Amazing Grace once was lost, but now it’s found.
The once-abandoned film, which documents Aretha Franklin recording her Grammy-winning double album, Amazing Grace, at a Los Angeles Baptist church in 1972, will finally hit theaters April 5, 2019—which is nothing short of a cinematic miracle. A miracle, “but not an accident,” proclaimed producer Alan Elliott, who has spent nearly three decades shepherding this essential film to the screen. The documentary was conceived as a celebration of Franklin’s gospel roots; it became a eulogy when she died in August 2018. Initially, a devastating production error by director Sydney Pollack made its precious footage unusable. Decades later, when technological advances allowed for the film to be completed, Franklin initiated a lawsuit to block it from being screened. Not even Robert De Niro, who wanted to feature the documentary at his Tribeca Film Festival, could sway her to change her mind.
But Elliott kept the faith. “I knew the importance of the album,” he said. “I knew that nobody at the record or film company cared, and that it would be lost if I didn’t stick with it. . . . I was like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters; I’m making mashed potatoes into a mountain, but I don’t entirely know why.”
Amazing Grace was a recording project seemingly made in heaven. After nabbing five Grammys and 11 consecutive No. 1 singles, Franklin was returning to her gospel roots, singing the iconic songs she’d learned in the Detroit church where her father, the Rev. C. L. Franklin, officiated. The album would be recorded live at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Accompanying Franklin was her mentor, James Cleveland—considered to be the King of Gospel—and his Southern California Community Choir, as well as Franklin’s own rhythm section: drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Cornell Dupree, bassist Chuck Rainey, and on congas, Pancho Morales.
As the transcendent album is testament, it was a glorious two nights. “She sings like never before on record,” sighed Rolling Stone magazine at the time. In attendance were gospel legend Clara Ward, as well as Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones (who are glimpsed in the film completely enraptured, on their feet with the rest of the congregation).
But Rainey, who joined Franklin’s band in 1971, doesn’t remember feeling a sense of historical import while making the project—or even knowing that the sessions were being filmed for a movie. “Session musicians aren’t always privy,” he told Vanity Fair. “We paid no nevermind [to the cameras]. Every time we played with Aretha, it was very exciting. As a musician, what more pride can you have than working with an icon?”
Amazing Grace was Franklin’s best-selling album, and remains the best-selling live gospel album of all time. But perhaps only aficionados of album liner notes noticed that its original release contained this tease: “The recording of this album was filmed by Warner Brothers, Inc. with Sydney Pollack directing.”
Yet the project was never realized, for a maddening reason. While shooting the recording, neither Pollack—an Academy Award nominee for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?—nor his camera team used a clapboard to sync the film with the audio, rendering their footage impossible to edit. After the shoot, their materials languished at the studio for decades.
Elliott first heard of the movie’s existence in 1990, when he worked at Atlantic Records under Jerry Wexler—who produced Franklin’s classic hit-laden albums. The two became close friends, and eventually, Wexler told Elliott that the albums’ recording had been filmed—but he was vague about what had happened to the footage.
By 2007, Elliott was becoming disenchanted with the record business. So, intrigued by the Amazing Grace story, he contacted Wexler about reviving the project. Wexler responded, “You’re the Don Quixote type,” and gave him the go-ahead to approach Pollack. (Wexler died in August 2008.) Initial conversations with the director broke down when Pollack insisted that the film should be revised to include contemporary talking heads—like Quincy Jones—discussing the project’s import. Elliott, who knew the album “forwards, backwards, and sideways,” insisted that Franklin’s music be its sole focus.
The two did not talk again about the movie until comedy writer Larry Gelbart—a mutual friend who had officiated Elliott’s wedding, and was one of the writers on Pollack’s Tootsie—told Elliott that Pollack was sick, and encouraged him to reach out. It was a “blunt” phone call, Elliott recalled. “I told Sidney I was sorry to hear he was sick. He said, ‘I’m not sick, I’m fucking dying.’ He said, ‘I know you know this movie better than I do, so I went to the studio. It’s yours to do; go do it.’ I said goodbye, and that was it.” Pollack died in May 2008.
What happened next plays like the worst-ever episode of Storage Wars. Elliott first realized something was amiss when he found an invoice for choir director Alexander Hamilton’s services as a lip reader among the project’s papers. Then he learned about the footage fiasco.
But soon, what Elliott calls divine providence lent a hand. At a party that year, he met Beverly Wood, who had once been head of film restoration at Kodak and was then working at Deluxe Entertainment. She, too, had grown up with the Amazing Grace album, and was intrigued by Elliot’s dilemma. She offered to send a truck to his home to pick up the boxes of film and audio materials. Three weeks later, all the footage was synced. “It was a sight-to-the-blind moment,” Elliott said.
The next three years were spent raising money to “to keep the trains running” on the film, Elliott said. That meant mortgaging his house on multiple occasions. “I was the proverbial guy walking in the desert for 40 years looking for some ways to finish the project. . . . Finally, I found somebody who would give me enough money to edit the movie.”
