The Cinematic Masterpiece You Won’t Get to See

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Daily – "The Cinematic Masterpiece You Won’t Get to See"

Introduction In the March 7, 2025 episode of The Daily, hosts Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise delve into the intriguing and ultimately thwarted journey of acclaimed filmmaker Ezra Edelman as he attempts to create a documentary about the enigmatic musician Prince. This episode unpacks the complexities behind the making and eventual shelving of what Sasha Weiss, Times magazine deputy editor, describes as a "cinematic masterpiece."

Ezra Edelman: A Filmmaker of Distinction Michael Barbaro introduces Sasha Weiss, who provides insight into Ezra Edelman's background. Edelman, known for his critically acclaimed 2016 documentary O.J. Simpson: Made in America, which won an Academy Award, is portrayed as a "once in a generation talent" with a rigorous and focused approach to filmmaking.

The Quest to Document Prince Sasha Weiss explains that Edelman's interest in Prince was sparked not by fandom but by Prince's symbolic representation in American pop culture. Prince is depicted as an "avatar of gender bending, dreaminess, boundary-pushing-ness," embodying an "uncategorizable sexiness." Edelman's project aimed to explore Prince's multifaceted persona, combining his artistic genius with his personal struggles.

Accessing Prince's Vault At [08:24], Weiss recounts how Netflix initially provided Edelman with exclusive access to Prince's personal archive, known as the "vault," located at Paisley Park in Minnesota. This vault was expected to contain rare concert footage, band rehearsals, unfinished films, and potentially candid moments that could illuminate Prince's private life and creative process.

Challenges in Filming However, the documentary faced significant hurdles. Edelman and his team discovered a lack of candid footage; attempts to capture Prince's spontaneous interactions often resulted in scratched tapes, suggesting deliberate tampering. The reluctance of those close to Prince to speak openly added another layer of difficulty. As Edelman admits at [11:35], "People were reluctant because I think it's a natural inclination of some people... So do I want to sully that through talking honestly?"

Unveiling Prince's Complex Legacy Despite the obstacles, Edelman persisted, interviewing over 75 individuals connected to Prince. The film aimed to present a comprehensive portrait, revealing Prince's troubled childhood, strained familial relationships, and tumultuous romantic liaisons. Sasha Weiss highlights a pivotal moment in the documentary where Prince's performance of "The Beautiful Ones" is interpreted as an expression of his deep-seated pain and grief, offering a new dimension to his musical genius.

Legal Battles and the Demise of the Documentary The turning point comes when the Prince estate, undergoing legal transitions, mandates a 17-page list of objections aimed at altering the documentary's content to omit unfavorable portrayals of Prince. Edelman’s refusal to compromise on factual accuracy leads to protracted legal disputes. Ultimately, Netflix announces at [22:07] that the estate and the streaming giant have mutually agreed to terminate Edelman's project, favoring the estate's vision of a Prince documentary instead.

Poetic Justice and Legacy The episode explores the ironic twist of Prince, who meticulously curated his enigmatic image, ultimately maintaining his mystique even after death by ensuring that Edelman's honest portrayal never reaches the public. Sasha Weiss and Ezra Edelman reflect on the implications of this outcome. Edelman muses at [41:38], "It's like, am I built for it? I might be built for it as a person, but am I actually in anymore?" while Weiss underscores the tragic irony that Prince remains an unknowable figure, locked away in perpetuated mystery.

Cultural and Ethical Reflections The conversation extends to broader cultural questions about celebrating flawed geniuses. Sasha Weiss emphasizes that honoring Prince requires acknowledging both his artistic brilliance and personal failings. Edelman challenges the notion that Prince, as a black icon, should be exempt from scrutiny, arguing at [33:35], "Why can't the world handle that?"

Conclusion The episode concludes on a contemplative note, highlighting the existential limbo faced by Edelman and the enduring enigma of Prince. It underscores the tension between artistic integrity and estate-controlled narratives, leaving listeners to ponder the fate of unreleased masterpieces and the complexities of posthumous legacies.

