The Stop Button

According to the opening titles, 20 Feet from Stardom will focus on background singers and session vocalists Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill. Love and Clayton started in the sixties, Fischer in the eighties, Hill in the aughts. If they’re the main cast, the supporting are Claudia Lennear and Tata Vega. The principals providing additional commentary and context are The Waters (Oren, Julia, and Maxine Waters), Gloria Jones, and Patti Austin. There are many mega-stars–Sting and Mick Jagger offer very different takes (Sting’s blue-eyed soulful while Jagger drools over Lennear memories), and then Bruce Springsteen’s the de facto narrator for the first half. Stevie Wonder’s around a bit, too, especially in the second half.

Though even though Sting and Wonder get more in the second half when Springsteen disappears too much, his absence spotlights Stardom’s big problem. It doesn’t know where it wants to go. It knows where it doesn’t want to go. When the film’s covering these entirely BIPOC women’s attempts at being solo artists in the late seventies, it doesn’t want to talk about disco. When talking about their experiences in general, it rarely wants to talk about race. Some interviews discuss it towards the beginning, but in the “it was another time” way.

And it was another time, and while all interviewees who talk about the sixties to seventies musical changes directly refer to race, director Neville hurries through it. There’s no dwelling, no exploring, which is Stardom’s other problem. Neville doesn’t know what to do with divas, which Clayton tells him straight up when the film crew—in the first few minutes and the only time they’re really present—wants her to turn off the music in her car, and she says something to the effect of, “You can’t tell a diva to turn off her music.”

Because there is no great recording session with all these amazing vocalists. There’s one, with many of the amazing vocalists, but not all of them. And not necessarily the ones you want to be teamed up. Well… it’s strange, actually. It’s a number for Love, and she so entirely captivates it doesn’t matter who’s backing her up. It’s also not an ensemble number.

Now, obviously, Stardom’s on a budget. One interviewee tells Neville they certainly wouldn’t be giving him an interview if they became a star. But while Neville does understand the potential for filming these women singing, he doesn’t fulfill it. Giving Stardom a strange parallel to the conventionally agreed upon reasons for some of these women not becoming solo superstars—they didn’t have the best writers or producers; they didn’t have anyone who knew what they could do with their music.

Since the film’s about celebrities, it’s also got some poorly aged elements. Hill got her first big break singing at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. Stardom’s from before further allegations and substantiations. What would Neville have done? Well, given the villain in Love’s career was very much Phil Spector, and the film did drop after those allegations, substantiations, and incarcerations, it certainly seems like Neville wouldn’t have wanted to go there. And it just makes Hill’s inclusion seem strange.

Especially since she just shows up in the second half (despite being around for a couple sessions in the first), like the film’s going to focus on her and her interactions with these other background singers. And… nope. Neville gets them together and does nothing with it. It’s an incredible miss.

But it’s also still an incredible show because every few minutes, there’s one great performance clip or another—presumably for budgetary reasons, there’s not an accompanying twenty-disc soundtrack. The snippets are often frustratingly short.

Fischer’s eventually the star of the film, getting lovely music videos of her singing because she was the one who made it—a background singer who went solo and won a Grammy—only walk back the twenty feet again afterward. It’s a good section of the film, but Neville doesn’t have any way to weave it back into the rest, so the very distinctly delineated third act often swings in out of nowhere. But it still works out, thanks to the subject matter and the interviewees.

There’s probably enough story for twenty hours, but another ten or fifteen minutes would’ve been nice, too. Besides Fischer and Hill’s music videos, Neville’s always in a hurry.

20 Feet from Stardom is a fine documentary and a fantastic time. It just ought to be better; even with budgetary constraints, Neville misses (and avoids) too much.

Also, get Bruce Springsteen to narrate everything.