Elton John: Never Too Late documentary is "completely unfiltered", says director
"This is a window into his most transparent and truest self."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Whether surrounded by kitsch trinkets in his dressing room on tour or pounding the piano in the studio, the Elton John of today – captured in a new documentary on the celebrated Rocket Man, now 77 – is clearly far more fulfilled than his younger self.
Elton John: Never Too Late explores the singer’s rise to international fame in the 1970s and, in candid detail, his struggle to come to terms with his sexuality, the forging of his own musical identity, his battles with cocaine and the crippling emptiness he suffered, despite enjoying the heady heights of success.
Having been sober since 1990 and finding love with David Furnish – with whom he shares two children, Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11 – it’s a far happier Elton that we see in backstage footage from his recent, final three-year Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. But there’s also a tangible sense of longing.
In the film, Elton is visibly pained to be apart from his family, a fact brought home in a touching scene that sees the doting dad – in the US on his 330-date tour before coming off the road to "dedicate more time to raising my children" – FaceTime his boys in England. "I want to see our children get married," he also reflects in the documentary, "but I don’t think I’m going to be around for that."
“That really upset me,” admits David Furnish, Elton’s husband since 2014. “Because in my mind I sort of think Elton is going to live for ever – we all think that – and Elton is so vibrant that it’s an easy thing to believe, but it forces you to confront that reality.” That reality has included a number of health issues.
“I don’t have tonsils, adenoids or an appendix,” he declared at Never Too Late’s London premiere. “I don’t have a prostate. I don’t have a right hip or a left knee or a right knee. In fact, the only thing left of me is my left hip. But I’m still here.”
When it came to capturing intimate moments between fathers and sons, a fine line was drawn, as the couple want to shield their children from the public eye. But Furnish, who wanted to co-direct the documentary for that very reason, persuaded his sons it was important that, with two fathers, “other people can see they’re just like anybody’s kids.
They were a little uncomfortable at first when they saw it,” he says, “but then we talked about what this film might do in terms of showing people in the world that having two dads is the same as any other family. That you don’t need a mum and a dad – that families come in all shapes and sizes – which is what we’ve read to them in their story books since they were born.”
The documentary came about following the hit 2019 film Rocketman, Elton’s fantastical musical biopic starring Taron Egerton. “We did some test screenings of Rocketman and got some feedback – there was this whole group of people who said, ‘What is he doing today? What is he up to?’” says Furnish, who also produced Rocketman.
The core of the film's narrative is drawn from the previously unheard audiotapes of Elton’s interview with Alexis Petridis, the ghostwriter of his 2019 autobiography, Me.
“That’s Elton completely unfiltered,” enthuses co-director RJ Cutler. “When I first sent David an early cut using those interviews with Alexis, he called me up very emotional and said, ‘I’m hearing a voice that I’m familiar with, but I don’t think anybody else in the world has really heard from Elton, and this is a window into his most transparent and truest self.'"
In the documentary’s final moments Zachary and Elijah proudly hug their father on stage at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Elton’s last US date and, poignantly, the site of his career-defining 1975 show that the musician performed 24 hours after attempting to take his own life.
It’s clear that his family are the most integral part in this inspiring story of survival; the sweet salvation found at the end of a long and bumpy Yellow Brick Road.
“This is a movie about a man at this point in life, with young children, which only magnifies the clarity of how life is finite,” says Cutler. “But it’s not unique to Elton John. This is a fundamental human conundrum, confronting the decisions on how you want to live your life.”
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