Notable Quotes

• Fan Zhendong at [00:00]: "What does it really take to be the world's number one at table tennis?"
• Sasha Weiss at [02:08]: "Prince was this kind of... personified sensuality, sexiness, but a kind of uncategorizable sexiness."
• Ezra Edelman at [09:19]: "It's Prince. There was a vault of material. He is a mysterious figure whose story had never been told."
• Sasha Weiss at [13:34]: "It's a masterpiece."
• Ezra Edelman at [35:21]: "Why can't we hold two truths together? It's not that hard."
• Sasha Weiss quoting Jill Jones at [38:15]: "Prince was a man who lived under the weight of expectation... his raw humanity is deemed insufficient."
• Ezra Edelman at [41:38]: "It does change you a little bit. It does sort of harden you."

Final Thoughts This episode of The Daily serves as a profound exploration of artistic legacy, the ethics of storytelling, and the indelible shadows cast by untold stories. It invites listeners to reflect on the balance between celebrating genius and confronting personal flaws, all through the lens of Ezra Edelman's thwarted attempt to illuminate the true essence of Prince.

Transcript

[Fan Zhendong]

What does it really take to be the world's number one at table tennis? Moments in the intense racket sport go beyond tactics. They can feel deeply emotional and instinctive, not pre designed or calculated, says Grand Slam table tennis champion Fan Zhendong. Find out more about the grit and grace of table tennis [e-mail] ubscendong that's nytimes.com UBS Z H E N D O N G Foreign.

[Michael Barbaro]

I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily. For the last few years, one of the country's most celebrated filmmakers has tried to unlock the mysteries of one of the country's most celebrated musicians. According to my colleague, Times magazine deputy editor Sacha Weiss, the result is a cinematic masterpiece. So how is it possible that nobody will ever see it? It's Friday, March 7th. Sasha, welcome to the Daily.

[Sasha Weiss]

Thanks so much for having me, Michael.

[Michael Barbaro]

Hard to fathom. It's your inaugural episode.

[Sasha Weiss]

I'm delighted to be here.

[Michael Barbaro]

I want to just acknowledge a certain awkwardness to the work we're about to undertake, which is we are going to be talking, you and I, about a very important film that none of us will ever see. Yeah, that's weird.

[Sasha Weiss]

Totally.

[Michael Barbaro]

But back when you thought the world very much would see the film, you became deeply invested in the story of it and you have stayed invested in it for years. Simple question. Why?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, let's start with who it's about. My name is Prince, the supernova genius.

[Michael Barbaro]

Prince, and I've come to play with you.

[Sasha Weiss]

You know, it's kind of a funny thing. I didn't come to this as a huge Prince fan. I came to it as a person who's deeply interested in him as a symbol. He was part of the wallpaper of my childhood. He is this kind of.

[Michael Barbaro]

Literally or figuratively?

[Sasha Weiss]

Figuratively. But you know, you hear him, you see him, he's kind of this like in the cultural imagination, he is an avatar of gender bending, dreaminess, boundary pushing, ness breaking, categories, sensuality, personified sensuality, sexiness, but a kind of uncategorizable sexiness. And I think for a lot of people, you know, he's at the top of the cultural pantheon. He's the icon of American pop music. He was a beautiful singer. He could play a million instruments. I mean, his music is just transcendently great. Hits like Kiss, I mean, the songs of Purple Rain, Alone in a world that's so cold. He was a world eating genius. So it's like no subject could be as big, as mysterious, as fascinating as.

[Michael Barbaro]

Prince, say A word about mysterious.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, I think Prince cultivated a kind of mystery. Right? I mean, he seemed kind of. He seemed spiritual. You know, he was someone who changed his name to a symbol without explanation. There was a performance of a kind of unknowability. Unknowability. I mean, that was part of the allure and part of the mystique. Also, he was extremely elusive. So that was my interest in Prince. And the other thing that drew me to the film was the person making it. Ezra Edelman, who I really admired as a filmmaker. I think he's a once in a generation talent, and I was really curious what it would be to see his mind tangling with Prince.

[Michael Barbaro]

Hmm. Well, tell me more about Ezra Edelman and why he is such a once in a generation talent.

[Sasha Weiss]

Hey, Ezra.

[Ezra Edelman]

Hi, Sasha.

[Sasha Weiss]

Thanks for being here.

[Ezra Edelman]

Thanks for having me. I'm, I think, happy to be here.

