Filmmaker Dawn Porter lets us in on the life and times of legendary musician Luther Vandross in her latest documentary.
One of the best things about growing up in St. Louis, Mo., in the 80s and 90s was that every night, on Magic 108 FM, at 9 pm sharp, the synthesizer whistle and the gentle bassline of Smokey Robinson’s “Quiet Storm” let the city know what time it was. Like many Black radio stations across the country that adopted Melvin Lindsey’s “Quiet Storm” radio format, Magic 108 sent the sounds of Barry White, Roberta Flack, Teena Marie, Rose Royce, and of course, Luther Vandross, across the airwaves and into our cars, living rooms, and bedrooms until sunrise.
And, as someone who spent a lot of my life listening to music, talking about music, and writing about music, when I was asked to speak with filmmaker Dawn Porter about her documentary “Luther: Never Too Much,” I immediately said yes. This was a subject matter I knew and loved. I grew up on Luther. I was a fan. I was a superfan. I could even keep up with (almost) all the “say you’re gonna be” lines in “House is not a Home.”
Reader, let me tell you: I was not ready.
As a director, Dawn Porter is known for telling the stories of preeminent people — John Lewis, Bobby Kennedy, and Lady Bird Johnson. And she’s known for showing the world how these incredibly famous people became who they became. But more than that, she loves to show her audiences that regardless of how well you think you know someone, there is so much more to their story than that.
I won’t go in for spoilers, but I promise you — if you think you know Luther Vandross, you don’t.
“The most fun thing to do is to watch this film with an audience of people who know his music,” Porter said when we spoke in May as she drove home from a visit to the Vineyard. “Because, for the first half hour of the movie, you get people going: Wait! I didn’t know that! And I didn’t know that, either!”
According to Porter, she doesn’t always want to tell a story chronologically, but as she learned about Luther’s beginnings it became clear that this was where his story needed to begin. “There’s so much that people, even superfans, do not know about where he came from, and hearing his backstory is so significant to how he evolved as an artist and who he was as a person.”
The beauty of telling his story this way, Porter explained, is that, “then the audience is in on the whole thing and you’re literally brought along for the rest of the movie. And that is such a gift because you celebrate his highs, you mourn his losses, and you definitely mourn his death.”
Which brings us back to where this article began with the segregated radio of the 80s and 90s. If you weren’t listening to the Magic 108 FM of your town, then you may not have heard Luther singing all his songs, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t listening to Luther. “One of the stories of this film is that at that time, Luther was everywhere. You may not have known it, but he was everywhere. And so it’s even more poignant that he wasn’t being as recognized because he was so influential.”
Poignant is one way to say it. Painful is another. Because for all that the mainstream wasn’t recognizing Luther for his talent and his impact, he was being recognized for his weight and sexuality. “We could have done half an hour of just talk show questions,” said Porter. “How much do you weigh? Are you over 300 pounds?” Porter lets the audience experience this along with Luther by slowly rolling out the way this happened in his life. “When he’s first teased, you’re kind of laughing, but then you start to see how painful it was for him, even though he was quote-unquote, playing along. Then the audience quiets down.”
For Porter, it is really important in all her films that the audience gets to see for themselves. “I wanted Luther to be able to tell his story as much as possible,” she said, Luther never married and while many speculated that he was gay, when he was asked outright about his sexuality, he clearly stated that all he owed his fans were his talent and his best efforts. Here, as an audience, we again get quiet and wonder: What do we ask of celebrities? How much do we demand of those who already give so much?
While there was pain in Luther’s life, his life was never defined by that pain. And Porter makes sure that we see all sides of Luther — the glamorous, the joyful, the inspirational. “Something I’m really proud of and that I love is this is really a celebration of Black music,” said Porter. From very early on in his life, Luther was influenced by the elegance and grace of singers like Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, and Aretha Franklin. “And that is how he lived his life,” said Porter. “He was not a person who was crass and crude. He lived that glamor and that poise, his songs were about emotion, they were about the internal.”
Porter’s films up to this point have been largely political, so choosing to make a movie about Luther Vandross was a bit of a bend in the road for her. One reason was that she found it crazy that there hadn’t been a film made about him. Another reason was that she had the cooperation of Luther’s estate and Sony, giving Porter access to everything from rehearsal footage to the exquisite costumes worn by Luther and his band. “It was very creatively satisfying because of what we had to work with,” said Porter. “But it’s also really important to me to look for films that have multiple layers and as we looked through the footage and talked to his lifelong friends, it was clear that there was so much to be revealed here.”
Porter couldn’t have predicted that the life of this film would mirror the life of Luther in its struggles to be recognized by the mainstream. After debuting at Sundance in January and becoming a festival favorite, it took until the day Porter and I spoke in May for the film to find a distributor. To some degree, Porter felt that this was due to distributors being worried that films aimed at Black audiences or a certain age demographic would have a harder time finding an audience. And Porter was perplexed as to why it took so long as there was always so much joy and enthusiasm for the film. “Everyone who was involved, everyone who saw it, all looked at it in the same way: like this is the person whose story is going to wow people and this is a special movie.”
Thankfully, on May 15, CNN Films, in partnership with OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, acquired the film. Porter, who worked with CNN on her film “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” was thrilled to be working with CNN again. “I’m not surprised that the folks at CNN see that there’s an audience for this movie,” Porter said. “It’s a great home for the film.”
Every film tells a story and there is a story to the making of every film. For filmmaker Porter, the story of “Luther Vandross: Never Too Much” started with the lyrics to songs and the importance of a life she thought she knew. It ended with the unveiling of the legacy, a talent layered with complexity and joy in the face of persecution. And what the audience experiences is an extension and an honoring of that legacy. A film that, like Luther, is centered in truth, talent, and endless love.