Billie

Refreshingly direct and to the point, this documentary doesn't mince any words and pulls no punches. It's Billie's story right in your face and told by many who really knew her and who had no interest in propagating fantasy versions of Lady Day. The attention paid to the woman who did all the hard work to get these stories told is in no way disproportionate and we owe her a debt of gratitude. Respect!

I don't know why so many here are mad that the film talked about Linda. I also don't know anybody needed this film to understand Billie's music. This film is about these amazing interviews that Linda took years to get, and in the process, probably died for them. Without Linda's obsession, there would be no film. I am just so grateful that she did this before all these people who personally knew Billie died. And it sounded like many of these folks were glad to have their voices heard to set the record straight. Linda instinctively understood the cultural importance of these accounts from the very mouths of people who had to endure Jim Crow crap with Billie. I loved the weaving of Billie's radio interview and her London TV appearences throughout. I also loved the amount of time this spent on her childhood, and her relationship with the songs Strange Fruit and Don't Explain.

Before seeing this documentary I knew little about Billie Holiday. She had a rough start in Philadelphia and Baltimore, including being sex trafficked by her prostitute mother. But she had a mesmerizing voice, while she could probably sing anything well she preformed more as a vocal stylist. And many of her songs were reflections of herself and her life. The documentary contains many vocal excerpts from interviews, including some by Holiday herself.

In many respects her life was mostly a tragedy, heavy into sex, drugs, and alcohol into her adulthood which ended when she was only 44. But she did have an indelible influence on her type of music.

On DVD from my public library, I watched it at home, my wife skipped.

Every bit of video or audio of or about Billie is amazing but this docu is so oddly and awkwardly put together with so much focus on this Jewish New Yorker woman who compiled many interviews and meant to write a bio but died before its completion. The amount of screen time spent either on billie's drug use or on this unknown writer woman made for one heck of a disappointing experience. More Billie!!! Not the least bit insightful and this writer's family must've insisted much (MUCH) of the film center on her. Which, when we're talking about Lady Day, is a criminal waste of opportunity. I wdve scored it lower except that I want to encourage more works about Billie Holiday - and if this film gets scored very low that might scare future projects away.

I don't know whether it's interesting or not that this intended writer of a bio on Billie - starting out just because she was a fan - like the rest of us - is white, Jewish woman but the amount of time this docu/biopic spends on the writer, who never completed the work before dying, is ridiculous and uninteresting. Way, Way too much screen time devoted to this other woman's life - which, when you've got footage and interviews of and about LADY DAY BILLIE HOLIDAY - it's mind-boggling to devote so much time on this one woman's attempts to write about Billie. Very odd style and underwhelming - which only left me desperately wanting to see and hear more of Billie and much less of this other distracting stuff. Badly done. R.I.P. TO THE LATE, GREAT BILLIE HOLIDAY.