Amy Winehouse Documentary Director Wasn’t A Fan Before ‘Amy’

The Amy Winehouse documentary director wasn’t a fan before directing Amy, but Asif Kapadia says that is all a thing of the past. The Amy Winehouse documentary has made him a fan, but he wants viewers to make up their own minds about Amy when they see her story.

According to the Seattle Times, the Amy Winehouse documentary director wasn’t a fan before Amy, had never met Winehouse, and had never seen her perform live, and that was precisely why Asif Kapadia chose to take on the monumental task of making the film.

Kapadia worked for two and a half years on the Amy Winehouse documentary.

He simply explained, “It’s why I made the film. I’m an outsider. I don’t start off as a fan.”

Amy has a feeling of being both authorized and unauthorized, according to Vulture. While Kapadia had all the legal legwork accomplished for the use of the music and other material in the film, he had difficulty with other aspects of the film. According to Kapadia, the tangle of complicated, protective, and touchy relationships Amy had with over 100 people lend an unauthorized angle to the documentary.

“Amy is somewhere in the middle of authorized and unauthorized. It was authorized because you can’t make a film about a musician without the music, and that means getting the publishing, getting the record company, getting the estate, everyone has to agree before you make the film. The only way we could make this film is if everybody agreed and signed off on it. So I assumed that it would be called an ‘authorized version.’ Then you say, ‘Well, look, we’re only going to make the film if you leave us alone and let us make an honest film, and we’re going to interview everybody. There should be no censorship, there should be nobody saying, ‘No, you can’t talk to that person.’ A lot of people around her made decisions I feel were not necessarily best for Amy. So, after we make the film, certain people go, ‘Well, we’re not happy with it.’ Well, this is the reality of what was going on.”

While the Amy Winehouse documentary director wasn’t a fan before Amy, the reverse could be said about Winehouse’s father’s feelings for the director. Mitch Winehouse is certainly not a fan of Kapadia after the documentary, and he has called the movie a “disgrace” and “horrible.”

Early reviews of the Amy Winehouse documentary have been positive, but Asif Kapadia says, “The audience has to make up their own mind.

[Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]