[Sasha Weiss]

So I've gotten to know Ezra pretty well over the years of reporting the story, and we've talked a lot. He is extremely dogged and rigorous. He is extremely focused.

[Ezra Edelman]

Again, you know, my issues with this, it's like, I don't want to make this shit about me.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's just very human. Ezra.

[Ezra Edelman]

Okay.

[Sasha Weiss]

That's what I think.

[Ezra Edelman]

Okay.

[Sasha Weiss]

He can be kind of intense.

[Michael Barbaro]

Mm. And what's his backstory?

[Ezra Edelman]

You know, from the time I graduated from school, where I, you know, wrote for a school paper, I always was interested in media and sports and I.

[Sasha Weiss]

So Ezra started out in TV journalism and sports journalism especially, and eventually he started directing his own documentary films.

[Ezra Edelman]

I'm self taught. I just, like, watch things. And so in some ways, I have the brain of someone who's trained on watching narrative films.

[Sasha Weiss]

He brings a lot of rigor and I would say also a lot of emotion and storytelling chops to these huge canvases that he takes on.

[Ezra Edelman]

I do believe there's a way of informing, really informing, talking about things and having people learn, but do it in a way that also entertains them. And I kind of took that as my mandate.

[Sasha Weiss]

But maybe the best way to talk about his work is to talk about his best known film on O.J. simpson, O.J. made in America, which comes out in 2016 to great acclaim on ESPN. It wins the Academy Award for best documentary film that year.

[Michael Barbaro]

Thank you.

[Sasha Weiss]

Big deal. Got a ton of attention and deservedly so, because part of its magic is that it takes an event that we all thought we knew. We had been over it a million times, and it gives it.

[Michael Barbaro]

We watched cnn. We knew the story.

[Sasha Weiss]

We knew that many of us Watched it, you know, as kids and watched the car chase and remember it and remember the polarization around it, the way that I would say black America and white America viewed the case very differently. And what Ezra manages to do in the film is to give a familiar recent historical event a much broader context. And not only do you OJ how huge he was, how beloved he was, how deep his downfall was, you also understand the context of race relations in California from the 1960s into the 90s and even the early 2000s. And you understand how many of the racial pathologies of our country run through this case. So it's this incredibly layered document where all of these different energies are drawn together to tell a new story. And Ezra works on an enormous scale. The film is eight hours and I think is widely thought of as one of the greatest American documentaries, one of the greatest American films that has been made in the last decade.

[Michael Barbaro]

Okay. I very much now appreciate why the prospect of this filmmaker, this mystery unlocker, being applied to the subject of Prince, who remains pretty deeply mysterious, would be appealing to you. So how does Ezra Edelman become drawn to and ultimately undertake a documentary of the same scale the work you just described applied to Prince?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, it may be worth saying, for one thing, that this film was not Ezra's idea originally. Huh?

[Michael Barbaro]

What do you mean?

[Sasha Weiss]

So after the success of O.J. he's like the toast of the film world, and he can do anything. He could do anything. And thinking about his next project, he gets a call from Netflix, and they have a very enticing proposition. So they tell him that they have made a deal with Prince's estate that gave them exclusive access to Prince's vault. Now, the vault, which is how it's known among Princeologists, is his personal archive, which was housed in Paisley park, which was his kind of home studio fortress in Minnesota, where he lived and recorded and performed. And it had. Who knows what. I mean, it was a treasure trove of material so tantalizing. So tantalizing. It's his vault, and people knew of its existence. And it was the kind of proposition that it would be very hard for a filmmaker like Ezra Edelman to say no to.

[Ezra Edelman]

It's Prince. There was a vault of material. He is a mysterious figure whose story had never been told. And so for me, it really was trying to help fans and non fans alike understand who this person is, and at the same time, in that understanding, help them understand his art more.

[Michael Barbaro]

And what do they find inside this vault?

[Sasha Weiss]

So they find beautiful concert footage, some of which has never been Seen before. They find band rehearsals, which at first seem like really exciting, but there's hours and hours of it, just music, just him playing music. They find some unfinished films that the Prince made, but it's basically all performance. What they didn't find is almost anything that was candid or spontaneous. Prince kind of hanging out with his friends, Prince on the off hours, Prince, you know, talking shit with the band, Prince writing music, composing music. I mean, he was a great songwriter. His process, nothing. And when they would find like the beginning of something or the suggestion of something, There was a little bit of footage of Prince horsing around with his girlfriends, for example, but the footage was scratched. It seemed like someone had tampered with the tape. So they came to the conclusion that it might have been deliberate, that anything that was candid, that was still around had been damaged.

