Filmmaker David Furnish has said Sir Elton John was “completely hands off” during the making of his Elton John: Never Too Late documentary.
Sir Elton’s 62-year-old husband told the PA news agency the singer asked him where he found the film’s concert footage as he had “not seen most of this”, and did not see the feature until it was 80% completed.
The Disney+ movie, directed by Furnish and RJ Cutler, sees the Rocket Man singer looking back on his life as he prepares for his final concert in North America at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, having performed two sold-out concerts at the venue in 1975.
Furnish told PA: “I can just say Elton was completely hands off, he didn’t see everything until it was up on the screen and the film was probably about what 80% completed, just missing the animation.
“And Elton said, ‘where did you find all this stuff? I’ve not seen most of this at all’, the concert footage.
“And the nice thing that I love, because he’s not very good at giving or taking compliments about himself, he said, ‘god, I was really good on stage, wasn’t I, really like, the passion and the energy I put into those performances’.
“When he saw the film it was very pleasing that he responded that way.”
Cutler added: “For a man who doesn’t like to look back, Elton’s got quite an archive too, two warehouses full of material, a lot of which had not been combed through and seen.
“And so our archivists looked through pretty much everything that existed.
“And among the things we found was unprocessed film with the footage of Elton singing Candle In The Wind, recording Candle In The Wind, which is the take that ends up on the actual Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, nobody had ever seen that because the footage hadn’t been processed.
“The Rolling Stone interview, we found that in the New York Public Library archives, and along with unseen still photographs, so we were able to recreate that scene, so much of the John Lennon material, it was a tremendous amount of material that was discovered just for this film.”
The directing pair said they initially had two separate ideas, with Furnish wanting to make a movie about the end of Sir Elton’s touring career, and Cutler wanting to make one about its beginning, so they decided to merge the two.
Furnish added: “Rocket Man was a fantasy, it was a fantasy about his emotional journey, but this is very much about those heady first five, six years of his career, the passion that he put into his craft, the artistry of creating those albums.
“I think most young people who listen to Elton’s music today, and we have a terrific burgeoning, growing young fanbase – 58% of Elton’s music is now streamed by 18 to 35-year-olds, which is brilliant – have no idea how famous he was.”
The movie also uses animation to tell the story of moments the film’s creators did not have footage of.
Cutler explained: “Well, you can’t help but wish that you were in certain rooms, and you also want to get the viewer into those rooms in a way that is exciting cinematically.
“You don’t just want descriptions of those moments, you want to feel like you’re there.
“And it elevates the film in a way, because it makes it more delicious, and as David has pointed out, it’s a language of cinema that we all begin with, the animated film, and it just worked beautifully.
“It wasn’t anything that you’ve seen before, Elton is depicted in a way you’ve never seen before, that scene of him as a little boy in his room with his 45s, finding solace in that home, where he’s so vulnerable and scared, that moves me every time I see it.”
Elton John: Never Too Late will be released on Disney+ on Friday December 13.
