Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, More to Appear in Clive Davis Documentary
Clive Davis’ colorful life is getting the documentary treatment.
IM Global, Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Prods. and director Chris Perkel are partnering on Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives, which is based on the music mogul’s revelatory New York Times-bestselling memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life.
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Indie entertainment studio IM Global is fully financing the project and handling worldwide sales while WME Global is overseeing domestic distribution rights. IM Global founder and CEO Stuart Ford and IM global music president David Schulhof announced the full details of the project today.
Clive Davis’ Grammy Party: See Exclusive Photos
Davis, however, beat them to it on April 16 at New York’s Cutting Room during a first-ever Arista Records reunion party. The 200 guests of the now defunct label got a sneak peek courtesy of a 10-minute sizzle reel of very early footage (some photos still contained watermarks). Included were interviews with big-name acts he was involved with during his unmatched career, among them: Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Patti Smith and the Grateful Dead‘s Bob Weir. “It’s very special to see because I didn’t know who [would participate],” Davis, 84, said at the event.
Expect there to be much screen time devoted to his late protege Whitney Houston, who was seen in several moments of the sizzle reel and featured prominently in his memoir. Per the release, his annual star-studded pre-Grammy gala will also get notable screen time. Just like his book, the film promises to be a dishy project that doesn’t shy away from the parts of his career he might like to forget. Those include Davi’s dramatic departure from CBS and being told he was “too old” to run a record company at 66 years old. Parts of that story appeared in the sizzle reel.
Other artists Davis has been involved with include Santana, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, Janis Joplin, Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Billy Joel, Earth Wind & Fire, Barry Manilow, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Rod Stewart, Sean “Puffy” Combs, the Kinks, the Grateful Dead and the Eurythmics. A five-time Grammy winner, Davis has also been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and once received the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Scott Free’s Michael Bernstein is producing with Scott and Mary Lisio serving as executive producers. Ford and Schulhof also get executive producer credits. WME Global and Craig Emanuel of Loeb & Loeb repped Davis in the deal. At IMG, Schulhof and general counsel Deborah Zipser handled negotiations.
Perkel has worked in documentary film since the early 2000s as an editor, producer and director. He co-directed the 2007 feature-length documentary The Town That Was about a Pennsylvania town forever changed by an underground mine fire. The Davis doc isn’t the first time he’s had his hands on a music-themed story. He edited Pearl Jam Twenty about the band’s two decades in the business.
This article originally appeared on THR.com.
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