[Michael Barbaro]

So the vault, for all intents and purposes and perhaps on purpose, was kind of empty. So what does he do?

[Sasha Weiss]

So he does what he always does, which is to start to interview people intensively. And he wants to talk to all the people who knew Prince well to try to understand what was driving him, what was he thinking about, what were his torments, what were his successes. And he seeks out kind of everybody in Prince's world, from, you know, bodyguards to family members to dear friends to many, many collaborators over the years.

[Ezra Edelman]

You know, like, look, somebody who was around him for decades and met with us before we started filming basically was like, good luck.

[Sasha Weiss]

And what he and his team begin to find is basically another locked door, another wall.

[Ezra Edelman]

You know, people who are around him were not at liberty necessarily to talk freely and publicly, whether they wanted to or not.

[Sasha Weiss]

People are very reluctant to speak candidly about Prince. They're protective. Some people seem scared even in death.

[Ezra Edelman]

People were reluctant because I think it's a natural inclination of some people whose names are made, were made because of their connection to them. So do I want to sully that through talking honestly? But at the same time, I mean.

[Sasha Weiss]

It'S not that unusual in a way, for a world famous celebrity, you know, for people not to want to talk about them. But it was very intense and, you know, it seemed across the board universal, this reluctance. And Ezra and his team started to wonder, like, what's the big secret here? You know, is there some secret that people won't tell us? And in fact, after many, many years of really persuasion and building trust at.

[Ezra Edelman]

The same time, people had a lot to say once they sat down because they had not really talked openly about him.

[Sasha Weiss]

People slowly did begin to talk.

[Ezra Edelman]

You start to investigate who the person was, and you realize there are these chapters in his life. There are this many.

[Sasha Weiss]

At a certain point, he had interviewed a over 75 people to start to get a clearer picture of Prince and to be able to marry a narrative of Prince's life from the beginning, really, to the end, where he died in a very mysterious way, with this footage that was in the vault. And it's not that there's a secret, but there's a complex, tortured, deeply traumatized person alongside the musical genius. And eventually Ezra had what he felt was a solid cut of the film, and I was able to watch it.

[Michael Barbaro]

Hmm. And what did you think?

[Sasha Weiss]

It's a masterpiece.

[Michael Barbaro]

And what makes you say that?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, one of the things the film does so well is tell the story of Prince's childhood. And it's maybe worth saying that it doesn't unfold the story in a linear way. It accumulates through the interviews, through all of the different people he speaks to. His lovers, his sister, his friends. And what you see is a picture of a boy. First of all, he had, according to several testimonies in the film, a troubled relationship with his parents. There was violence in the home. His parents split when he was a kid. First he was living with his mother. She then remarried. And two people in the film say that Prince told them that when he was a kid, his stepfather shut him in a room or a closet for six weeks. Wow. And he came out changed.

[Michael Barbaro]

How could he not?

[Sasha Weiss]

How could he not? And then when he was 12, his mother kicked him out of the house and sent him to live with his father. He was very close to his father. His father was a musician, and he was a very religious man. He was a strict man, kind of an authoritarian parent. And he found Prince in a room with a girl a couple times. And he, too, kicked Prince out when Prince was 14 years old. So he. He was an abandoned person. And that abandonment and the dissolution of his family and the feeling of neglect, according to the many people who knew him, was a real through line in his life. This drove Prince to his own unstable sort of familial and love relationships. And one pattern that you see in the film over the course of Prince's life is that he would kind of assemble families around himself in the form of collaborators and bandmates, but he would always really challenged those relationships to the point of breaking. He was distrustful. He was demanding. A couple of his close collaborators say that when they asked for a raise, Prinz said to them, if you really loved Me? You wouldn't ask me for a raise. He was really controlling with his girlfriends. With one girlfriend, he tried to prevent her from seeing her family and from making phone calls. At a certain point, he wanted.

[Michael Barbaro]

That sounds like somebody locking somebody in a room for six weeks.

