The 57-year-old director reflects on the challenges of making the Amy Winehouse film, Back to Black.
It was in a dark jazz club in London’s Soho around 20 years ago that British filmmaker and artist Sam Taylor-Johnson first saw Amy Winehouse perform. At Ronnie Scott’s, a venue steeped in music history, the diminutive singer with a howling ’60s vocal style belted out her tunes, leaving not a dry eye in the room.
“Marisa met me at her audition unadorned in anything Amy, to show she could pull her character from the inside,” explains Taylor-Johnson. “She was super-sweet and polite, and I thought it would be a huge task to take it from what I saw to her becoming Amy.“But that’s exactly what she did. Marisa looked down the lens and challenged me with a different energy than she came in with. At that moment, I knew she was capable of summoning up what it would take to be Amy Winehouse.
“That was the hardest thing to do as a director, to show that Amy was suffering. We see the pain is causing her, but it is in no way sensationalised. It’s a big part of her struggle and her music, so it has to be there.” “From a young age I have always been quite strong. I’ve always had a good sense of self, the feeling that if something feels right, I should follow that instinct.”Though not essential to the making the film, meeting Winehouse’s parents was also key for Taylor-Johnson. “I was confronted with two deeply grieving, sad parents,” she says of Janis and Mitch Winehouse.
“All the decisions I’ve made in my personal life have served me well, and if I’d started listening to opinions and not being impulsive, then half the things that are great might not be there,” says Taylor-Johnson, who was previously married for 11 years to art dealer Jay Jopling, with whom she shares two daughters, Angelica, who’s now in her mid-20s, and Jessie, now in her late teens.“From a young age I have always been quite strong.
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