'I didn’t know she was sick when I decided to take the job'
An in-depth conversation with Irene Taylor, director of Céline Dion: I Am
The other week, I wrote here about the recent documentary, I Am: Céline Dion, directed by Irene Taylor. It’s about Dion’s struggle with the rare autoimmune condition Stiff Person Syndrome, and the resulting crossroad in her career—including a remarkable scene of Dion having a severe neurological episode after a day of trying to record, and then, after recovering, standing up and belting out a hopeful power ballad.
What I didn’t know when I watched and wrote about it was that I’d had a subtle influence on the movie. Taylor is a veteran, award-winning documentary maker on subjects political and personal, including, as we’ll discuss, her experiences as the daughter of deaf parents and the mother of a deaf child. But she’d never made a film about an entertainment figure. A friend directed me to a Guardian feature in which Taylor explained that early in the process, before she even knew of Dion’s illness, she came across my book, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, where I wrestled with the implications of Dion’s vast popularity versus the disdain of many critics (myself then included) for her music. Taylor hadn’t known Dion’s work well herself at the time, and she said the book helped her decide to go ahead with the film.
Learning that, I thought we had to talk, so I got in touch through Taylor’s company Vermilion Pictures. What follows is the gist of our ensuing conversation, a warm and engrossing chat, edited considerably for length and clarity (I know it’s still quite long). It’s probably best read after seeing the film, but that’s up to you.
IRENE TAYLOR: I was thrilled when you reached out because, if you don’t know this, you were like my north star…. I read [Let’s Talk About Love], and I was like, “I think this is all I want to read. I’m not going to try to go down the rabbit hole and learn about all—I’m not going to read some Us magazine article.” And so as a result, I did enter the film quite green about some of the most basic details of her life.
Of course, you see her through the prism of the music world. I was seeing her through the prism of authenticity. Just, “Who is this person?” I don’t care if she’s a rock star. I don’t care if she’s a children’s-book author. I’m just trying to find out who this person is if you strip away all those things. I thought your book … I really appreciated, and this might be too strong of a word, the confessional aspect of it—where you decided to use the experience of writing it as a way of examining your own, again, too strong of a word, but examining your own bias.
CW: That’s not too strong of a word.
IT: Okay. So what I also gleaned from reading it was that you really found someone who had something special. And that specialness is what kind of shifted your mind about it. So I just trusted that this guy found something that maybe I would find, too. … That maybe I would, also, just turn and look at it from a slightly different angle.
CW: I do feel like the film is unique among anything that’s ever documented Céline. I was amazed that it existed. I always had the sense of there being a fortress around Céline—as open a person as she is, that the organization around her was trying to save her from any possible public vulnerability and danger on that level. So watching the film, which is so vulnerable, was a really startling experience.
IT: I think it was very evident to me, without knowing the depth of her personal history, that I was meeting her not just on any day. I was meeting her in a very emergent and emerging part of her life. And so I really just focused on one day at a time, like just trying to not draw parallels with what she used to do and how it used to get done.
We only had one [formal] interview, if you can believe it—where it was like, “today is the day, we’re going to do the interview.” … Any time I talked with her, usually, she was comfortable and there was nothing happening, so we just started talking. And before I know it, we’re an hour into a conversation.
And of course we were all living in the pandemic…. And I think she saw, “Oh, I have an out,” because all the performers had to stop. And so she seized it and did something about it. I think, even though she didn’t like what she was learning from the doctors, she was getting these answers that she was not willing or not able to, to stop the train and ask them in years previous, right?
… I didn’t know she was sick when I decided to take the job.
CW: Okay, this is something I was unclear about. How far into the process of getting diagnosed was she when she initiated this? At what point are you coming into the story?