[Sasha Weiss]

He wanted control.

[Michael Barbaro]

So basically, this is a portrait of. This is something of a psychological cliche, but someone who was hurt, who goes on to do some real hurt.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yes. And I think, you know, what you see unfolding in the film is someone also at war with himself. You know, on the one hand, just this overwhelming creativity that was pouring out of him and a desire to have people participate in that, but a constant pushing people away. You know, he was a great elevator of women. For example, he had many famous female collaborators, but many of those collaborators testify to the fact that he could be, you know, not only controlling, but kind of put them down and diminish them and make them feel worthless. And he could also be physically abusive. So you hear from a girlfriend of his, a collaborator, Jill Jones, who talks about a moment when she flew into a jealous rage and Prince hit her and never apologized. And her anguish many years later is just totally vivid for the viewer.

[Michael Barbaro]

I wonder if you can explain, and I'm sure the film attempts to do this, how all of that pain, that anguish, all this biography influences and is ultimately responsible for Prince's music.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, there's a great moment in the film where he's singing the Beautiful Ones. You can find performances like this one online. And, you know, one of the refrains is, do you want him or do you want me? Cause I want you. It's the song of yearning. And he is just giving a wild performance of a kind of screaming and keening and, you know, falling. And I gotta know, I gotta know. When I heard his, like, sort of yelps and his cries, I always thought it was about sexuality, you know, and sexual yearning, romantic yearning. But I was able to hear it in a different way. And partly because one of his bandmates is telling me. I hear her voice on the film telling me. This was the central problem of his life, this problem of abandonment. Do you want me? And you could hear the pure pain in it. And then suddenly, Prince's screaming feels also like grief. It's not just sexuality, it's also grief, it's also pain. And it's authentic. And I understand that the song contains all of it. You know, so it's this richness, and you sort of understand what's feeding the performance. And that when he's there on stage, like, yes, he's, I'm sure, aware of what he's doing and in control of what he's doing, but he's also possessed and kind of channeling all of this complexity through his body and through his voice. And I just hear his music completely differently now. The layers are so much deeper.

[Michael Barbaro]

Mm.

[Sasha Weiss]

So the movie is an answer to a cultural question that I think has been vexing us for a decade or more, which is what do we do with great artists who are extremely flawed human beings? And the answer that the movie offers is that we basically sit with their contradictions. Right? And Prince was, on the one hand, a genius, an original of a generation, an original of a century. I mean, he's a Mozart of American pop and with a mind that was teeming with music and ideas. He was also controlling. He could be abusive towards his lovers. He was deeply vulnerable. He was a person who crossed boundaries and contain multiplicities. And Edelman is asking us to sit with that for nine hours and take it all in and allow ourselves to pity him sometimes, allow ourselves to adore him and worship him and allow ourselves to criticize him and to sit with the wild brew of who Prince was and also to make the argument that knowing this enriches our understanding of the art he made. It deepens our understanding of the art he made. It deepens our love of it, because we know where it comes from, or we know something about where it comes from and how he transforms the raw material of his selfhood into something transcendent.

[Michael Barbaro]

We'll be right back. This advertisement is paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

[Sasha Weiss]

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[Michael Barbaro]

So, Sasha, I think we've arrived at the moment in this conversation, we've held it in suspense long enough where you just have to explain why it is, how it is that this masterpiece is never going to be seen by anyone else, how that's possible, what the story there is.

[Sasha Weiss]

So as part of the original agreement that Netflix struck with the Prince estate for access to the vault, the estate was going to have an opportunity to review the film for factual accuracy. Ezra Edelman welcomed this. He's a journalist.

[Michael Barbaro]

No one wants to get anything wrong.

