There aren’t many contemporary songwriters who don’t give performances interesting enough to sustain a 90-minute documentary, but not many are Diane Warren, one of the great figures of modern Hollywood. Despite having her own singing catalog estimated to be worth as much as half a billion dollars, and despite having 15 Academy Award nominations and a Lifetime Achievement Award, Warren still maintains the aura and attitude of a street hustler, as if everything new is a new tune that… Promoting it to studios or stars is what will finally give her a break. You almost have to come up with a new multi-hyphenated descriptor to sum it up… something like that Polar hedgehog.
The new documentary “Diane Warren: Relentless” goes a long way toward summarizing the broad outlines of her story first, for those encountering it late, and satisfying the additional curiosity that may still be held by those who already know Horatio Warren. A worthy rise of Algeria and the plateau of 35 years. The subtitle comes off as something of an understatement (it’s a polite abbreviation for the “relentless as fuck” bracelet that Warren proudly flaunts). And the gratitude that someone like Cher has for reviving her career with “If I Could Turn Back Time” doesn’t mean she won’t stop interviewing Warren on camera when she feels the songwriter is getting too pushy. .
There are plenty of possible psychological disorders that director Bess Kargman throws in as possible reasons for her subject being the way she is, leaving the audience to sort out exactly what kind of neurosis might be most responsible for Warren’s trophy collection and riches. The one thing that unites some of Warren’s earliest photos on display, dating back to when she was a middle-class teenager in Van Nuys, and photos of her as the queen of her world today: She constantly gives the camera the finger. But this sense of challenge goes hand in hand with a feeling of neediness in Warren’s driven world.
Her family of origin goes some way to explaining this: Her father was supportive, while her mother was extremely uncaring, to the point that Warren devoted a large portion of her big, rousing Oscar speech to proving her mother wrong — something that feels like an everyday devotion. There are other factors at play: As reported here, Warren revealed that she was sexually molested as a child when it came time to talk about the rape-themed documentary she brought Lady Gaga on as a collaborator, “Til It Happens to You.” There is also loose talk, among several of the friends interviewed, that Warren is “on the spectrum” or has Asperger’s Syndrome, which may – may – Explain why she’s the most talkative loner you could ever hope to meet, both on screen and off.
Warren has never been shy about admitting her lack of a love life. Among the headlines it features is one that suggests the queen of romance says she’s never been in love — the kind of classic satirical hook that makes you wonder why a documentary wasn’t attempted much sooner. (Or maybe it was, and she was as good at turning down filmmakers’ requests as she was at turning down romance.) Warren acknowledges there has been speculation that she’s gay, but insists it’s just a brand of not particularly interested; The film features her reuniting with fellow producer Guy Roche, with whom she reportedly had her last romance over 30 years ago. No less than a friend of Clive Davis turns up to testify that “as far as I know she was never in love.” Paul Stanley of KISS “plays a psychiatrist,” he says, to speculate that “it’s easier to write about heartbreak when you don’t have to live it, but you’re afraid of it.” Well… maybe.
For Warren’s own part, she says she’s playing a character when she writes classic love songs — a character, like the rest of beloved humanity — and offers this commentary on her own lyrics from Aerosmith’s Oscar-nominated song “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing”: “I don’t want to miss a thing.” That anyone accepts my eyes. I don’t want anyone staying up all night to hear me breathing. …Why the hell are you kissing my eyes?” (If only she had the gumption to turn that funny response into an actual answer song: “I’m good at missing out on all that.”)
Warren has one great love, besides her beloved cats: Oscar — or as she eloquently put it when she received the Lifetime Achievement Award, “Mom, I’ve finally found a man.” Of course, her 15 nominations in the Best Original Song category and no win thus far has made the Susan Lucci angle as big a magnet for press coverage as the Never Fall in Love angle. How seriously does she take it? Very much so, says Clive Davis, who called her miserable on the night Lady Gaga lost her set to Billie Eilish, though he supposes she should have been celebrating a livestream performance that was supposed to inspire millions of assault survivors. But, to play “shrink”, as many of her friends happily do in this film, perhaps the Academy is like her parents: the music branch is always happy to hand out praise, like her father, in the form of a nomination, but my mother’s desire to become a secretary instead prevails. Finally in the public vote.
The psychological complexity doesn’t end there: There’s probably some kind of Freudian explanation for why Warren has long been rich enough to own her own gleaming Hollywood office tower, and retreats daily to work on songs in a writing room so unkempt that even the tunesmith at the bottom of The latter may be afraid to enter. But somehow, it all somehow fits together, in Kargman’s reasonably comprehensive portrait of a powerful entertainment industry figure who still seems closer to her old teenage runaway/juvenile delinquent self than anyone’s idea of a businesswoman or socialite.
Although the topic of internal motivation is well covered, those who admire Warren’s music industry acumen might wish the running time was a little more filler, to cover some side angles that aren’t covered as often. For example, has Warren’s career been hindered or enhanced by the fact that she is pretty much the last outsider in the business who will only write alone, excluding all the contemporary artists clamoring to bring in a team and co-write? And does her recent focus on film work — with nominations the past seven years in a row (potentially hitting eight soon) — have anything to do with how little room there is for ballads like “Un-Break My Heart” in the world of up-tempo music. Pop now, true love of the movie world, or Oscar excitement?
But even with some unexplored territory when it comes to the business of music, and the actual mechanics of writing, “Diane Warren: Relentless” succeeds in presenting its subject as a complex, vulnerable, arrogant, and almost counterintuitively charming character who just wants to hang out with a lot. Even if that’s the case, like Cher, I’ve earned the right to cut off contact from time to time.