IT: It’s very hard to pinpoint [the time of] a diagnosis, particularly for an orphan illness. It really becomes a consensus, or that the majority of the doctors believe that this is the illness. So I was pulled in by her manager first and he wanted to have a call with me, when I learned that she had an illness that didn’t have a name. [He said], “The doctors think it’s some kind of syndromic something, and she’s trying to get to the bottom of it. And I really just need to let you know this because it might impact how we film and how we schedule filming because … she has to see a lot of doctors and she some days just wakes up and doesn’t feel well.”
And that actually didn’t really turn out to be much of a problem. I think over the course of our entire year or so of filming she only canceled maybe two days.
… But yeah, I didn’t know.
CW: So before they told you about the sickness, how did they broach the idea of doing the film? What was the film supposed to be without that piece of information?
IT: Fortunately, no one ever tried to tell me what they thought the film “should” be, because they would have had me running for the hills. They just said, “We think you’d be a great fit.”
CW: And why was that? You must have been surprised that they were approaching you.
IT: I was totally surprised. I let them know that I was not very familiar with her music, other than some of her greatest hits. Sure, I could sing the lyrics to “A New Day Has Come,” because for some reason that just resonated with me in my life when she performed that song. Of course I knew Titanic. But I was living overseas, far away, off the grid at that time. [Taylor was a guide in the Himalayas in the late 1990s.]
I talked with them for—I’m going to get my timing wrong— but it was many months, maybe even a year from when I first started talking with them. … I had enough second guesses about whether this was a good idea for me to do, that I think that I didn’t question why they wanted me. I just went slowly enough that I was like, “I’ve never made a film about a celebrity. I’ve made films about people who are celebrities to me. But I’ve never made a film about a global megastar.” And I thought, as a fellow artist, this could be a very worthwhile experience. And I did have very good vibes coming from her when I spoke with her. So I thought, “I’ll try it.”
And [after that], when they told me [about the illness], I hung up the phone or the Zoom call, whatever it was, and I was like, “Huh. They didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me.”
CW: So they were waiting till they felt like they trusted you.
IT: Yeah. I got over it pretty quickly. Because I think when you are the manager of Céline Dion, you have a lot of things to consider. And sure, I had signed an NDA and anything they told me, of course, shouldn’t go out into the world, but they just didn’t want the word to get around. But also I think they felt like maybe Céline would tell me. And when she hadn’t told me by that point, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they thought, “We need to just make sure Irene can pivot a little bit and think about this.”
But another reason I did not get upset about it—I noted it, but I didn’t get upset, because I felt a palpable relief. Because now I thought, “Ah. This is my wheelhouse. I can do this. And I am sorry for this woman and whatever this mystery illness must be. But I know how to do this, step by step.”
As a parent, I’d made a film about my own deaf son [2019’s Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Acts]. And I’d made [a film] about my parents [Hear and Now, 2007]. Both the films were about their their experiences hearing for the first time, from deafness. … And it really helped me, I think, as a mother having experienced that and as a daughter having made a film with my parents, to watch someone just navigate this thing that was not only a crisis of her health, but a crisis of who she was and what her identity was.
What I was trying to better understand is, can Céline only see herself as a singer? And I realized I was with her at a time when she was being reminded, “I’m a mother too. I’m a sister. I was a daughter—Irene wants to know more about my mom and my dad.” And so I think that maybe the film [offered] some positive reinforcements for her, because I didn’t really go into her career. I had such fertile—albeit devastating—ground to work with, that I just didn’t take her back to those eras of her life that might have made her wistful or sad.
CW: Yeah. I just watched Moonlight Sonata this weekend. It’s a beautiful film, a real emotional experience. But it did become clear to me watching it why they had thought to approach you. Because you so sensitively deal there with not only deafness, but the Alzheimer’s diagnosis of your father, with a lot of sensitivity to how to ethically and generously portray somebody in that kind of situation.
IT: The thing about Céline that was miraculous, truly miraculous is that when I was there, the minute I entered her home, as long as it was the right day for her, I pretty much had the same access I had when I made a film about my own family. Who would have thought that?
CW: Not me!