[Sasha Weiss]

Nobody wants to get anything wrong. You can review the film for factual error. Now, in the years that Ezra spent working on the film, there were these ongoing, complicated legal battles over Princes Estate, in part because Prince left no will. So the estate changed hands. It changes from being overseen by a bank and courts in Minnesota to now being overseen by a lawyer who used to work for Prince in the 90s. Members of his family and a music company. And the new people in charge watch the film and they submit this list that's 17 pages long, all kinds of quibbles and queries and objections, almost none of which have to do with facts. They have to do with things about Prince that they don't want included in this documentary. And Edelman, you know, makes a few changes to try to kind of compromise with them. But he's not going to change. For instance, one of Prince's collaborators talking about how when he became devout and extremely religious, he asked her to renounce her homosexuality before he would collaborate with her again. He's not gonna take out an assessment of his album the Rainbow Children, which was kind of widely shared at the time that there were anti Semitic lyrics. He's not gonna take out elements of the story that are sad or unfortunate or portray Prince in a negative light, because they're part of the story and they're part of the arc. And he's not gonna allow extra journalistic facts to determine the shape of his film. So this back and forth continues for many months and the estate manages to hold up the film on questions of length. They claim that they had agreed to license music for six hour film and no more. And this was no simple thing. Like, to cut this film by three hours would be like. The metaphor that I keep thinking of is like unknotting a hand woven Persian carpet. Extremely difficult to disassemble, would be like starting all over. But also, it wasn't ever clear that this would satisfy the estate anyway because they had made their strong objections to the project very clear. So the project seemed to be at an impasse and ultimately, last month, Netflix comes out with the following statement. The Prince estate and Netflix have come to a mutual agreement that will allow the estate to develop and produce a new documentary featuring exclusive content from Prince's archive. Translation Ezra Edelman's film is dead. He's cut out, it's thrown away. And if there's ever gonna be a film, it's gonna be a film made by the estate.

[Michael Barbaro]

Wow. Sounds like Netflix basically sells out Ezra Edelman after all these years and says that some family made version of a film might someday replace what you have described as this masterpiece.

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, all of the parties have been tight lipped about the situation for contractual reasons, but that's my sense of it. Yeah. So the day after this news came out, I was able to talk to Ezra. Well, it's kind of a grim day.

[Ezra Edelman]

Yeah, it's a little sad. It's a little sad.

[Sasha Weiss]

And he was devastated.

[Ezra Edelman]

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 Kristick, Brett Granado.

[Sasha Weiss]

And, you know, we were talking a little bit about the estate's rationale, or what we perceive as the estate's rationale.

[Ezra Edelman]

You know, the statewide.

[Sasha Weiss]

He thinks it's absurd.

[Ezra Edelman]

I have no interest in putting out 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.

[Sasha Weiss]

The lawyer for the estate said to Ezra at one point in this process, he fears the film will do generational harm to Prince.

[Ezra Edelman]

The film would do generational harm to Prince. What does that mean?

[Michael Barbaro]

So the argument was that a film that fully exposes the motivations and the biography of this artist will hurt his reputation for a generation. I just want to translate that phrase.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yes. I think the fear is. In a crass way. This will get Prince canceled. He was a jerk. He was a difficult boss. He was meant. Right. That it would demystify this icon. You know, fundamentally, they're concerned about their bottom line.

[Ezra Edelman]

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 so.

[Sasha Weiss]

But I think, you know, Ezra sees it the opposite way.

[Ezra Edelman]

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 of which is true, but, like, it's so much deeper. His struggles between good and evil in himself. This struggle that you see in the music and the art and then how it played out in his life. It's like, how can you not want to tell that story? But that's the story of Prince that's meaningful.

[Sasha Weiss]

Engagement with Prince just deepens our relationship with him and kind of revives his legacy. And, I mean, I totally agree. Like, Prince is present, but it's not like he's a vital figure in the culture right now. And I bet anything that if this film had come out, there would have been a whole huge discourse around Prince and a complex one and an interesting one. And I think it would have brought him again to the fore of the cultural conversation. And, I mean, when Ezra did show a very small group of people an early cut of the film as he was working on it, he saw that kind of reaction.

[Ezra Edelman]

There's almost invariably whatever people's responses are through the trajectory of this life in 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.

[Michael Barbaro]

That's the estate side of this. What does Ezra make of Netflix's role in all of this?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, Ezra declines to discuss Netflix, but in my own reporting around the unraveling of the deal, I think Netflix bears a lot of responsibility for what happened. I think that when Ezra started making this film, it was a kind of heyday of prestige documentary. And Netflix was producing high profile, really rigorous documentaries that were kind of in the mold of some of the things that Ezra does. Really intense investigations, journalistically important. They made the film Icarus, which is about the Russian doping scandal during the Olympics that won the Academy Award. And in the years since, documentaries have been transformed and Netflix has been transformed. You know, the executive who originally hired Ezra has been let go and new leadership was brought in and they've leaned further and further into certain kinds of documentaries that were skirting away from journalism much more toward entertainment. Right. True crime. Celebrity documentary where celebrities began to be producing partners.

