Documentary filmmaker Bruce David Klein had finished shooting for the day when he was told that his subject, Liza Minnelli, wanted to see him privately. He found her sitting on the edge of her bed.
“She grabbed my hand. She started petting it and she looked up at me with those luminous, dark eyes and said, ‘Bruce, don’t put in anything phony in the movie. Don’t make me look like a phony,’” he said.
After years of arguing with his subjects that they needed to be truthful on film, Minnelli’s request was refreshing. And accepted. The result is the unvarnished documentary “Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story.”
The film, which lands on PBS on Tuesday as part of its American Masters series, offers fresh insight into an EGOT winner who overcame addiction, insecurity and the shadow of her mother — Judy Garland — to become a beloved American icon.
“We could probably have made three dozen different films on Liza’s life,” says Klein, who has previously made documentaries on Meat Loaf and Carl Icahn. “It’s a big epic subject that she is.”
Not a conventional biopic
Klein uses old performance clips and new interviews with friends and admirers like Ben Vereen, Mia Farrow, Chita Rivera, George Hamilton, Joel Grey, John Kander, Darren Criss and Michael Feinstein — plus revealing sit-downs with Minnelli herself.
The filmmaker didn’t want to do a conventional biopic: “It sounds pretentious, but I did learn over years of doing this that the smartest thing to do was to let the material speak to me instead of applying a preconceived notion of what the film would be.”
A light bulb went on when he and Minnelli, 78, first sat down and he asked her about Fred Ebb, the lyricist half of the legendary Broadway songwriting duo with Kander that wrote “Cabaret” and “Chicago.”
“Oh, Freddy,” she said. “He invented me.”
From there, Klein realized that Minnelli had leaned on five key mentors after her mother died in 1969, people who helped shape the then-raw performer — Ebb, Kay Thompson, Charles Aznavour, Bob Fosse and the designer Halston.
“I think the greatest gift that these mentors gave to her was confidence — self-confidence,” says Klein. Most superstars like to boast they did it all alone. Not Minnelli: “In Liza’s case, she actually was very much in favor of giving credit and being humble that way.”
The five mentors
The documentary makes the case that Aznavour — called the French Frank Sinatra — helped her deliver a song closer to the heart, and that Fosse gave her dancing both precision and discipline.
Thompson, an actor, singer and author, mentored her like a quirky godmother and Halston made her glamorous. Ebb was like a big brother who supplied her with many important lyrics, including for her landmark 1972 concert film “Liza With a Z.”
“People do ask me a lot what was the most important moment and what was the height of Liza’s career. And they expect me to say ‘Cabaret,’ but absolutely, positively, it’s ‘Liza With a Z,’” says Klein.
“That was the moment that you saw all five of her key mentors and her friends and everything all come together to lift Liza into the stratosphere.”
Vereen, in a separate interview, agrees with the premise the film makes about her mentors but adds that they were also fighting for her attention.
“I think they all clinged onto her because of her legacy and, of course, her talent,” he says. “I wouldn’t say ‘used’ but it was a chance for them to do their thing — whatever they did — and she got the benefit of it. We all did.”
A real Minnelli emerges
Klein wasn’t frightened to go to uncomfortable places, like the root of Minnelli’s addictions — “I didn’t want anyone to know that I was less than perfect,” she tells the filmmaker — and her romances, which often were disastrous.
A portrait emerges of a woman both strong-willed and a people-pleaser. “She has that steely power-confidence, and she has that insecurity-vulnerability, and she has both in spades, and they kind of clash inside of her,” says Klein.
Minnelli was what today is called a “nepo baby” — born on the third base of fame — but she may have had a harder time finding her own superstar level. She was constantly compared to Garland — the star of the immortal “Wizard of Oz” — and rudely put down for her unconventional beauty. Her father, Vincente Minnelli, was an Oscar-winning director.
“This idea of a double-edged sword of privilege with her was one of the surprising things I learned,” says Klein. “For her to get from third base to home was actually harder than for many of us to rounding the bases because of the expectations.”