IT: But I also wanted to make a movie about music. Moonlight Sonata was about music, but this was … really about a musician. And, having grown up with deaf parents, I didn’t have biases like, “Oh, my parents were classical-music people, or my parents were hippies.” I could find my own way instead. I came by Bonnie Raitt honestly. I came by David Bowie honestly. I came by Beethoven honestly. I came by PIL honestly, when I lived in England. … I’m just very open.
While Céline’s music was not something that I would say was my taste, she was undeniable—she had a relevance that I could understand. And I remember it so clearly, I see it right now: I’m driving my station wagon the year I moved to Portland, Oregon, and I’m blaring Céline Dion with the windows down and the sunroof open, because I really liked the song and it was “A New Day has Come.” And I remember I picked up my friend and I put the windows up, not because I was embarrassed, but I was like, “I am blaring Céline Dion right now.”
CW: It does sound like a moment of, “Oh, is this a little much?”
IT: Yeah—like, this wasn’t someone who knew me very well.
I don’t think what I listen to defines who I am—but what I’m willing to listen to definitely defines who I am.
CW: In the book I talk about the idea that we have “taste biographies,” parts of our backgrounds that shape what we like and what we don’t like. And I hadn’t thought about the fact that being a hearing daughter of deaf parents might lead to a kind of catholicism of taste, an openness to not necessarily defining yourself by any kind of music, for example. There’s this other kind of context involved. You can see it from the outside in a way.
IT: Yeah. I do notice sometimes people develop musical taste in counterpoint to their parents’ taste, because they don’t want to listen to that anymore. … But the thing is, music really touches me. And I thought, “This is a delight. I get to make a movie about a musician.” Now, granted, she is a performer and she says it’s not about the song, it’s about the performance.
CW: Yeah. It was so interesting to hear her say that.
IT: She’s scribbled and written lyrics for her things, and she definitely has opinions. And I saw that just in the little bit of recording I saw her do. She’s very hard on herself. She has opinions. She wants a guide track, but she also wants to respond to that guide track and not follow it.
But I really think that I could connect with her because we weren’t talking about the intricacies and the mechanics of writing music, right?
And then when I found an old video of her playing “Moonlight Sonata,” I was like, “That’s going to go in my movie, because that’s a little nod to me.” … I’ve heard that piece of music probably 4,000 times!
CW: Did you feel like you developed a different perspective on her music as well as on her, as you did the project?
IT: I think I developed a bonafide connection. I had an “aha” series of moments that made me realize this almost primal authenticity that she has—she can’t help herself. That’s why she’s “kooky,” as some people say, or “eccentric.” It’s because she just does these things and they’re like, “Oh, there’s Céline again!” I think that there is a very distinct connection between her eccentric and again, primal authentic self and the emotion that she puts into not only her voice, but her willingness to hit those heights and hit those lows and to do everything in between and to have the chutzpah to just do it all, like the “bangs” [when she fist-bangs her chest in performance].
CW: Oh, sure.
IT: Some people say she borrowed that from someone, but the thing is she does it so effortlessly. And when I saw the only live music performance of Céline Dion [since her withdrawal from public], within 20 minutes of her having an [attack], I wanted to weep. It was very excruciating to film that scene. But when that happened afterward, that just was like a profound, not just a filmmaking experience, it was a profound life experience. I used to joke with other people, “I’ve never even seen Céline live.” Now I have, and I feel like I’ve seen the best performance of her life. … And I really realized how authentic those body mannerisms are for her, and to see her on the other side of this neurological haywire episode, to see her body contort, it was so deeply upsetting. And then to see it go back, not only to this “normal” or more typical day-to-day movement, but then to see her break out into her performance self—
CW: Yeah.
IT: And the joy that came out of her. And my [director of photography] saw it too… Céline was singing that song, and when she got to the second verse, Nick [Midwig], my longtime filming partner, he was like, “she is in her own universe right now,” and he just went for it. He just started going in front of her … to move closer … and in that moment, I admit, I was so excited that he had the guts to just move in front of her and do that. Because after the episode, we were gun shy … both uncomfortable with what we had just done.