[Michael Barbaro]

Meghan Markle comes to mind.

[Sasha Weiss]

Meghan Markle comes to mind. David Beckham. I mean, there are lots of them now, you know, so they're becoming a global empire. They're one of the largest and most important players in the documentary world. They're the arbiters, in some sense, of what documentary films are, the direction that they're going in. And now they're just generating tons of content quickly, cheaply, kind of formulaically. And the kind of painstaking, long gestating project like Ezra's is not the currency anymore. I mean, they still make some really good things, but they're able to make a lot more things that aren't that good but that a lot of people watch. And meanwhile, Ezra's film is all tied up in this complex legal battle.

[Michael Barbaro]

And so for all those reasons, it's kind of easy for Netflix to walk away from.

[Sasha Weiss]

That's my sense. I mean, I interviewed one person familiar with the company who said, you know, why would they want to be tied up with this legal fight when they could just go make 10 more, you know, reality shows about real estate when they can make 10 more celebrity documentaries where they're partnering with the estate? You know, So I think for them, the great art versus making a whole bunch of stuff more readily. Cost benefit analysis. My sense is that ultimately they didn't stand by the film.

[Michael Barbaro]

Let's just assume for a moment that Netflix is in the business of doing what's good for Netflix and Netflix's audience. Would Netflix be right to assume that what Ezra Edelman has created here might not actually necessarily be what its vast audience wants?

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's possible that that's their calculation, that they're making a kind of pure, you know, look at the numbers business decision. I think that's possible. We'll never know because the film just isn't being given a chance to be put in front of an audience. But I think Ezra would totally disagree with that idea.

[Ezra Edelman]

I believe that people can handle the truth in an honest portrayal of a brilliant artist and at times, a flawed human.

[Sasha Weiss]

So, you know, one argument that was aired when I was talking to people who had seen the film, talking to some people who hadn't seen the film, but even the idea of the film, you know, one thing that was said was essentially an argument about black genius left to stand as celebrated, you know, like white rock. Stars of similar stature are not exposed.

[Ezra Edelman]

To the same level of scrutiny.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah. Are not exposed to the same level of Scrutiny. And why can't we let Prince stand as a kind of monument before we start to take him apart? So what do you make of that argument?

[Ezra Edelman]

I mean, I make a lot of things of it. First of all, it is born out of a complicated history of a country we live in. I understand the desire to have our black heroes be celebrated 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? Like, why can't we handle that? Why can't the world handle that? I don't understand it as far as just this argument of, like, we.

[Sasha Weiss]

I think Ezra believes that for audiences to be given this, like, rich, chewy thing to engage with about this major icon would be satisfying for them.

[Michael Barbaro]

I want to ask you a somewhat provocative question. This was an effort to demystify someone who, to a large degree, wanted to be unknowable. And so this outcome, as tragic as it must seem to Ezra Edelman, and clearly to you as someone who sees it as a masterpiece, is there any kind of cruel poetic justice here that this controlling artist who curated his image so carefully is going to remain, because of what happened here, unknowable that he is weirdly getting the last word on what we all get to see of him.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah, I mean, I did often feel, reporting this piece, haunted by the presiding spirit of Prince and feeling like he was messing with all of us. So I think, yes, there's a kind of, you know, cruel poetry to it all. On the other hand, you know, Prince, at the end of his life, was opening up a little bit more. And the last hours of the film actually are about this. They're about a series of concerts that he gave lo fi, piano and a microphone, natural hair, where he was singing and talking and starting to talk about some of his pain, his childhood, his regrets, his loves. And it's still kind of veiled and perfumed, but it's more raw and the style of performance is more raw. And he also was undertaking the writing of an autobiography. There was something happening. I think he was changing.

[Michael Barbaro]

Maybe he did want to be more known.

