In 1991, director Alek Keshishian released one of the most acclaimed and best-selling music documentaries of all time. Madonna: Truth or Dare. More than three decades later, he explores the experiences of another pop star and actress in his Apple TV+ documentary Selena Gomez: My mind and me.
The director sees big differences between Madonna and the young woman who is the focus of his new film.
“Madonna was a very armored person. She almost enjoyed this sparring [with paparazzi]and Selena is instantly a much more vulnerable person,” Keshishian said during an appearance on Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted virtual event. “I’m not saying Madonna isn’t vulnerable, but Madonna was in her 30s when she did that did truth or dare… What I noticed is [Selena], What was different from most pop stars and celebrities I met was that she seemed to have no delusions. She had no armor. She had no role that would attract her. So that was really fascinating to me.
Keshishian and Gomez originally talked about him making a documentary about them in 2016 revival tour, but once he started filming, he realized that for the then 24-year-old actor, “things were really getting out of hand.” They put the project on hiatus for a few years, a time when Gomez was being treated for bipolar disorder.
“When she came out of the psychiatric facility in 2019, she contacted me. I was one of the first people to see her when she came out,” Keshishian said. “I immediately felt that there is now a much deeper, more interesting documentary than a tour documentary. It was a documentary about a young woman who came out of this facility, recovered and learned to live with her diagnosis again.
The documentary was praised as “sincere and soulful”. The New York Times Called Gomez “boldly unguarded.” To help the director make his film, the singer and Only dead in the building Star provided him with her diaries — in “two big boxes,” Keshishian says. Paradoxically, the filmmaker describes his subject as “a very private person. She is not one to reveal such things about herself. But I think what we did together was to do something that was maybe bigger than any of us, which is to help other people.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
Source: Deadline
Joseph Fearn is an entertainment and television aficionado who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a keen eye for what’s hot in the world of TV, Joseph keeps his readers informed about the latest trends and must-see shows.
