surrounding that with a bunch of photos, archive footage, and interviews with people who were around back then. You've got to hurry up and make these docs now, while the people who knew the subject during the late 1960's are still alive - that clock is ticking. My fear in doing this rock chain was that so much of it might seem sad, based on how many rockers and rocker-tangent people are already gone. Then this just becomes a roll call of the fallen, like in "Hunger Games".
Two years ago, Michelle Williams was in talks to star in a film called "Janis", while another studio was producing a rival Joplin film called "Get It While You Can", to star Amy Adams. That first film's apparently been in the planning stages since 1999, when Lili Taylor was cast. By 2006 they were talking about Zooey Deschanel, then Nina Arianda in 2012. Shooting with Michelle Williams was supposed to start in May 2017, but I'm not sure if it did, and the project starring Amy Adams is now listed as cancelled. It's funny, Juliette Lewis appears during the closing credits of "Little Girl Blue", and I wonder if she was ever considered to play Janis, because there is something of a resemblance there - plus, doesn't she play in a rock band?
As for the "Monterey Pop" film (which I breezed through in about 30 minutes, by skipping the Hendrix and Shankar performances) "Little Girl Blue" shows us a bit about what went on behind the scenes - famous documentarian D.A. Pennebaker set up all the cameras aimed at the stage, and the acts did not know that they would be filmed for his movie until just before they went on stage, when they were asked to sign release forms at the last minute. Now I don't know what the filmmaking rules were back in the 1960's, but today this would be considered dirty pool. Everyone has a right to their own image, and to know when they're being recorded, and to force them to make the decision on the spot between appearing in a big, film and reaching a much wider audience than ever before (while waiving all possible salaries and royalties) and keeping the rights to their own image and performance was simple for most of the acts, but it's still an underhanded move. The members of Janis' group, Big Brother and the Holding Company, rightfully complained and did NOT want to give up on their rights or royalties, so they performed on the first day of the festival without the cameras rolling. Something got worked out, because the group came back on Day 2 and did an encore performance of two songs, so they could be included in the film.
But several acts who performed at the festival, most notably the Grateful Dead, are still absent from the film. Phil Lesh later said that the Dead did not perform well at Monterey, which could explain why they're not in the movie, and that their band had a habit of blowing their big chances. They did play between The Who and Jimi Hendrix, both acts notable for destroying guitars at that venue very cinematically. (Perhaps I'll get more insight on this from the Dead's perspective in tomorrow's film.) Hey, at least the Grateful Dead got to play at the event, the Beach Boys were booked, but didn't show since Carl Wilson was in trouble for refusing to be drafted, and Brian Wilson was beginning his life of seclusion after the "Smile" album was scrapped (more on the Beach Boys in a few weeks...). Dionne Warwick was double-booked and did not appear, same goes for the Rascals, Bob Dylan was recovering from his motorcycle accident, and the Beatles, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart all declined. Donovan, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks couldn't get work visas in time.
(What a great gig it must have been in the 1960's, being a photographer or filmmaker, you just showed up at a concert and filmed history being made, and then if you somehow got a photo of Jimi fanning the flames on his guitar you probably just knew that Rolling Stone magazine would pay you a couple of grand for it.)
Anyway, back to Janis. The film traces her journey from Port Arthur, TX, where she grew up listening to Bessie Smith and Leadbelly records, then playing blues and folk music in high school. She became a misfit due to her weight, appearance, and support of integration. She briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she performed with a folk trio called the Walter Creek Boys, and hung out with the staff of the campus humor magazine. But she left Texas and hitchhiked to San Francisco, where she fell in with a crowd even worse than comedy writers - musicians. Naturally that led to shoplifting, heavy drinking and drug abuse (really, after a week of rock documentaries, we should be used to all this by now.) But after becoming emaciated, her S.F. friends threw her a party to raise the bus fare to send her back to Texas - on some level, they understood that if Janis stayed in San Francisco and kept hanging around with music people, it wasn't great for her health.
So she moved back to Texas, went back to college, wore her hair in a beehive, visited a drug counselor and got engaged. Yeah, that didn't take, before long the promoter for Big Brother found her performing in Austin and sent his friend to bring her back to San Francisco. Thus began a string of relationships with both men and women, many of whom were fellow musicians, like Country Joe McDonald and Dave Getz (from Big Brother). At some point, somebody realized that the band name "Big Brother and the Holding Company" was very confusing - like, is Janis Joplin "Big Brother", because that sounds like a man should play that role. Why not "Big Sister" or "Big Momma", why hang on to the connection to "1984" if it's not working? So on some posters it started appearing as "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company", which managed to be even MORE confusing.
We all know the story from here - Big Brother released their second album, the famous "Cheap Thrills" LP, with cover art by R. Crumb and the song "Piece of My Heart", then Janis left the band soon after that for a solo career. Janis brought Sam Andrews along from Big Brother to her new backing band, the Kozmic Blues Band, influenced by the Otis Redding sound but with a horn section much like Chicago's. Hey, steal from the best, right? She toured Europe, where security was so lax that there were more audience members on stage than musicians, and came back and made appearances on Dick Cavett's shows, several of which are shown here. (Cavett speaks fondly of Janis, and strongly implies that they had a relationship thing going as well. Hey, it was the 60's, the era of "free love", no judgments. People didn't start paying for love until the early 80's.)
The Kozmic Blues album went gold, and this brings us up to Woodstock, where Joplin had to wait hours to perform, because many acts had clauses in their contracts that stated they needed to perform before her, apparently. Which gave Janis TEN HOURS to wait to perform, and nothing fills up such a big space like that better than heroin and alcohol. You know, to calm her nerves before performing in front of 400,000 people - just to take the edge off, I'm sure. But by the time Janis went on stage (2 am) it was probably hard to tell if she was more drunk or stoned. But Pete Townshend famously remarked that Janis was incredible, even if she was having an off-night. It's notable, however, that her performance was not included in the 1970 "Woodstock" documentary, and this was at her own request. I guess by 1970 filmmakers learned that they couldn't pull that last-minute release form trick any more.
Supposedly at this point, after she'd been drug-free on a trip to Brazil, she came back to America, formed the Full Tilt Boogie band, and began using again - but even when she kicked the heroin, alcohol was readily available to pick up the slack (the detox process now known as the "Eric Clapton Special"...) In the summer of 1970 she went back to Texas to attend her high-school reunion, and then recorded the tracks for the "Pearl" album in the fall of 1970 - then of course she overdosed in early October and that album was released posthumously. It did very well, if that's any consolation.
End on something positive, end on something positive - I know, how about the fact that there are members of Big Brother and the Holding Company that are still alive? That's good news, right?
Also starring Dick Cavett (carrying over from "Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago"), Clive Davis (ditto), the voice of Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power), Karleen Bennett, Laura Joplin, Michael Joplin, J. Dave Moriaty, Jack Smith, Powell St. John, Jae Whitaker, Travis Rivers, Dave Getz, Sam Andrew, David Dalton, Bob Weir, Peter Albin, Julius Karen, D.A. Pennebaker, Country Joe McDonald, Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, Peggy Caserta, Dave Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Payback"), with archive footage of Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix (also carrying over from "Now More Than Ever"), Cass Elliot, Don Adams, Jerry Garcia, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Pete Townshend (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix"), Roger Daltrey (last seen in Quadrophenia"), John Entwhistle (ditto), Keith Moon (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today", Yoko Ono (ditto), John Lennon (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars")and cameos from Pink, Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Kalifornia"), Melissa Etheridge.
RATING: 6 out of 10 feather boas
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