If you want to make a documentary about someone famous, it helps to have a person on the inside – a spouse, say, who knows exactly where a treasure trove of archive is just waiting to be explored.
Such is the case with the film Elton John: Never Too Late, the film about the British superstar singer-songwriter, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is co-directed by David Furnish – Elton John’s husband – and R.J. Cutler, the renowned documentarian.
“We have a very extensive archive,” Furnish said as he and Cutler stopped by Deadline’s Toronto Studio. “We are always building and putting things away, but we’re never pulling it out. We’re always saving something for a rainy day. Well, this was the rainy day where we had the opportunity to go into the archive and uncover so many things that have never been seen before. Most of the footage from the ’70s Elton hasn’t seen before at all… It was really fun to finally be able to unearth all these gems and have a really good comb through everything that we’ve been accumulating for such a long time.”
The idea for the film, which will premiere theatrically in November and then debut on Disney+ in December, sprang from Elton’s farewell U.S. tour.
Directors David Furnish (L) and R.J. Cutler of ‘Elton John: Never Too Late’ at the Deadline Studio held at the Bisha Hotel during the Toronto International Film Festival 2024 on September 6, 2024.
Michael Buckner for Deadline
“Three or four years ago, I was invited to meet with David, and we started talking about a movie that he had imagined that involved Elton’s final concerts in the United States,” Cutler explained. “We talked about this idea that I had long had, that there was great storytelling to take place around the first five years of Elton’s career. And we immediately, I think, both gravitated towards this exciting idea that we might tell the story of these early years, which involved some monumental achievements, but also some monumental decisions. And then the big decision that he had made to finish touring [in 2022] and to spend more time with his family and what brought that about as well.”
In Cutler’s varied career, he has directed films on a wide range of subjects, including several on American icons including John Belushi and singer Billie Eilish. His new film on lifestyle tycoon Martha Stewart just premiered at Telluride. We asked him about the secret to making a successful “celebrity” documentary.
“The key is to understand that everyone’s a human being and everybody comes from somewhere. Everybody has a childhood. Everybody has their hopes and dreams and the journey that they go on, and we’re looking for themes,” he said. “I don’t think of these films — for all their differences — I don’t think of them as very different from narrative films that deal with well-known people; Oppenheimer or Maestro are also films about well-known people that tell thematic stories, dramatic stories, stories that are character driven and emotional and cinematic. And we approached this film exactly the same and found particularly in these two time periods of Elton’s life, incredibly rich narrative and emotion and conflict and obstacles to overcome and lessons to be learned. And that’s how we built this film and tell the story of Never Too Late.”
Elton – Sir Elton; he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1998 – is raising two children with Furnish. At age 77, he has found a contentment that long eluded him.
“We live in a society now that reveres fame and success more than ever. And the old adage, ‘All that glitters is not gold,’ is actually really genuinely true,” Furnish observed. “Unless you have real love, real contentment and a sense of belonging in your personal life, all the other stuff is just stuff. It just doesn’t really matter.”
Watch the full interview above.
Deadline Studio at TIFF is sponsored by Final Draft.