Prince documentary

 I watched a documentary on Prince called When Doves Cry. It’s got a lot of one star reviews online but you know I am a sucker for such things.

So let’s get all the negative stuff out of the way. First, the main narrative is driven by an actor playing Prince as opposed to footage of the real artist. Sure there’s plenty of interview footage but the whole thing feels ‘cheap’. I did think the actor was good but it is always going to hurt in comparison.

Though there are some fantastic “gets” of interviews of people who were involved early in Prince’s career- his first manager, his first producer, a mentor and so on-it doesn’t seem like any of them were much around post- Lovesexy.

That’s fine of course, but you have to keep it in mind. Also, his 1985 Rolling Stone interview is a large basis of the material covered here.

The focus here is also on the personality instead of the music, and right or wrong, the filmmakers are buying deep into the Purple Rain mythology.

Now, that might not be that far off. Prince’s upbringing is far from ideal.

The doc picks up on the PMRC controversy and the Warner Bros fight. Important but it’s always tilted towards melodrama.

For example, Paisley Park is drawn up as a compound with Prince as dictator. Another outlook might be it was dream house. Another outlook might be that celebrities as big as Prince have their lives taken from them.

Moving to Chanhanssen to live seems to be the most reasonable celebrity behavior I’ve heard. Also, I suspect Prince was a strict taskmaster like Zappa, but I suspect the musicians knew what they were signing up for.

The drug overdose is hard. Do you play it for sympathy ( the man did acrobatics whilst in high heels and he did that for decades) or do you tackle the subject in a more sensational manner? This doc seems to split the difference.

The tone makes a doc and this doc isn’t always very positive. Prince had a terrible childhood, he lost his firstborn at six days, and died by all accounts alone. Still, you could probably tell similar stories about literally so many people , especially huge celebrities. I had the thought at times that this was more dirge than celebration.

That said, would I recommend avoiding this? Not necessarily. I have been a huge Prince fan for awhile, and I appreciated this look at his life. That said, I took it all with a big grain of salt.

One revelation for me was the Record Company fight over “Kiss”. The label didn’t think it sounded like a single. Obviously, history has marked it as iconic.

One can see why - it doesn’t resemble many radio songs in 1986, but Prince was right. Once you hear that guitar intro, you have to stick around to see what is going to happen.