Ezra Edelman broke his silence on Netflix‘s decision to shelve his Prince, calling it stifling and “a joke.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the nine-hour project doc accused Prince of physical and emotional abuse. In February, Netflix said the documentary would not be released, and that the estate may develop another project drawing from Prince’s extensive archive.
Appearing on Pablo Torre Finds Out, Edelman shared his side of the story.
“The estate, here’s the one thing they were allowed to do: Check the film for factual inaccuracies. Guess what? They came back with a 17-page document full of editorial issues — not factual issues,” Edelman explained. “You think I have any interest in putting out a film that is factually inaccurate?”
Edelman said a major sticking point was “who’s in control.”
“This is reflective of Prince himself, who was notoriously one of the most famous control freaks in the history of artists,” he said. “The irony being that Prince was somebody who fought for artistic freedom, who didn’t want to be held down by Warner Bros., who he believed was stifling his output. And now, in this case — by the way, I’m not Prince, but I worked really hard making something, and now my art’s being stifled and thrown away.”
Edelman went on to accuse Netflix of being afraid to show the “humanity” of Prince.
“This is the thing that I just find galling. I mean, I can’t get past this — the short-sightedness of a group of people whose interest is their own bottom line.”
“The lawyer who runs the estate essentially said he believed that this would do generational harm to Prince. In essence, that the portrayal of Prince in this film, what people learn about him, would deter younger viewers and fans, potentially, from loving Prince. They would be turned off,” Edelman said.
“This is, I think, the big issue here: I’m like, ‘This is a gift — a nine-hour treatment about an artist that was, by the way, f**king brilliant.’ Everything about who you believe he is is in this movie,” he continued. “You get to bathe in his genius. And yet you also have to confront his humanity, which he, by the way, in some ways, was trapped in not being able to expose because he got trapped in his own myth about who he was to the world, and he had to maintain it.”