And it was just the discomfort of, “Would she want us to do this?” Of course, we could just never show it to the world, so I didn’t have an ethical problem with shooting it. But I didn’t want her to wake up and learn that we had shot it and to feel a resentment… Although I was pretty sure I was on good footing to shoot it, because we were already shooting with her for so long at that point.
CW: And was that the only crisis that she had while you were there?
IT: She had another one while during the tenure of my filming with her, but I was not there with her. Her manager was, and that is the vertical video that you’d see close to the top [of the film]. … It really helped me as a storytelling tool to have that video, so that I could just have the intro I had and then be like, “Stop. Okay. This is not going to be the film maybe you think it’s going to be.”
If there’s one word I could aspire to when I was making the film, I wanted to surprise myself, and I wanted to surprise others by surprising myself. So the things I included in the film were the things that surprised me.
CW: That’s definitely something I was thinking about during it. Do you remember the first thing that really surprised you in the process?
IT: I was in my other office, which has a giant, gorgeous, handmade walnut conference table that I had just had made like a month earlier. The wood was a gift from the tree film [Trees and Other Entanglements, HBO, 2023]. … And within five minutes of talking to me, she was like, “What is that tree? Behind you?” So I learned right away that she likes trees, right? So we just totally went on a tangent for a half hour and talked about trees. And she talked about how she can’t keep her trees alive because she lives in Las Vegas. Then I get to Las Vegas and I’m like, you don’t even have grass, sister. How do you expect to plant trees that don’t belong in Vegas? And by the way, you’re on a water ration. So yeah, it’s just very sweet, because she wants trees because she can’t have them, you know.
The surprises made me feel more comfortable, because it was like, “Oh, we have this in common, or we can talk about this. And you don’t realize I didn’t do my homework.” But I didn’t do my homework on purpose. And I eventually told her that. …“Please don’t take offense. This was something I very consciously decided to do because I just wanted you to tell me what you wanted to tell me.” And then the stuff that I would find interesting or I wanted to know a little more about, I would ask it honestly.
We both, I think, knew there were much bigger fish to fry in this film than revisiting earlier representations of her. Whether or not they were authentic did not matter, because here we were, and we were authentic. Experiencing, in real time, something together that was undeniably real.
CW: A lot of these films nowadays that are commissioned by the artists and their management, they can feel very stage-managed, like extended press releases. How did you negotiate what kind of input they would have and would not have?
IT: I did ask some basic questions to satisfy some personal standards that I have both artistically and also ethically, because … as much as I love music and as much as I love film, I wasn’t trained in film. I was trained in journalism and my interest lied in photojournalism and photo documentary. And so I asked just enough questions to satisfy what I needed to know. And I really didn’t ask them any more once I started filming, because it was so evident to me that she was going to leave me alone.
And when the episode happened… there were no follow-up calls like, “What did you see? What happened? Can I see the footage?” There was nothing like that. We didn’t speak about it. I knew if she wanted to ask me about it, she would. … But when that episode happened, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to show her the film before the world saw it. I wasn’t willing to make that decision without her input, because it was such an extraordinary human moment that no one planned for.
… And then it really helped that when I showed Céline the film, we didn’t have to deal with a difference of opinion. Because she said, “I think this film is going to help me. Please don’t change that scene.” She was crying throughout the whole film. That was the hard part. And then we talked for a while when it was over, but really I just listened. And the gist of it was, “I see myself in a way I’ve never been able to see myself before. And thank you.” And that to me was truly the greatest compliment, artistically, but also human to human.
CW: How much do you feel like you got to know her?
IT: I feel like I got to know her pretty well. Partly because she also wanted to get to know me. … I’ve gotten to know the undercurrents. I can speak to her character, I can speak to her integrity. I can speak to, I think, the the tools in her toolkit, where they come from, what part of her. I still can’t tell you biographical data of hers—I think I can remember, like, one of her siblings’ names.
