Billie

Besides this doc I also just watched the newly released DVD "Sid & Judy" (Garland) both foretelling the enormous pressures of achievement. Money & drugs/alcohol, as usual, play a part. This doc compiles the many years of research from the intelligent, yet sensitive, 125 audio taped interviews of Linda Lipnack Kuehl along with her research into the paper trail documentation of Billie's life. Unfortunately Linda died before she could edit it all into a source story (although many other's have utilized her research) on Billie's life. The saddest part is two years before Billie died (1959 with just $750) she married McKay, and even though she intended to divorce & create a will, it was never completed & her estate went to him & his family.

Note: 1937, Count Basie introduces Billie (age 22) into the band and to the audience with perhaps the first recorded singing rhyming rap lyric. Amazing to hear how current it sounded.

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.

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!

This could've been a good documentary about Billie Holiday. For me, this doc had poor balancing of the elements in a very complicated life. As others have mentioned, I don't know why the life of the interviewer/biographer was enmeshed in a film about Billie. If they want to tell Linda's story, they should make a separate movie about her. This movie gave me a chance to see some video clips of Billie singing that I haven't seen before. There were a few insightful remarks about Billie from some musicians who worked with her. Overall, I don't think justice was done in telling the life story of Billie. She was a unique singer who influenced every other singer in her day. I would've liked the focus of this film to have been on that.

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.