Awards Daily talks to SCAD Lacoste Film Festival Outstanding Director Award recipient Sam Taylor-Johnson about what her first four films have in common and why she always seems to tackle controversial characters.
After directing three biopics, Sam Taylor-Johnson says Back to Black might be the last one she does for a while. . .well, maybe.
“I say that until something comes up,” the director laughs. “I never know what’s around the corner in terms of what will interest me.”
Her four films — Nowhere Boy, Fifty Shades of Grey, A Million Little Pieces, and Back to Black — have a few themes in common, including music and addiction, with Back to Black a culmination of these elements.
“I didn’t even recognize within myself that I was repeating the thread. Music is such a massive passion for me, so it will always be central in my films. But addiction has been a heavy theme in my work. You’ve seen it destroy people and their lives. Amy Winehouse was never afforded the anonymity of Alcoholics Anonymous. She was so hounded by the press that they’d break into the rehabilitation center she was in. When you’re not afforded [anonymity], how can you recover? That was such a big thing for me to try to point out.”
To direct Back to Black, Taylor-Johnson did a lot of research on Winehouse’s life, coming at it from a different perspective than what audiences have seen.
“I saw the documentary [Amy] by Asif [Kapadia] when it came out, and I think he’s a brilliant filmmaker. I thought it was amazing and really struck a chord with me like it did everybody. In terms of making my film, instead of looking from the outside in, I looked from her perspective out. In a way, it gave her her agency back in a sense that she was on her path of creativity, and these were her words telling her story. I listened to all the interviews I could that she gave, spoke to people around her, and then from there, it’s quite intuitive. I kept thinking in each moment, what would she think of this? How would she feel about that? Every little detail would be, is this what she chose?”
Another aspect of Taylor-Johnson’s filmography is controversy. Aside from Nowhere Boy, each of the characters and figures at the center of her films can be polarizing (even fictional ones like Christian Grey). Of course, Fifty Shades is her biggest box office hit, bringing E.L. James’s “mommy porn” novel to life.
“I wanted to reframe it and try to give the character [Anastasia Steele] her power back in a way. That was complicated.”
Then, there was adapating A Million Little Pieces to the big screen, a memoir that started as a best-selling Oprah Book Club pick before questions around the author’s credibility destroyed both the book and author’s reputation.
“Meeting with James Frey made me believe in him—believe in him as a brilliant storyteller and his story being worth retelling. I knew it was going to be a limited audience, but there was something about what he went through that felt so wrong for what he survived. I felt like he was still an inspiration. I felt like he needed to be more of a role model than he was given credit for. That was my driving force.”
With Amy Winehouse, Taylor-Johnson feels the artist’s story, music, and creative soul had been overshadowed by the tragedy of what happened to her. “It’s that thing of, let’s elevate above the story.”
However, it’s never her intention to seek out such contentious figures. She’s just drawn to them.
“No, I don’t know why I keep doing it! I really need to give myself an easier path. I go at things with gusto and halfway in think, I really could have given myself a better path here. If filmmaking isn’t difficult enough, to put controversy on top and constantly be in a position of defending your decision to make something. I looked at other filmmakers and thought, you had an idea, and you made it. Mine cannot live or die on the idea, but on people’s judgment of who the character is as a person in real life. And that makes things much more complicated. I guess there’s a part of me that wants to uplift those from the gutter in a sense. If you feel like somebody’s been kicked down, how can you elevate where I think they should be?”
As a female filmmaker, she says she definitely has to stand her ground to not compromise her vision, with Back to Black being a real turning point for her creatively.
“My name is on this film. It’s not going to say ‘Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, but there was this really annoying person who made me change this scene, so I’m really sorry if it’s not good enough.’ And I would have those [situations] until this film.”
So, if Back to Black is her last biopic, what is she looking to do next?
“I’d like to do some kind of crazy action movie where it’s completely different. I say that and I’ll probably find my path back [to biopics].”
SCAD Lacoste Film Festival ran June 27-29.
