Ezra Edelman
speaker
564 appearances
5 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 9 Apr
Ezra Edelman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You start to investigate who the person was and you realize there are these chapters in his life.
Yeah, it's a little sad. It's a little sad.
This is a real film. It's called The Book of Prince. It's nine hours long. It's a product of a lot of people's hard work and blood, sweat, and tears. Caroline Waterlow, Tamara Rosenberg, Nina Kristic, Brett Granato.
I have no interest in putting on a film that is factually inaccurate. Like, oh, so the estate gets their opinion about the film put out for the world to see after they're getting their way, which is the film getting killed, and the film gets slandered in the process. And, like, that's not okay.
The film will do generational harm to Prince. What does that mean?
I do believe the irony is this film would be great for Prince. And I think it would serve the estate and its bottom line tremendously.
You know, what do you see when you visit Paisley Park? Oh, this is where a guy lived. But what you see is now a museum that's full of rooms that are named after albums. There are rooms that are full of his shoes. There are rooms that are full of his outfits. But there's really no mention of sex. There's really no mention of religion. There's a glossy...
thing that's being promoted for monetary gain this image that we continually need to traffic in of this person who wore glitzy outfits and glitzy shoes and made all this work all which is true but like it's so much deeper his struggles between good and evil and himself this struggle that you see in the music and the art and then how it played out in his life is
It's like, how can you not want to tell that story?
There's almost invariably, whatever people's responses are through the trajectory of this life and this story, they all come away being like, oh my God, I love this guy. I want to listen to more of his music. This is why I believe this is short-sighted.
I believe that people can handle the truth and an honest portrayal of a brilliant artist and at times a flawed human.
Exposed to the same level of scrutiny? for who they are and certainly on par with their white counterparts whose talent and accomplishments they match and or outdo. But at the same time, I reject the argument, first and foremost, because A, If I were making a film about David Bowie, I would set out to do the same exact thing that I did with Prince. Who was this person?
Why did he change characters? What was going on in his life at all those times? And was I sensitive, by the way, as a black man taking on a black subject, knowing that people might think, oh my God, why are you tearing this person down? But also, why is warts and all such a terrible concept? Why is it not okay to know about a human? Especially, again, we get to have it both ways.
You just want to love his art but have him remain unexamined. But if we examine him and you maybe are going to appreciate that art that you love so much even more, You might appreciate the struggle. By the way, this guy got kicked out of his house when he was a teenager. He lived in the basement of his best friend. He created himself out of whole cloth.
His will, his drive as a person, as an artist, the struggle he went through, that a guy, yeah, he happened to also be a genius, is unparalleled. That's also what the movie's about. Why can't we hold two truths together? It's not that hard. These things go together. His genius, by the way, would not have wrought Prince, would not have created Prince. Genius alone. No. Genius plus drive plus trauma.
Those are the things that created Prince. Why is that a hard thing? Why can't we handle that? Why can't the world handle that? I don't understand it.
You know, we are only as strong as our own shoulders, after all. And, like, it's like, am I built for it? I might be built for it as a person, but am I actually any more built for it? And so, trust me, it's not like this is a loss of innocence. I thought the world was great and people do the right things for the right reasons. But when it happens to you in this way, you're like, huh, okay.
It does change you a little bit. It does sort of harden you.
I think the film exists, I mean, I assume it exists at Netflix somewhere. I mean, this is the thing. Now it is, like, I would go back and change the last shot of the film to, you know, there's a motif in the film of, you know, Prince made a few documentaries or shot a bunch of stuff.
And so each time though, he decided based on where he's at in life that they weren't going to actually ever be seen. So they went back in the vault. The point is everything goes back in the vault. You try to make a film, it goes back in the vault. So I would now, if I could change the film, the last shot would be this whole thing going back in the vault. And the vault door would close.
Showing 401–420 of 564 · page 21 of 29
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