The film’s first cut was three-and-a-half hours long. Elliott screened it for a handful of close friends, including Hamilton; Jonathan Taplin, producer of The Last Waltz; and basketball coach Phil Jackson, who was the son of a minister himself—and had recently had an operation to successfully treat his prostate cancer. Ten minutes in, Elliott looked over to see Jackson overcome with emotion. “He said to me, ‘This is the absolute truth.’ He doesn’t throw those things around lightly,” Elliott said
That screening would inform the 87-minute theatrical release. “I’m sitting in the room, and all I could think of was, how can I make this movie go faster so Phil Jackson isn’t uncomfortable?” Elliot said with a laugh. “That’s when I had an a-ha moment, to take my cue from musical theater.”
Thank God for Cop Rock—Steven Bochco’s audacious 1990 cop show/musical, on which Elliott had served as a composer. “I grew up in musical theater and could write in that style,” he said. “Amazing Grace is completely pilfered musical-theater structure. . . . You have your introduction of the participants, à la Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Comedy Tonight,’ which is when the choir walks in. You have an ‘I wish’ song, which is ‘Wholly Holy.’ You have the end of the night big song, which is ‘Amazing Grace.’ . . . Then you have the rousing ‘Old Landmark’ for a curtain call.”
Then came what Elliott calls “the craziness.” Franklin sued him to stop any screenings of the film. (Elliott and Franklin settled out of court). In 2015, she sued the Telluride Film Festival, where the film was set to have its premiere. She contended that the footage “was taken with the express understanding that it would not be used commercially without agreement and consent by Ms. Franklin.”
The judge sided with Franklin, despite an unearthed, decades-old contract Franklin had signed with Warner Bros. authorizing release of the film. According to Elliott, Robert De Niro called Franklin personally, offering to screen the film in the fabled Radio City Music Hall. Franklin reportedly told him, “Well, baby, it’s in the hands of the lawyers.”
Why, precisely, was Franklin so opposed to the release of the film? Her reasoning remains vague. Rainey said that he tried talking to her about the movie over the years, but she always changed the subject. In 2015, she told the Detroit Free Press, “I love the film itself. It’s just that, well, legally, I really should just not talk about it, because there are problems.”
Elliott has a theory. He speculates that Franklin may have responded as she did due to residual disappointment that the movie did not come out as originally planned—perhaps dashing her hopes of having a movie career. In 1972, he said, people at Warner Bros. and Atlantic Records told Franklin that she could be a movie star like Diana Ross, who had received an Oscar nomination for her performance that year’s Lady Sings the Blues. “In December of 1971,” Elliott said, “she came out to start rehearsals for Amazing Grace, but she also did a guest spot on [the TV series] Room 222. . . . You can see how great she is.”
It might also have been an issue of artistic control. “Quincy Jones told me stories that when he was with Aretha, they would finish a recording session and she would fly with the tapes to New York to do overdubs without him,” Elliott said. “I would imagine as close to perfect as I think the movie is, she wasn’t a participant in it [behind the scenes], and that’s probably an issue about which artists would be territorial.”
Sabrina Owens, Franklin’s niece and the executor of her estate, thinks there might be something in that idea. “Aretha was a perfectionist,” she told Vanity Fair. “She liked to have input in all her projects and I don’t know how much she had in [the movie].”
Owens herself did not discuss the movie with Franklin. “I saw the film about three years ago, and I knew the world needed to see it,” she said. “At the time, she wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t a conversation she was ready to have; she was more focused on her health.”
Whatever the reason, the film remained in limbo until Franklin’s death. “It was gut-wrenching,” Elliott said. “I knew how good it was.” His only contact with Franklin was a five-second encounter in 2008 at the House of Blues, where, as per arrangements by Wexler, he met her backstage following a concert. He identified himself, and Franklin said, “Yes, we’ll be talking”—then walked away.
Shortly thereafter, he became friends with Owens. She informed Elliott confidentially that Franklin was seriously ill. “Sabrina and I agreed that I wasn’t going to do anything after that,” he said. “We would just talk to each other every couple of months. . . . I knew at a certain point, we would get the movie out.”
Now, Amazing Grace lives. It has received rapturous reviews (“Don’t bother with tissues. Bring a towel,” said The New York Times), although Elliott reports receiving a phone call from Oprah Winfrey asking why Franklin’s towering performance of “Mary, Don’t You Weep” is abridged in the film. (It’s because the cameramen at the time, Elliott says, did not film that song in its entirety).
Elliott has been accompanying the film across the country, screening it at civil-rights museums and black churches prior to its national release on April 5. It was shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts on what would have been Franklin’s 77th birthday. “I’m really proud of it,” Elliott said. “Every time, I see something different [in it]. It’s absolute quirk of the universe, this movie.”
Rainey is still playing and teaching. During Amazing Grace’s opening weekend, he will be conducting seminars at the Midwest Rhythm Summit at Terra State Community College in Ohio. He has seen the film as well, and likes it “as a portrait of how things are in the black church.” Mostly, it brings back “a lot of good memories,” he said. “That rhythm section was one of the best I’ve ever played with. All we cared about was playing music and pleasing Aretha.”
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