BEFORE: I know, I'm getting further and further away from rock music here, but I'm following the links and trying to clear my Netflix watchlist at the same time. This is the most contemporary/current artist I'm going to cover, and from today I work my way back to rock music, but it seems I've got to go through pop music to get there.
Tony Bennett carries over from "Amy" and so does a record producer who was seen in yesterday's film working with Amy Winehouse.
THE PLOT: This documentary goes behind the scenes with pop provocateur Lady Gaga as she releases a new album and prepares for her Super Bowl halftime show.
AFTER: The good news is that Lady Gaga is 32 now, so she's escaped membership in the "27 Club" (though she makes reference in this film to going through alcohol and drug issues) and maybe she's got her head screwed on straight and may be with us for a long while. The film follows her as she prepares to release an album named after and dedicated to her late aunt and also goes through negotiations and rehearsals for her performance at the Super Bowl in early 2017.
But deep down, she's just a regular person, it's very important that this message comes across. A normal person with a few million dollars, who's being courted by Bradley Cooper to appear in his remake of "A Star Is Born", and who does a guest-star appearance on "American Horror Story". Or perhaps she's exerting a lot of money and effort to make sure that she's portrayed as a regular person, only regular people don't have documentary crews following them around as they prepare to perform for an audience of thousands in a stadium and millions more on TV. And that's the seductive nature of fame right there, trying to maintain some kind of balance while everyone around you keeps telling you how special you are, enough that you might start to believe it yourself.
Having a throng of fans waiting outside your record studio, all looking for a selfie with a star, has to affect one's self-image, that's all I'm saying. I'm guilty of it myself, I keep the photos on my phone of the three biggest stars I've ever managed to pose with, only one of them is "Weird Al" Yankovic, and that only impresses people in certain social circles. (But when it does, it REALLY does...)
Gaga has her meltdowns, like when someone changes the script before her TV appearance, or changes the inner lining of the jacket of her costume, so it doesn't feel familiar when she puts it on, God forbid. And even though she loves and admires Madonna, she's got a beef with her for not telling her directly what she doesn't like about her, apparently Madonna went to the press and said why she doesn't like Lady Gaga, instead of saying it to her face. Lady Gaga would NEVER do that, only by telling a documentary crew what she doesn't like about Madonna, and not saying that directly to Madonna, she's sort of guilty of doing the exact same thing.
Making an album is a personal journey, one Gaga equates to "open heart surgery", but I assume she's being metaphorical here. You've got to watch out for irony, though - Amy Winehouse sang a song about not going to rehab, and then later that became an issue. So in a few years if we see Gaga hospitalized with heart problems, wouldn't that quote from this film be a fun clip for someone to find?
I've got to question some of the editing choices here, like when Gaga is greeting the fans outside her recording studio, I'm not sure that's the best place to drop in a montage of her most outrageous red carpet outfits, like the time she wore a dress that was made of meat. (Now, me, I would have suggested she dial it back a bit, and wear a skirt steak skirt, but that would be just for the great pun opportunity. I guess you've got to go all the way and make that a full dress.)
I don't follow the gossip magazines like "People" and "Newsweek" so when Gaga made references to splitting up with her fiancé, I had to find out who that was from the internet. She refers to having her heart broken three times, and it wasn't very hard to learn who those three people are - hey, that's life in the fame bubble, your whole existence is put on display for everyone to comment on or speculate about. That's the price you pay for having 29 million Instagram followers these days. Another musician depicted here can't imagine having that many followers, and therefore that much responsibility. Clearly it comes with some kind of price, whether that manifests itself as stress pain or relationship difficulty, but nobody else is going to let a famous person off of the merry-go-round, only the individual herself can do that.
But, as I've seen many times before in these rock documentaries, particularly with bands like the Stones and the Grateful Dead, once you've bought the house in Malibu and built up a company around your music brand, plus a charitable foundation and also a fashion line, it's very difficult to take any time off, because so many people are then depending on you for a steady income. The trick is either finding a balance, or a way to keep those companies going if you want to take a few months off, even if it's for valid medical reasons (much is made here of Gaga's bad hip...).
Lady Gaga was the first woman to have four number one albums in the 2010s decade - so it can't be all bad, right? And she's even got two varieties of ferns named after her, because their rolled-up leaves resemble a monster's hand, and her fans are known as "little monsters". Plus scientists have also named an extinct mammal and also a parasitic wasp in her honor, so that's something. I remember reading the other day that Jim Morrison has an extinct lizard named after him, since he was sometimes called "The Lizard King". Because paleontologists are known for their sense of humor, right?
Also starring Lady Gaga (last seen in "How the Beatles Changed the World"), Mark Ronson (carrying over from "Amy"), Cynthia Germanotta, Joe Germanotta, Natali Germanotta, Bobby Campbell, Florence Welch, Sandra Amador, Michael Bearden, BloodPop, Andrea Gelardin, Marlene Gerais, Ashley Gutierrez, Hamish Hamilton, Ruth Hogben, Richy Jackson, Nick Movshon, Brian Newman, Darryl Pinckney, Shantiel Alexis Vazquez, with cameos from George Bush, Barbara Bush, Donatella Versace and Elton John.
RATING: 5 out of 10 NFL jerseys
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