[Sasha Weiss]

I think, in some sense, I mean, look, probably on his own terms, but there's the question of what Prince would have wanted. And then there's also the question of, like, what's good for the culture in some way and what's good for the legacy of a person like Prince. And actually, after the news of the film being finally killed broke, Jill Jones, who's the girlfriend that I was talking about before, who was one of the people who appears in the film talking about Prince's abuse of her was a lot of pain. Posted something that I thought was incredibly moving about what's wrong with this film not coming out. She was very in favor of the film coming out. Why? Well, let me read you a little bit of it, because I think she says it really beautifully. So she says Prince was a man who lived under the weight of expectation, both his own and those of the world that adored him. He built a Persona so larger than life that it became a prison, a gilded cage, one he could never fully step out of. He knew that revealing his true self, stripped of the carefully crafted Persona, would lead to rejection. And in a way, he was right. The recent choices made by Netflix and his estate only reinforce this truth. The world is unwilling to accept Prince as a man, only as a myth. Without the elaborate stagecraft, without the veil of mystery, his raw humanity is deemed insufficient. His struggles, his journey, his sacrifices, all the elements that shaped him will remain obscured. Instead, the world will most likely receive a sanity polished version of Prince in quotation marks, a carefully curated illusion that erases the depth of his reality. I thought that was something really extraordinary coming from someone who had been hurt by Prince, who saw some of the worst of Prince, but she can hold that against, A, his greatness, but, B, these sort of layers of pain that prevented him from being known. And she's saying, like, let's look at the whole thing, because that's the way to really appreciate who this man was.

[Michael Barbaro]

What she really seems to be saying is to deny the world this film is to deny this man's full humanity and to hide it away. And that only reinforces the idea that there's something wrong with being what all of us kind of are, which is damaged and complex, and that this whole journey means that revealing the fullness of that experience is somehow intolerable.

[Sasha Weiss]

I think that's exactly right. And I think humanly, not only artistically, we have to make room for what's broken in us. And that's part of the story. Sometimes it's the center of the story. And that's what Edelman has done here. And, yeah, I find it really, like, bitterly ironic what Jill Jones is saying, that, like, maybe in some way, one of Prince's deepest fears was that he would be seen and people would run away scared. And that's what's happened. So this leaves Ezra in a kind of existential limbo. And I know he's thinking a lot about his future as a filmmaker.

[Ezra Edelman]

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 in anymore? 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.

[Sasha Weiss]

A question in people's minds may be, like, where is the film? Like, where does it exist? Like, is it in. Is the film itself in a vault? Like, it's in a hard drive somewhere?

[Ezra Edelman]

I think the film exists. I mean, I assume it exists on 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 that goes back in the vault. So if 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. And that's a wrap.

[Sasha Weiss]

Ezra, thank you so much.

[Ezra Edelman]

You're welcome. I always enjoy talking to you.

[Sasha Weiss]

Sasha, you too.

[Michael Barbaro]

Well, Sasha, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

[Sasha Weiss]

Thank you, Michael.

[Michael Barbaro]

We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by Netsuite.

[Sasha Weiss]

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[Michael Barbaro]

Here'S what else you need to know today. President Trump is suspending tariffs on most imports from Mexico and Canada for the next month in a concession to the country's leaders and to the US Business community, which fears that tariffs will cost them money. Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum celebrated the news, saying that Mexico's cooperation with the United States had, quote, yielded unprecedented results. And on Thursday, California's Democratic governor Gavin Newsom broke with other top party officials by saying he objected to the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports.

[Ezra Edelman]

Would you do something like that? Would you say no men in female sports?

[Sasha Weiss]

Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that.

[Michael Barbaro]

It is an issue of fairness.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's deeply. Would you speak out against this?

[Michael Barbaro]

Newsom, widely seen as a potential Democratic candidate for President in 2028, made the declaration during an interview with the conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk at a moment when Democrats are wrestling with how to respond to President Trump's victory and the reality that the party's position on social issues like trans participation in sports, is unpopular with many voters. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Asta Chaturvedi and Diana Wynne. It was edited by Michael Ben Waugh and Brendan Klinkenberg. Was Fact Checked by Susan Lee. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Ba? Itu and Diane Wong and sound design by Alicia Ba? Itu. It was engineered by Alyssa Moxley with help from Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Michael Balbaro. See you on Monday.

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