Alanis Morissette Says She Won’t Support The “Salacious” New HBO Documentary About “Jagged Little Pill”
There’s a new HBO documentary about Alanis Morissette’s iconic 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, AKA Fuck You, Uncle Joey! The Alison Klayman-directed feature Jagged debuted last night at the Toronto International Film Festival, and while Alanis agreed to be interviewed for the movie, she didn’t attend the premiere. On Monday, the director told Deadline that it would be great if Alanis could be there, “but I’m so grateful for all the time that she did put into making this film.”
Now Alanis is elaborating to Deadline on why she didn’t show up. She claims the filmmakers had their own “salacious agenda,” they interviewed her during a “very vulnerable time” (she was dealing with her third round of postpartum depression during the pandemic), and the doc includes “implications and facts that are simply not true.” Alanis says she won’t be supporting the film. Ooo, she’s pissed. Maybe so pissed that she’ll write an angsty album about the experience? Alanistans can only hope!
Here’s Alanis’ full statement, via Deadline:
“i agreed to participate in a piece about the celebration of jagged little pill’s 25th anniversary, and was interviewed during a very vulnerable time (while in the midst of my third postpartum depression during lockdown). i was lulled into a false sense of security and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film. this is when i knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged.
this was not the story i agreed to tell. i sit here now experiencing the full impact of having trusted someone who did not warrant being trusted. i have chosen not to attend any event around this movie for two reasons: one is that i am on tour right now. the other is that, not unlike many “stories” and unauthorized biographies out there over the years, this one includes implications and facts that are simply not true. while there is beauty and some elements of accuracy in this/my story to be sure— i ultimately won’t be supporting someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell.”
HBO has yet to respond to the statement. On Monday, Alison the director said:
“It’s a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself,” Klayman told Deadline. “I think she’s incredibly brave and the reaction when she saw it was that it was a really–she could feel all the work, all the nuance that went into it. And again, she gave so much of her time and so much of her effort into making this and I think that the movie really speaks for itself.”
In the doc Alanis talks about being the victim of statutory rape by five men when she was just 15:
“Something about me being 15, that’s when I really started to be hit on,” she says in Jagged. “[When I was] 12, they were a little scared, 13 they were a little scared but they’d still—14, less scary, 15 all bets were off.”
“It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part,” she tells Klayman in the documentary. “I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded like ‘Hey, you were 15, you’re not consenting at 15.’ Now I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re all pedophiles. It’s all statutory rape.”
I remember reading about one of Alanis’ “relationships” with an older man who saw the then-teenager as his “protegé”. She wrote the song Hands Clean about this particular perv, and the lyrics are pretty fucked up (“I have honored your request for silence”):
Alanis is currently on the road for The Jagged Little Pill 25th Anniversary Tour. Damn. 25 years. I was just a kid when I became obsessed with the album. One of the many eight-year-olds locked in their bedrooms, scream-singing, “Would she go down on you IN a theaterrrr?!” Ohhh, sweet summer child. Totally clueless.
Pic: Wenn.com