The Philadelphia Film Festival wrapped up its 2024 edition last weekend, and as usual, the program featured some standout music documentaries. Here are three of them, including one with special local salience.
The Philly Sound… Heard ‘Round the World
This film, directed by Bill Nicoletti, tells the rollicking, decades-spanning story of Sigma Sound Studios, the Philadelphia recording studio that, between 1968 and its closure in 2014, was the birthplace of significant music across numerous genres.
The Philly Sound Heard ‘Round the World, which had its world premiere at PFF, features some pretty great music throughout, from rock to the Gamble and Huff Philadelphia soul to the height of disco in the late 1970s. A 12-year-old Taylor Swift even recorded a demo there, in the studio’s last years.
Nicoletti has masterfully assembled archival music and sound, and there are a couple of indications that this project took a very long time: It could not have been easy to clear all that music, and many, many people interviewed in the film have since passed away.
These include Sigma founder Joe Tarsia, local legend Jerry Blavit, and Philadelphia International Records songwriter Thom Bell. (Nicoletti told the Philadelphia Inquirer in a recent interview that the film was in the works for ten years, and because Gamble and Huff are working on their own documentary, he had to excise any and all Philadelphia International Records music.)
Gamble, Huff, and the late Bell were all interviewed in the film, however. Among the other talking heads are both Hall and Oates.
The film treats one late figure with particular reverence: Linda Creed, the songwriter who wrote, among other hits, “The Greatest Love of All,” a song that plays in various forms in the film when she’s discussed. She died of breast cancer in 1986, shortly before Whitney Houston’s version of the song hit #1 on the charts.
There’s no word on a release date; while John Legend and Al Roker are on board as executive producers, the film needs more investment for additional musical clearances. But whenever this film gets released, it deserves to be widely seen.
Luther: Never Too Much
Luther Vandross was one of the most successful R&B singers of the second half of the 20th century. He was much adored and respected, and won a truckload of Grammy Awards for what turned out to be his final album, Dance With My Father.
But Vandross also lived a life filled with sadness and tragedy. His father died when he was eight years old and all three of his siblings passed away before he did. Vandross spent much of his life battling health problems, was always gaining and losing huge amounts of weight, and died at age 54, after suffering a stroke around the time of the release of that last album.
And also, Vandross was almost certainly a closeted gay man who spent most of his life alone. The man who sang a bunch of great songs about the glory of romantic love lived most of his life without it.
Luther: Never Too Much is a documentary, directed by the great, prolific documentarian Dawn Porter, is an examination of Vandross’ entire life, that fairly balances all of that; Vandross was a huge talent, while also underling the tragedy of that life.
While not moving too far off of conventional documentary form, Never Too Much masterfully uses archival footage, from performances to interviews. It recalls, in many ways, Lisa Cortés’ Little Richard: I Am Everything, from last year, about another great musician whose life was underlined by tragedy.
While originally scheduled for a 2025 release, Luther: Never Too Much will come out theatrically this fall before landing next year on CNN and Max.
Omar & Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird
A lot of music documentaries these days look exactly like every other, but that’s certainly not the case with Omar & Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird, a new documentary about musicians Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López, who played together in the bands At the Drive-in and the Mars Volta.
This very engaging film was assembled from hundreds of hours of home video footage from the two men over the course of several years, as we see their rise, the change in bands, and the various intersections of drug addiction, their relationships with women, the Church of Scientology, and other topics.
I’m not super-familiar with the work of either of their bands, but I was still enthralled from beginning to end by this film. It’s in theaters now.
Were you at the 2024 edition of the Philadelphia Film Festival? What were your favorite music documentaries there?
