Ezra Edelman (Finally) Speaks

EPISODE 209: Closing THE BOOK OF PRINCE.

When we recorded this episode, nobody had ever heard Ezra Edelman talking about his “controversial Prince Netflix documentary” into a microphone. Which is completely unsurprising to anyone who knows him.

The guy who won the Best Documentary Oscar for O.J.: Made in America doesn’t love talking, in public, in general. His whole thing is letting his work, his reporting, in all its tonnage, speak for itself.

The O.J. doc, made for ESPN, was eight hours long: so long, and so unfairly good, apparently, that it inspired the Academy Awards to ban “multi-part series” from the Best Documentary Oscar category.

And The Book of Prince, made for Netflix, was nine hours long.

But this time, Ezra’s work cannot speak for itself. Because there is a 0.000000000% chance, I am now told, that any of you will ever be allowed to watch it.

 And yes, Hollywood is, of course, a graveyard of passion projects — several of which we’ve loved chronicling on PTFO in the past. But the story behind The Book of Prince feels different.

It feels different because Ezra, who turned 50 last year, devoted almost five years of his life to very quietly perfecting this film.

 And then a story about this saga appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine last September. And the writer — who’d been following the production process for a year and a half — declared it “a cursed masterpiece,” citing the more than 70 interviews Ezra had conducted. And a month after that, with the seal broken, you may recall that Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris and I did an episode of this very show in which we described our own experiences seeing Ezra’s movie at an early screening, as well, long before this documentary became the Lost Ark.

And if you just want to know what’s in the film: I do recommend that you go watch that episode we did. But if you’re like most other people in Ezra’s life, you’ll probably have the same cursed reaction.

 All of which is why Ezra once told me that he’d never open up about any of this, across from me, into a microphone, in our studio.

Until now.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo