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Sid & Judy

Country: USA, Language: English, 100 mins

Minor Interest | Documentary | 2019

Director: Stephen Kijak
Writer: Stephen Kijak; Claire Didier
Producer: John Battsek; Diane Becker

CGiii Comment

Seriously, she didn't stand a chance...being surrounding by vultures...who pecked and picked the very flesh off of her bones.

Gleaned from [some would say a dubious] memoir [by Sid Luft], personal photographs and archival footage...Sid & Judy is both pleasure and pain. Her star shone so brightly...she died, June 22, 1969, aged 47.

Judy Garland needs no introduction, her story is familiar territory for many...yet, Stephen Kijak has rooted and rummaged and assembled...Judy as you've never seen her before, Judy as you have never heard her before...and, Judy...a version of events, you did not know.The impeccable highs, the death-defying lows...the drugs, the alcohol, the marriages, those men...who eagerly snatched the money she earned without offering a helping hand...something she so desparately needed. Judy will always be an icon...when she sang...she sang with her heart on her sleeve. Torch and tragedy have never been so painfully [nor painstakingly] portrayed [nor lived].

This is an astounding homage...punctuated with highlights; live on stage, singing with Ms Streisand. Truly, un-missable.

Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

June 2019 marks 50 years since the death of the extravagantly talented and tragically short-lived entertainer Judy Garland. Her dramatic career-from teenage sensation in The Wizard of Oz to epochal Hollywood star-made her a legend, while her troubled private life and charismatic pathos made her a quintessential gay icon. But it turns out there is a Judy we didn't know: in this revelatory new biography, we are treated not only to spectacular film clips and rare concert footage, but to the memories of the one man who, for a tumultuous decade, was her confidant, producer (of A Star Is Born), manager, and, not incidentally, third husband: Sid Luft.

What emerges through Luft's observations, only recently made public, and through Judy's own words is a poignant portrait of a woman whose vulnerabilities were exploited by an industry she helped build, but whose resilience, entrepreneurship, and unfailing commitment to her creative gifts seem particularly modern. Directed by Stephen Kijak (Never Met Picasso, Frameline20), Sid & Judy reminds us why generations of LGBTQ+ folks have found in Judy Garland their lodestar of perseverance and joy.

— PETER L. STEIN