CW: One of the things I wonder is how much, given the unusual life that she’s had, beginning as a performer so young, how well she knows herself, outside of the performance persona. Obviously all kinds of sincerity and emotion and all of those things breaks through, but I wondered being up close to her, whether, it’s possible to have an intimacy with her that isn’t performative. To the degree that you feel comfortable talking about it.
IT: I think she has her head very squarely on her shoulders. Part of the reason I did not go down the rabbit hole of her earlier life, particularly her early child career, and all of the complexity that we know from seeing child actors and the like [here we have a brief digression about Michael Jackson and the 1972 song “Got to Be There”] … I just felt like I didn’t want to go there because, again, today’s ground was so rich with story material.
When I found that clip in 700 hours of archives, where she says at the start of the film [as a teenager] in her broken English, “I want to sing for the rest of my life”—and she says it, and then she laughs—it was cinema. It was a news interview, but in the context of the film, this is nonfiction cinema at its most glorious, because it said it all. It doesn’t matter the details of her manager and her relationship and, “Was she…” Because I really did see this woman who was living out that girl. And she was in front of me and it was so congruent. It was like a lock and key.
CW: She’s really insistent in the film, and especially in the interviews she’s done around the film, that she’s going to return to performing. Do you think it’s realistic?
IT: I think there are so many possible realities ahead for Céline that are very positive. For her, it is about the performance, not about the song—so if she is performing less as a musician and more as an advocate, that might be her next era. But music is coursing through her veins, I think, as much as it always has. … And I really believe she wants to get back for numerous profoundly good reasons.
CW: There’s a point where she talks a little bit about the possibilities of having an alternative kind of repertoire from what she’s done before. Do you think that she’s prepared to make those kinds of transitions? She sounded nervous when she was talking about it.
IT: She said to me, “It’s up to them if they want to come see that.”
CW: Yeah.
IT: But I think I think she’s always going to have this fan base that is going to follow her wherever she takes them.
CW: Absolutely.
IT: I was watching her “I’m Alive” video yesterday because I’m thinking about something, this creative something that’s in my head, and I was like, “I’m going to go watch that video.” And I kept thinking about what it was like to be her [at that time]. There was this long-distance curse, right? Maybe she felt it in her body. Maybe she didn’t. Only she really knows: Were those the early days of her getting an inkling that something was wrong?
Maybe she was just feeling like the rest of us—for a woman in middle age, it might be, “Is this menopause? That’s what they told me would happen.” Or, “Is this the disease I saw my brother suffer with? Is this the Alzheimer’s my father had?” And I thought now to look back at her canon, particularly her performances, it is both profoundly sad and it is also profoundly inspiring. Because it existed while it existed in that pure way, and nothing lasts forever, as we tell our children, as the Bible tells us, as the oldest stories in the world tell us, right?
And it’s really just a reminder to just live in the now. As painful as that is for her, because living in the now is a little less comfortable than just relishing the past. But good on her, she’s doing it bravely.
I think she feels a tremendous responsibility, not only to her fans—we have always known that to be the case—but now she feels a tremendous responsibility to help scientists, doctors, and patients who are grappling with this very rare disease.
“I will tell you,” she said, “I may have found my calling.” And I remember I said to her: “Céline, I think plenty of people feel like you already had a pretty strong calling, and you have been pretty good at your calling.” And she said, “Yes, but this might be the real calling.”
Marvellous. Like many people, I didn’t know what to think about CD when I was younger. I was simply mesmerised by her beautiful delivery of Hymne á l’amour the other week, sur la tour Eiffel so to speak. I just hope Piaf could hear and see it up in sparrow heaven, or wherever she is.
And I’ve known for some time that whenever Barbra pulls out of the Oscars, Celine is there to replace her which is pretty solid performing in my book anyway.
Will now look for Irene Taylor’s other work about her family, thank you so much.