‘Amazing Grace’ is finally ours
Aretha’s long-dormant gospel doc arrives soon.
Like a tantalizing treasure locked in a box, an Aretha Franklin masterpiece has sat just out of reach for more than four decades.
Now the world will finally get a look at “Amazing Grace,” the much-wanted, long-thwarted movie capturing the 1972 church sessions that hatched Franklin’s best-selling gospel album of the same name. After years of technical snags and legal tangles, the singer’s estate has cleared the way for the film’s release – just in time for Oscar consideration.
“Amazing Grace” will premiere Nov. 12 at the DOC NYC film festival in Manhattan, ahead of runs in Los Angeles (Nov. 20-27, Laemmle’s Monica Film Center) and New York (Dec. 7-14, Film Forum). Producers expect to lock down a distribution deal for a wide theatrical release in 2019, and say a special Detroit event is in the works.
“It’s an excellent film. I see it as very pure,” said Sabrina Owens, a niece of Franklin and executor of the estate. “Aretha is around 30 years old. Her voice is crystal-clear. It’s just very inspirational, very moving. We think anyone who sees it will get joy out of it.”
Owens and family members were given a private showing in September at Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, a month after Franklin’s death. Their host was producer Alan Elliott, the L.A. composer and music professor who has been battling to release “Amazing Grace” since obtaining footage rights a decade ago.
In the movie, Franklin is “young and very shy, nothing like the confident, self-assured person we saw later,” Owens said. “She says maybe said five words the entire film. It’s just her standing there singing, with a voice so beautiful and charismatic.”
“‘Amazing Grace’ has been a lost treasure of documentary filmmaking for over four decades,” DOC NYC artistic director Thom Powers said in a statement. “I can’t think of a bigger honor for a festival than to premiere this film.”
As it sat out of sight through the decades, the filmed 1972 performance took on mythical stature. The Roots’ Questlove is among those who romanticized “Amazing Grace” as a lost cultural artifact needing to be revealed:
“NOTHING has tortured my soul more than knowing one of the GREATEST recorded moments in gospel history was just gonna sit on the shelf and collect dust. Many people have told me rumors about it since before I had a (record) deal,” he wrote on Instagram in
2015. “The 5 mins I saw of the clip back in 2011 had me JAW DROPPED.”
In 1972, Franklin was firmly established as the Queen of Soul, a mainstream star of R&B and pop. What’s notable about “Amazing Grace” is it showcases the Detroit singer in her most natural element: a church.
Footage was captured in January
1972 at New Temple Missionary Baptist in Los Angeles, where Franklin was joined by the Rev. James Cleveland and his choir for two days of electrifying gospel sessions. Atlantic Records’ parent company, Warner Bros., wanted a documentary to chronicle the album’s recording and tapped director Sydney Pollack to oversee the shoot.
The ensuing double album was a blockbuster, winning a Grammy and becoming the biggest commercial success of Franklin’s career. It still reigns as the best-selling album in gospel history.
But in the analog days of the early ’70s, the 20 hours of unsynchronized footage and music tape proved daunting to assemble. Clapboards hadn’t been used during the shoot to mark scenes. Worse, the audio tape machine had lagged behind the cameras in the first place. Even after hiring the choir’s band conductor to read lips, Warner Bros. gave up and shelved the movie project.
Elliott acquired the footage in 2008 at the urging of Jerry Wexler, the producer who shepherded Franklin’s early Atlantic Records career and was determined to get “Amazing Grace” finished.
“It was just a big box of film, and a big box of audio,” Elliott said.
Aided by digital technology, Elliott enlisted specialists to sync it all up, and from there the reams of footage were edited into a cohesive final piece.
But for reasons that remain murky – including to Elliott and family members – Franklin resisted the movie’s release.
“It isn’t that I’m not happy about the film, because I love the film itself,” she told the Detroit Free Press in 2015. “It’s just that – well, legally I really should just not talk about it, because there are problems.”
In 2011, Franklin had pre-emptively sued Elliott, contending he wasn’t authorized to use her name and image. They settled out of court.
Four years later, Elliott turned up a decades-old contract between Franklin and Warner Bros. that presumably authorized the film release of “Amazing Grace.” Showings were scheduled for the prestigious Telluride and Toronto film festivals in 2015, with plans for international distribution. Franklin again turned to the courts, securing an injunction from a Colorado federal judge to stop the movie just hours before its scheduled Telluride premiere.
And so “Amazing Grace” sat in limbo for the next three years, amid continuing negotiations between Elliott’s team and Franklin’s attorneys. The singer rejected several offers. “We’ve gotten past all that, and both sides are very excited about getting the movie before a public audience,” Owens said.
With the 91st Academy Awards looming in February, the upcoming screenings will allow “Amazing Grace” to clear a key deadline by the skin of its teeth: Films must show for a week in both New York and L.A. to be eligible for the Oscars. A marketing campaign will be launched touting the movie for best documentary and best picture.
“I’m just so excited to share the movie with the world,” Elliott said.
The sound mix was finished last week in L.A. with an assist from Jimmy Douglass, who mixed the original “Amazing Grace” record. For longtime fans, watching the 1972 performance unfold on the big screen will transform it “from a two-dimensional to three-dimensional experience,” Elliott said.
And he’s confident “Amazing Grace” will resonate well beyond the gospel community.
“This is a transcendent experience if you’re a music lover. This is just pure music, played by one of the great rhythm sections in music history, sung by the greatest singer of our generation.”