DIDDY DIDN'T DISAPPOINT WITH DOCUMENTARY "CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP" AT TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
VARIETY- JIM ASWAD
Among the many skills that Sean Puff Daddy/P. Diddy Combs has (or has not) displayed over the years, the greatest might be a preternatural ability at self-promotion that borders on self-mythologizing. And with the aid of first-time director Daniel Kaufman, and the extended family and friends around Bad Boy Records, the wildly successful record company Combs founded in 1993, the documentary Cant Stop, Wont Stop: The Bad Boy Story which premiered on Thursday at New Yorks Beacon Theatre as part of the Tribeca Film Festival goes a long way toward sealing that myth.
While the story of Combs and the label is compelling fatherless kid rises up from the streets and founds company that leads him to become one of the greatest black entrepreneurs in history, overcoming adversity and tragedy along the way the fact that the filmmakers didnt really have much to work with beyond archival and current documentary footage makes their accomplishment all the more impressive. Cant Stop is essentially a post-reality-TV documentary: Its got quick-cut pacing, dozens of talking heads, flashbacks in the form of vintage footage and visits to old neighborhoods, and most of all, the snowballing drama inherent in working toward a looming, difficult goal: The Bad Boy 20th anniversary concert at Brooklyns Barclays Center in May of 2016. (Even the 20th anniversary is revisionist: the label was actually 23 years old.) The reality-TV element is likely just as due to Heather Parry an MTV veteran who is now president of production for Live Nations film and TV division as it is Kaufman.
The documentary alternates deftly between the history of Combs and the label told via voiceovers, interviews, and copious archival footage and the hectic, stressful buildup toward the show, rehearsals for which took place in a giant soundstage outside Philadelphia. (The footage representing the past is usually in color; the present in a nourish black and white.) We see the cast of characters then and now: Combs mentors like Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell, who famously hired him as an intern and even more famously fired him as his hitmaking star was rapidly rising with Craig Mack and Mary J. Blige I fired him and basically made him rich, he says and then Clive Davis, who signed the lucrative distribution deal that allowed him to launch Bad Boy. We meet label family members Lil Kim, Faith Evans, Mase, 112, Total, Carl Thomas and executives like Harve Pierre and James Cruz, and most of all, creative director Laurieann Gibson, who is tasked with pulling together the anniversary show. There are cameos from music stars who played pivotal roles in Bad Boy history: Blige, longtime friend and fellow up-from-the-streets mogul Jay Z, contemporary and occasional collaborator Nas. And hovering over the entire proceedings like a benevolent spirit is the artist to whom Combs essentially owes his entire career and myth, The Notorious B.I.G., who was murdered in 1997 and has been memorialized by Combs multiple times over the years. (Also appearing, presumably because the doc will premiere on Apple Music, is Jimmy Iovine, who seemingly has a contract that requires him to appear in every documentary about a platinum artist made in the past five years.)
The films pacing lingers on Bad Boys mid-1990s salad days and its rapid move into excess It was too much success too quick, Combs says and then pauses on Biggie, particularly the events leading up to his death and the memorial parade through his Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (which is egregiously misspelled in a chyron of the film), as well as its lingering impact on Combs. But then the parallel tracks pick up again, and Diddy relaunches himself as a solo artist paying tribute to his friend with the No. 1 1997 hit Ill Be Missing You, and the countdown clock for the 2016 reunion shows draws ever nearer.
Through it all, we see Combs the harsh taskmaster berating a lighting crew, telling his musicians they sound like a wedding band, scolding an employee to Fix your energy, we got work to do, for real as well as the sensitive and generous Puff (in vignettes accompanied by voiceovers describing his sensitivity and generosity in detail); the motivational speaker (telling his fellow performers before the concert: Last night we were human; tonight were super-human!); and, indeed, the human being, getting poked and prodded by a doctor during a checkup.
The tension peaks as the show begins, a mic fails and a distraught Combs is depicted backstage (amid voiceovers about how hard on himself he is), but then the triumphant concert ensues in ultra-slow motion this segment is actually not accompanied by music performed at the concert. Instead, in a masterful move that prevents viewers from burning out on the Bad Boy songs theyd already heard several times in the film, the footage is accompanied by a voiceover of Combs talking about his admiration for Nina Simone, and then her Feeling Good plays. It provides a melancholy and poignant climax to the film that, say, Mo Money Mo Problems wouldnt.
Thursday nights screening before a packed house that seemed to be celebrating its own anniversary with the films songs was followed by a mercifully brief 20-minute performance by several of its stars. Seconds after the last credit rolled, two male voices were heard chanting the familiar Bad boy taunt (off-key) Combs sons Justin and Christian came onstage and were quickly introduced by Gibson, then Lil Kim raced through a three-song medley climaxing with Junior M.A.F.I.A.s Get Money. She and former rival Evans high-fived as they switched places and Evans delivered a three-song medley, followed by about 60 seconds of Carl Thomas. Then Combs and Mase took the stage to Cant Nobody Hold Me Down and tore through two more quick songs (one of them ended so abruptly Mase kept rapping for several seconds), then were joined by dancers for Mo Money Mo Problems; for Biggies verse the music dropped out and the performers all pointed skyward.
The entire cast came onstage for a long and seemingly off-the-cuff thank-you speech from Combs, which petered out after hed gotten to his mother and New York City. This is truly a humbling experience, he said, perhaps a little ingenuously after nearly three hours of homage. To all the dreamers out there: you gotta keep fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting. And with that, he left the stage.
