Liza Minnelli Gets Her Due in a Vivacious New Documentary
"Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story" vibrantly celebrates the career of one of our greatest entertainers.
Defying the adage that the lady needs no introduction, Bruce David Klein’s captivating documentary Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story extends a four-minute introduction to its larger-than-life subject Liza Minnelli before the film truly enters the breach, touching down on June 22, 1969, the day her mother Judy Garland died.
In the midst of the preamble performance clips — presenting Liza as a gangly ingenue onstage with her mother, and as a superstar commanding the world’s stages on her own — Klein runs amusing outtakes of Liza, present-day, sitting for interviews but not at all passively. Dressed in head-to-toe black, her trademark pixie cut topped by a newsboy cap, she commands the room tenaciously, directing the cameraman on how to shoot her.
As she reminds us, speaking into camera, she might be her mother’s daughter, but there’s a lot of her father, Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli, in her, too. He was a tyrant on set, she says, and she appears to enjoy playing the role for the benefit of Klein’s crew.
It might be, in that five minutes the film tells us almost all we need to know. Born of Garland’s irrepressible talent and drive, and Minnelli’s studio-honed polish and precision, Liza, a daughter of MGM, lived up to her lofty destiny. But her path from Hollywood’s most famous infant to conquering stage and screen was far more complicated and compelling than that.
According to friend Jim Caruso, who performed with Liza in her Tony-winning 2008 Broadway comeback Liza’s at the Palace, her parents might have laid the blueprint, but it was her godmother Kay Thompson who made LIZA possible.
Intimate home movie footage depicts the closeness between Liza and Thompson, the performer, songwriter, Eloise author, and former vocal coach and confidant to Garland who swept in like Auntie Mame to care for and protect Liza after her mother died. An oft-unsung pioneer of 20th-century pop culture, Thompson joins Garland and Vincent Minnelli on the list of pivotal artistic influences that shaped Liza’s career.
Liza has always had a good eye for “picking people to be around,” she informs us. Proceeding in chapter form, the film follows the thread of important mentors and muses in Liza’s life, from Thompson to French pop idol (and apparent friend-with-benefits) Charles Aznavour, to Cabaret creators John Kander and Fred Ebb.
With every chapter, the movie dances through a moment of sincere appreciation for her mentors’ art, too — for Aznavour, for Bob Fosse, and, of course, Liza’s platonic soulmate, Halston. The movie captures comprehensively, and often in the artists’ own words, how Liza has traveled her decades-long journey through public life in the company of icons.
The film sources several golden nuggets straight from the respective horses’ mouths, like Aznavour’s pithy description, en français, of his relationship with Liza — we are more than friends and less than lovers. Song historians and Frank Sinatra fans alike should enjoy the clip of Ol’ Blue Eyes, onstage with Liza, introducing a performance of “New York, New York,” noting that she did the song “before anybody,” including him, but, “Then I had to stick my nose in it.”
Beyond the vintage clips and news footage portraying each era, Liza’s personal details are rendered warmly through the eyes and observations of those who know her best now. Drawing on accounts from friends and family — Michael Feinstein, Mia Farrow, Ben Vereen, Jim Caruso, Joel Grey, sister Lorna Luft — the film locates the human being behind the pixie cut and sequins.
Although, this is no tell-all dive into the star’s scandalous past. In another reminder that Liza is her parents’ daughter, Caruso points out that she was raised with the Hollywood studio mentality that you smile for the public. You won’t see Liza dishing dirt on-camera, he says.
Indeed, she doesn’t. Liza sometimes lets her guard down, and isn’t afraid of telling it like it is — as in a moment with girlfriends Michele Lee and Marisa Berenson talking about their past men, when Liza interjects, “And some of them weren’t men at all!” — but she keeps her private life to herself.
At one point, she even vehemently claims that neither she nor any of her celebrity friends were doing drugs at Studio 54. Sure, Liza. The movie does take a cursory, headline-oriented look at the star’s struggles with substance abuse, but without offering much insight into her experience or recovery.
It’s Liza’s friends who keep offering major reveals, like Ben Vereen, moved to tears watching home movie footage of him and Liza hanging out in the ’70s, suddenly declaring his undying love for her. Or Mia Farrow offering then-husband Sinatra’s unvarnished opinion of Liza’s performance style when she first started out: Not everything has to be the national anthem.
Farrow, a fellow daughter of MGM and friend since pre-school, turns out to be a font of fabulous quotes and casual, first-person recollections of some of the most famous people who ever lived. Her insights add to the movie’s overall archival importance, while also summoning genuine, pure admiration for Liza’s talent, artistry, and perseverance.
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story (★★★★☆) is playing for a week in theaters through Thursday, March 13. In our area, it’s at The Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW (director Bruce David Klein will be in-person for a special screening on Friday, March 7, at 7:30 p.m. where he will be doing a Q&A following the movie), and at Cinema Arts Theatre, 9650 Main Street in Fairfax, Va., where there will be another special screening Saturday, March 8th at 2:30 p.m. followed by a Q&A with Klein.
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