Director: Bess Kargman
Stars: Diane Warren, Cher, Common
Synopsis: The untold story of a legendary songwriter. Featuring Cher, Common, Jennifer Hudson, Gloria Estefan, Kesha, LeAnn Rimes, and more.
In the beginning of the film, Cher says about her ‘If I Can Turn Back Time’ songwriter, “Diane is nuts.” Just about everyone in the documentary says the word that is part of the movie title: relentless. Diane Warren herself has it on a bracelet she wears, “Relentless as fuck.” At the end of the documentary, it says that Warren has no plans to retire. Aged sixty-nine, why would she? For the last forty-years, hit after hit after hit has been written by one single person and movie after movie after movie has a song written by this same one person who keeps getting nominated for Oscars – and not winning. But director Bess Kargman goes through her life in a breeze, delving into the ins and outs of her upbringing, career decisions, and the enigma of how a Van Nuys girl became songwriting royalty.
Warren, who has Asberger’s and says her neurodivergency has played a massive role in her creativity, explains the massive drive that pushes her. Her childhood wasn’t totally happy and Diane developed a hot streak of rebellion being a teen in the 1970s and ran away multiple times to where her own parents put her in juvenile detention after catching her with marijuana. It also didn’t help that when she sought out a music career, Diane’s own mother continued to doubt her, trying to steer her into being a secretary, like she was. Only Diane’s father recognized the drive and bought her first guitar; she would give tribute to him in ‘Because You Loved Me’ by Celine Dion for the movie, Up Close and Personal.
With every bump along the road and people challenging her and doubting her, Diane’s thought is, “Fuck you. I’ll prove you wrong.” It is this drive that the documentary puts out her continuous need for validation in her songwork, going back to when she sued out of her original contract because of how she was being financially used, leading her to create her own publishing company. It is a catalog worth over half a billion dollars today, but while every artist is cashing in, Diane has no interest in selling hers. Diane says music has saved her life and it’s not about fame and fortune. She also was never interested in marriage; there’s a coaster that says, ‘Relationship Status,’ and of the options, it is checkmarked by a word I won’t write here, but it rhymes with ‘hunt.’
The most obvious thing in the documentary is that Diane is both A) a demanding figure who has alienated some people from performing with her again, and B) not shy to talk about herself, yet finds it awkward to talk about herself and her creative process. Simply put, there is no process, and everything in one room is a massive clutter. She’s not vain about herself. There are also the more serious feelings underlying her, such as revealing of being assaulted as a child in making ‘Til It Happens To You’ with Lady Gaga and the pain of losing that Oscar especially compared to other nominated songs. Kiss lead Paul Stanley only has one clip in the documentary, but as he noted in talking about Diane, “it’s easier to write about heartache when you don’t have to live it…but you do fear it.”Diane Warren: Relentless isn’t a wowing documentary, but pulls the curtain back to show off a woman who has played to every massive artist and producer and is widely beloved. It remains staggering that one person just showered us with glorious songs – ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing,’ ‘Unbreak My Heart,’ and ‘How Do I Live’ to name how many hit singles written by her? Bess Kargman brings out Warren as candid as she can be comfortably from her personal life to her love of animals, energetically showing us that someone who will never stop working and never stop succeeding.
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