Among the many skills that Sean Puff Daddy/P. Diddy Combs has (or has not) displayed over the years, the greatest might be a preternatural ability at self-promotion that borders on self-mythologizing. And with the aid of first-time director Daniel Kaufman, and the extended family and friends around Bad Boy Records, the wildly successful record company Combs founded in 1993, the documentary Cant Stop, Wont Stop: The Bad Boy Story which premiered on Thursday at New Yorks Beacon Theatre as part of the Tribeca Film Festival goes a long way toward sealing that myth.
While the story of Combs and the label is compelling fatherless kid rises up from the streets and founds company that leads him to become one of the greatest black entrepreneurs in history, overcoming adversity and tragedy along the way the fact that the filmmakers didnt really have much to work with beyond archival and current documentary footage makes their accomplishment all the more impressive. Cant Stop is essentially a post-reality-TV documentary: Its got quick-cut pacing, dozens of talking heads, flashbacks in the form of vintage footage and visits to old neighborhoods, and most of all, the snowballing drama inherent in working toward a looming, difficult goal: The Bad Boy 20th anniversary concert at Brooklyns Barclays Center in May of 2016. (Even the 20th anniversary is revisionist: the label was actually 23 years old.) The reality-TV element is likely just as due to Heather Parry an MTV veteran who is now president of production for Live Nations film and TV division as it is Kaufman.
The documentary alternates deftly between the history of Combs and the label told via voiceovers, interviews, and copious archival footage and the hectic, stressful buildup toward the show, rehearsals for which took place in a giant soundstage outside Philadelphia. (The footage representing the past is usually in color; the present in a nourish black and white.) We see the cast of characters then and now: Combs mentors like Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell, who famously hired him as an intern and even more famously fired him as his hitmaking star was rapidly rising with Craig Mack and Mary J. Blige I fired him and basically made him rich, he says and then Clive Davis, who signed the lucrative distribution deal that allowed him to launch Bad Boy. We meet label family members Lil Kim, Faith Evans, Mase, 112, Total, Carl Thomas and executives like Harve Pierre and James Cruz, and most of all, creative director Laurieann Gibson, who is tasked with pulling together the anniversary show. There are cameos from music stars who played pivotal roles in Bad Boy history: Blige, longtime friend and fellow up-from-the-streets mogul Jay Z, contemporary and occasional collaborator Nas. And hovering over the entire proceedings like a benevolent spirit is the artist to whom Combs essentially owes his entire career and myth, The Notorious B.I.G., who was murdered in 1997 and has been memorialized by Combs multiple times over the years. (Also appearing, presumably because the doc will premiere on Apple Music, is Jimmy Iovine, who seemingly has a contract that requires him to appear in every documentary about a platinum artist made in the past five years.)
The films pacing lingers on Bad Boys mid-1990s salad days and its rapid move into excess It was too much success too quick, Combs says and then pauses on Biggie, particularly the events leading up to his death and the memorial parade through his Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant (which is egregiously misspelled in a chyron of the film), as well as its lingering impact on Combs. But then the parallel tracks pick up again, and Diddy relaunches himself as a solo artist paying tribute to his friend with the No. 1 1997 hit Ill Be Missing You, and the countdown clock for the 2016 reunion shows draws ever nearer.
Through it all, we see Combs the harsh taskmaster berating a lighting crew, telling his musicians they sound like a wedding band, scolding an employee to Fix your energy, we got work to do, for real as well as the sensitive and generous Puff (in vignettes accompanied by voiceovers describing his sensitivity and generosity in detail); the motivational speaker (telling his fellow performers before the concert: Last night we were human; tonight were super-human!); and, indeed, the human being, getting poked and prodded by a doctor during a checkup.
The tension peaks as the show begins, a mic fails and a distraught Combs is depicted backstage (amid voiceovers about how hard on himself he is), but then the triumphant concert ensues in ultra-slow motion this segment is actually not accompanied by music performed at the concert. Instead, in a masterful move that prevents viewers from burning out on the Bad Boy songs theyd already heard several times in the film, the footage is accompanied by a voiceover of Combs talking about his admiration for Nina Simone, and then her Feeling Good plays. It provides a melancholy and poignant climax to the film that, say, Mo Money Mo Problems wouldnt.
Thursday nights screening before a packed house that seemed to be celebrating its own anniversary with the films songs was followed by a mercifully brief 20-minute performance by several of its stars. Seconds after the last credit rolled, two male voices were heard chanting the familiar Bad boy taunt (off-key) Combs sons Justin and Christian came onstage and were quickly introduced by Gibson, then Lil Kim raced through a three-song medley climaxing with Junior M.A.F.I.A.s Get Money. She and former rival Evans high-fived as they switched places and Evans delivered a three-song medley, followed by about 60 seconds of Carl Thomas. Then Combs and Mase took the stage to Cant Nobody Hold Me Down and tore through two more quick songs (one of them ended so abruptly Mase kept rapping for several seconds), then were joined by dancers for Mo Money Mo Problems; for Biggies verse the music dropped out and the performers all pointed skyward.
The entire cast came onstage for a long and seemingly off-the-cuff thank-you speech from Combs, which petered out after hed gotten to his mother and New York City. This is truly a humbling experience, he said, perhaps a little ingenuously after nearly three hours of homage. To all the dreamers out there: you gotta keep fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting. And with that, he left the stage.
