‘This Little Woman Made Giant Works of Art’: Joan Baez, Lily Tomlin Talk Janis Ian in New Documentary
“When I started out, I wanted to be really famous,” Janis Ian says in the trailer for her upcoming documentary. “So naive.”
In the exclusive trailer above, Varda Bar-Kar’s Janis Ian: Breaking Silence follows the singer-songwriter’s career that kicked off in 1965, when a 14-year-old from New Jersey dropped the scorching “Society’s Child.”
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The track about an interracial relationship was met with deep controversy — she even received death threats — but she followed that up with her masterpiece “At Seventeen,” which she performed on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. The trailer documents six decades of Ian’s career, including her many Grammy wins, queer icon status and health struggles.
“This little woman made giant works of art,” Joan Baez says in the trailer. Lily Tomlin adds: “Very strong, emphatic social commentary.” The documentary also features Laurie Metcalf, Jean Smart, Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, and others; it premieres on March 28.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Ian told us about how it feels to have a film made about yourself. “The first time somebody wanted to write my biography, I was 16,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of offers over the years, and it’s not something that’s ever interested me. When you’re well-known as a young person and you get so much press over the years, you stop being an object of interest to yourself.”
“I had two requests for Varda: I told her I wanted to focus on the times as much as on the songs, because I thought it was the times that were important,” she continued. “And I wanted her to speak with people who didn’t like me, and unfortunately, most of those are dead.”
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