Director Dawn Porter knocks it out of the ballpark again with her moving documentary “Luther: Never Too Much” at the M.V. Film Center.
I actually didn’t know that much about Luther Vandross when I first saw the film earlier this year. I was brought to tears during that initial viewing, and again this second time around. Vandross’ velvety, rich voice goes right to your heart. Porter effectively takes us immediately to the first of those many moments, opening with black and white rehearsal footage of him singing “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” and seamlessly segueing into color during the electrifying performance.
Porter has Vandross tell his own story through rarely seen performance and interview archives, with commentary from friends and those who knew him in his career.
We begin with Vandross describing his childhood as happy: “My impression was life was great.” He then reverently speaks about his different musical influences as film clips flow. “I was a Motown child. I used to draw pictures of the Supremes in math class.” It turns out that if his mother wished to punish him, she would forbid Vandross to watch the group on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”
Speaking about his adoration of female singers, Vandross’ lifelong friend and musical collaborator Robin Clark says that he loved their tone and range. Vandross says about Aretha Franklin, “When she sang, it rendered you helpless.” It was after seeing Dionne Warwick at age 13 that he decided to follow his passion: “I knew I wanted to affect people the way she affected me.”
Porter carries us along Vandross’ musical journey, which eventually evolves to include moving from a background singer and jingle writer to composer, arranger, songwriter, producer, and lead performer. There are wonderful vignettes of Vandross working with, among others, David Bowie, Bette Midler, and Roberta Flack, who was the one who encouraged him to produce his first album in 1981, “Never Too Much,” an R and B album, which exploded with popularity on the airwaves.
Porter doesn’t shy away from painful aspects of Vandross’ life, including a lifelong battle to earn the respect his music deserved. Another was his struggle with compulsive overeating and dieting, and the incessant media focus on his weight and resulting health problems. Revealingly, Vandross says, “The food is incidental. It’s more about your emotional state, whatever your coping mechanism.” Gaining and losing some 120 pounds repeatedly when the emotional stress became too much, he says, “Food has never let me down.”
With so many songs about love, the media was relentless, too, in probing Vandross’ sexuality. When one interviewer pushes him to speak about it, he comes back, saying, “What I owe you is my music, my talent, my best effort. That’s all. I will neither deny or confirm any such personal rumors about things like that.”
Many of his friends talk about Vandross’ fruitless search for love, and the agony it caused. When asked on “Oprah” about his one or two favorite songs, he replies that it is “Any Love” because it is entirely autobiographical, with such piercing lines as “All you need is a chance to try any love.” In an extremely poignant moment, Max Szadek says that before being Vandross’ personal assistant, he loved the song, but “working for Luther, I could see that desperation it described … was real, and I hated the song after that, because he wasn’t seeking love, he was seeking any love.”
Porter seamlessly interweaves incisive interviews with Vandross’ friends and colleagues into long sections of his spine-tingling performances, building a moving story of this musician’s life that leaves us with a deep understanding of the man, his challenges, and his remarkable talent.
“Luther: Never Too Much” screens the week of Nov. 8 –14. For more information, visit https://mvfilmsociety.com/2024/07/luther-never-too-much.
