Kevin Smith's Shelved Prince Documentary "Finally Going to See the Light of Day"
Famously spoken about in his Evening With Kevin Smith DVD back in 2002, writer/director/raconteur Kevin Smith at one point shot a documentary that focused on and was produced by Prince...and like a lot of things created by the late Grammy-winning artist, it never saw the light of day. Smith recounted the entire tale of how this documentary came to be, his many headbutting moments with the artist, and how he didn't sign an NDA in his widely-released Q&As. In a new interview Smith has confirmed that his documentary will "finally see the light of day" in some form in the future.
When asked by readers of The Guardian what the likelihood of the film being released is, Smith replied: "Very high. The director of OJ: Made in America is making a documentary for Netflix, and came to the house to interview me. When they went to the vaults after Prince died, they found so much unreleased music and so many music videos, but the only footage of him talking was what I shot. It's extraordinary: he acts differently to how he ever acted in his entire life, and he talks for hours and hours. It looks like it's finally going to see the light."
The director Smith refers to is Oscar and Emmy-winner Ezra Edelman. Details on the documentary itself are largely unknown though it had previously been reported that Ava DuVernay would direct but later departed the project. Edelman's involvement hasn't been confirmed by Netflix so Kevin may have let this one slip.
During his Evening With Kevin Smith Q&A story about Prince Smith revealed that the entire project came about as he was trying to gain the artist's permission to use the song "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" for his movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Though the artist didn't allow him to use the song, the collaboration was born from that conversation. The plan, as Smith tells it, was to hold a listening party with Prince fans at his Paisley Park studios for his upcoming album at the time.
Though hesitant to take on the project, Smith eventually agreed despite the fact that the film would have overtly religious overtones, something Smith had dabbled in before with Dogma (and which made him hesitant). Smith also revealed in Evening With that at the time that he believed about 20% of the crowd that was present knew who he was and was perplexed by the fact that "Silent Bob" was working with Prince.
In his An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder follow-up, Smith revealed that he heard footage from the movie was being used as a recruitment film for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Now it seems like we'll actually get to see the thing that Smith fans have heard about for decades.
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