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Listening to Kenny G Review – The Hollywood Reporter

 


Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane loves a challenge. After the humanizing portrait at the Super 8 Our Nixon, she upped the ante with her devil sympathetic doc Glory to Satan?

But where do you go from there? Which widely maligned figure can you celebrate, or at least validate – or at least tolerate – after Tricky Dick and Ol ‘Scratch?

Listen to Kenny G

The bottom line

Benevolent sympathy, although padded, for a musical devil.

Place: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF Docs)

Director: Penny lane


Turns out the answer will surprise you or seem oddly predictable, which might worry Lane if his goal is to be an artistic opponent and not just a cinematic troll. His latest salvage project is smooth jazz legend Kenny G, who receives the director’s introspective, lighthearted treatment on HBO. Listen to Kenny G.

Like Garret Price’s recent Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage, Listen to Kenny G is part of Bill Simmons Music Box anthology series. While entertaining and very occasionally revealing, this new entry suggests that Simmons forgot one of the lessons from his ESPN’s early entries. 30 for 30 franchise: not all documentaries have to be feature films. Listen to Kenny G is never really boring at 96 minutes, but there’s no point in doing here that couldn’t have been done in an hour.

In the opening scene, Lane is heard asking the artist formerly known as Kenneth Gorelick, “How are you feeling?” With a smile, he replies, “Underestimated in general. But other than that, I’m fine. Whether or not Lane’s intention is to be seen as a troll – in internet parlance, not under the bridge parlance – Kenny G is absolutely and completely a troll, which is probably the best thing I have. learned from Listen to Kenny G.

And how could he not be? If you spend your life collecting absurd amounts of money with one hand and scornful, mocking comments with the other, being a troll might be the only legitimate answer. You can either internalize and self-flagellate yourself whenever someone criticizes you for destroying popular music and being a curly-haired idiot, or you can smile broadly but sheepishly and, to switch to sporting taunt, point in. direction of the instrument panel. Kenny G, who doesn’t express an iota of nastiness at any point in the documentary, knows the exact sales of each of his albums and takes the healthier route.

You might think that the film’s validation of a slandered 90s icon would make it a bit like Netflix’s recent documentary about painter Bob Ross, but it’s more like recent depictions of Anthony Fauci because if you learn a lot one thing about Kenny G is that Kenny is a hard worker.

“I want to be the best interview you’ve ever had, and if that means sitting here for 12 hours without eating or drinking, I will. It’s my problem, ”he says. The secret to Kenny G’s success, if you’re not cynical enough to attribute it to a collective lack of musical taste around the world, is that he enjoys working hard. He practices his saxophone three hours a day, and he has spent a comparable amount of time learning to fly airplanes and playing golf, cooking, washing clothes, being a father. This is where you might wonder why none of Kenny G’s sons are in the documentary, why no mention is made of his marriage, etc. I guess this is the result of the decision that only Kenny G himself is qualified to comment on Kenny G the man (as opposed to Kenny G the phenomenon).

Offering the counterpoint, the sarcastic suggestion that its success is, indeed, attributable to a collective lack of musical taste, are an assortment of scholars and commentators, including New York Times jazz and pop critic Ben Ratliff; and professors at Columbia and Bard. This is where you really get the impression that our common contempt for Kenny G may not be wrong, but is certainly overdone. Mocking Kenny G has become a game of one-upmanship in three decades. And who better than Penny Lane to be some sort of devil’s advocate, so to speak.

Experts are prone to exaggerating as much as insightful observation, and depending on your perspective, one of these things can undermine the other. They quibble not with his techniques, but with the over-glorification of his record keeping and aggressive musical noodles. Underlines jazz critic Will Layman for this observation: “What you hear in Kenny G’s music is not a conversation at all. This is a solo project. It’s not sex. It’s masturbation.

Experts interviewed also quibble about his lack of musical knowledge and, guess what, Kenny G is comfortable enough to admit that he’s more interested in jazz from a technical perspective than from a music theory perspective. . If you wait long enough, they discuss – this one isn’t a quibble – the role of race and ownership in its success, and, in perhaps the documentary’s most revealing moment, Kenny G admits that this is something he never considered. Even if you don’t believe it’s true, you believe it’s the perception he wants to spread to the world because his fans will believe him and it will make his detractors’ heads explode.

My favorite scenes in Listen to Kenny G presents the artist in his studio explaining the precision behind his slow and methodical recording process. No one will walk out of the doc thinking they’re making bad music for lack of effort. It is here that Lane’s inability or lack of interest in finding genuine, well-known musicians to comment on his production is odd. Industry numbers here include Clive Davis and Kenny G’s former high school jazz teacher, while the documentary needs five minutes from a New Orleans studio saxophonist breaking down Kenny G note by note, For the best or for the worst.

Now, I’ve gone from lamenting the film’s padding to asking for a longer documentary, as it’s one thing to convincingly argue that Kenny G is not the Antichrist, and quite another to convincingly argue that it is good.

From an objective point of view, it’s not great that Lane allows her subject to direct the speech so thoroughly, even if it makes Listen to Kenny G a documentary that fans can celebrate (in addition to providing the expected fodder for detractors). Either way, there are some funny things here, and it will likely leave audiences wondering which vilified figure Penny Lane will adopt next.

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