Luther: Never Too Much

Bluesky

Luther Vandross will be a name immediately familiar to some, and a voice familiar to many more. A co-production of several organisations, but ostensibly a CNN film, it's not entirely clear why it's out now. It has been 20 years since his untimely death but sometimes it seems that the reason the documentary has been made now is because this is the last chance to interview many of those he worked with. In 20 Feet From Stardom there are many stories of backing singers, including Luther Vandross, but his role(s) working for and with David Bowie are just part of his stories. Mariah Carey, whose career was nurtured by Vandross, appears, as do many of those who worked with him in his solo work and the various groups before his breakthrough success.

There are some revelations. I hadn't known that he'd appeared on Sesame Street as part of Listen My Brother. They were a large group associated with Harlem's Apollo Theater, and their early work with the Children's Television Workshop included You Gotta Learn, which featured Vandross on lead vocals. We do get a fair amount of early stories, including how persuasive the velvet voice could be. A tale of green shoes would leave anyone who's tried to influence a parental purchase similarly shaded with envy.

There are also some disappointing moments. Discussion of the singer's sexuality includes an interview where he declines to answer, a statement where someone says that nobody should speculate, and then some speculation. It feels a disservice to someone who so very clearly worked to keep their private life private, and even more so for the fact that there seems to be nothing new. If anyone knew 20 years ago they aren't telling, and in documentary the adage isn't 'no news is good news'.

There are several folk interviewed, including a number of record industry figures. Some of them seem to be participating to magnify their role in events, though that may be an unkindness. One can't rule out that their efforts unlock a particular tax efficiency strategy or otherwise.

Jamie Foxx, whose production company is also involved, is much less cynical in his contributions. There's praise for Vandross as a musician, his works as aphrodisiac, and even a clip from Foxx's days as a regular on In Living Color. That sketch show was a parallel to Saturday Night Live but for a mostly black audience. The film does discuss the notion of 'crossover success' but not in enough detail. Luther's ability as an artist wasn't so much overlooked as trapped outwith the (mostly white) mainstream. When he did finally win a Grammy his joy was palpable, but too many of his successes came too late.

The need to present in a particular way is one of the better focuses of the film. It talks about how Luther, more than six feet tall, was affected by perceptions of him as a larger black man. His weight loss 'journey' and its return is a significant part of the film, and there are potentially moments within it that would distress. There's plenty of archive interview, and a moment where Oprah talks about being asked if she was going to put the weight on like Luther did is one that could bear closer examination.

While discussing (or rather extensively not discussing) his sexuality, there was opportunity to talk about the 'backlash' against disco and its impact on American popular music. A genre that was urban, young, often of colour and frequently queer was literally bulldozed by reactionary forces. While artists like David Bowie sought to make use of the various Detroit and New York sounds, others resisted them, sometimes violently. What is required of artists to succeed against such headwinds isn't to be taken lightly. While Luther: Never Too Much does touch on the subject, it's got so little to say about him that it's a shame it doesn't serve as a better lens for what was going on around him.

There's plenty of music, but as in A Complete Unknown this usually takes the form of snippets. Blur: To The End was saved in part by a tie-in concert film, but fans of Vandross may find themselves repeatedly opening new tabs to track down footage of his performances. While it is getting a limited theatrical release, one day in cinemas, most audiences will encounter it on streaming services or the upper reaches of linear TV. In either case the temptation will be to go in search of the songs themselves, and one couldn't fault them.

There are several filmed inserts of mixing desks with handwritten labels. Much like the statue element of Super/Man, they don't add to proceedings as much as interrupt them. What might have been intended to be meditative interstitials are so obviously artificial that they cast uncertainty upon the clips and colleagues that make up the bulk of the film.

Dawn Porter has directed several documentaries. Among many political stories there's also a Cirque Du Soleil film. Her recent television series The Sing Sing Chronicles shares the setting at least with last year's Sing Sing but both of those do more than this to use personal stories to shed light on structural issues.

It might be too much to expect a film to tell a bigger story, but that hope is borne in part because it doesn't really manage to tell a smaller one. Living in the US in the early 90s meant that Luther's songs were in the aether, but a lot of the archive footage is from the BBC. He had significant success in the UK, perhaps because the market wasn't segregated in the same way.

My general rule is that the best documentaries talk about an interesting subject in an interesting way. Luther: Never Too Much has the first, but not the second, and despite opening the door to several topics that would add more to the front half of that equation, never delivers. Never Too Much takes its name from his 1981 song and his first album. In that he professed love such that "a thousand kisses" was never too much. Unfortunately the documentary isn't too much; indeed at times it feels barely enough.