©Courtesy of XTR

Q : With all those Diane’s hit songs(such as Ace of Base “Don’t Turn Around, Celine Dion “Because You loved Me, Toni Braxton, “Un-Break My Heart”）,  which was the song that made you hook into the her music, get inspiration and finally ended up making this film?

Bess Kargman: I heard of Diane, I knew her music because she’s written so many hits first, and when setting out to make a film, you really need to suss out, is she going to be a great character that can sustain a 90 minute film? And her music alone warrants a feature length film, but people are more interested in characters and personal stories. Those are so much more interesting just behind the music. 

We used her music as a structural backdrop to really give us insight into her life. We created an arc which shaped around unplanned life events, which were so surprising. And the personal moments that we got to capture on camera really rounded out the audience’s understanding of who she is. Not only as a prolific songwriter, but as a human being. 

Q : Diane said in a film that writing songs is like having a sex, very intimate. She often plays a song over and over again. That’s how she writes. But I’m curious to know, what are the other elements that surprise you about her song writing style? Her style is very original, because she didn’t learn from any musical lesson. So talk about the approach that surprised you about her writing a song by filming her. 

Bess Kargman: So because she’s self taught, she told us that she doesn’t know what the rules are, so it’s fun to break them. There’s no real important structure to her songwriting process because she was never conventionally trained. The beauty behind that is she can create a song or a riff just within a song from her hand slipping on the piano. 

So there’s a whole unique way to approach her work. She never rewrites her music. What she does, she might spend an entire day on 7 words, one phrase in a song and obsess over it until it feels right. And then she totally moves on. She’s not like an editor who day after day goes back and tweaks.

So it only takes her about a week to write a song. She has boxes of songs in her brain. It’s pretty incredible how many songs she has that are totally finished waiting for voices. And she really works hard to figure out who the right voice is for each of her songs. She’s notoriously private about her creative process, like she even challenged me like, Oh, you’re not going to ask me about that, are you?

And I wanted to have her say that on camera too, so the audience could feel what I was feeling which is her bumping up against me that’s the most fascinating thing with any artist you want to see their process, so then you have this prolific songwriter saying that’s boring, I’m not going to show that.

It wasn’t that we were showing it without her permission, but I love the idea of her saying no. And then you can just show it, It’s the show. Don’t tell me about it. So, because we filmed for nearly three years, we got enough of her process to show people how she creates her music. 

Q : Could you talk about her relationship with her parents? Mother was a very tough cookie. She wanted to be like a teacher or a secretary, but she was very supportive after the juvenile incident, and I believe that her song, “Because You Loved Me” was dedicated to father, right? So talk about her relationship with parents. 

Bess Kargman: Diane’s pretty comfortable talking about almost flippantly. She talks about how unsupportive her mother was. I think she’s sort of come to terms with it, though I know as a teenager, I’m sure it was very painful for her. To have the person who gave birth to you be unsupportive is scarring, but I did have conversations with her where she said, maybe that made her even more ambitious, because it was proving mother wrong. She even talks about it in the film, so it’s sort of that lack of support, which gave her a fire to churn out this unique music. Her father was more supportive and there was a big turning point in her life when she turned her into juvenile hall, she got arrested for pot. 

Her dad was crying saying, we didn’t want to do this, but we don’t know what else to do and after that it became very clear that all he really needed to do was support her music endeavors for her to take a different approach to her life, to clean up her act, to have a focus and not become the total slacker that she was really becoming, because she was not banned from doing music in the house,  but it was frowned upon and once her dad started to support her in her music endeavors and her middle teens, everything changed.

But she always had a complex relationship with both parents. I mean kind of like all of us, even with supportive parents, no one has a perfect childhood. No one has a perfect life. So We all are shaped and informed by our youths and part of who we become.

©Courtesy of XTR

Q : That’s so true. In the film, all the musicians talk about their first meeting with Diane. It’s quite an engaging experience to a certain extent. And I’m curious to know, how Diane is able to pitch her songs to musicians? Sometimes the musician initially offers her to write their songs or she usually writes a song and she had an idea of a certain musician in her mind that might be probably ideal for this song and just directly contacting those musicians? How does she work with musicians?

Bess Kargman: Diane has this really interesting process where after she’s completed a song, she will never pitch that song to anyone. Even if they’re ultra famous, she will only pitch a song to an artist. After hearing that the artist in her head is perfect for the song. There was a song she wrote and I was asking her, she was pitching some songs to Gwen Stefani, and I was asking her what about that song? And she said, that’s not her song, I would never pitch her that song. I pitch songs to people who then say to me, I have to have that song. 

This is my song. And she has this ability to know what songs are meant for what voices and what songs to hold back and offer a different person. She can hear it kind of in her head. Even if she never wanted to be a performer herself, she can hear the artist’s voice being right for a song. And then she’ll meet with artists and play the song on her guitar with her mediocre voice, which that’s how she describes it as well and it’s accurate, actually, her voice is getting better.

I will say her voice is actually getting quite nice if you can believe it after all these years, but she is really insistent upon playing the song for an artist and that’s how she gives the artist. 

Q : I see. Is that the case for the Armageddon movie theme song, “I don’t want to miss a Thing” by Aerosmith as well?  

Bess Kargman: You mean you’re curious about the process of how Steven Tyler got there? 

Q : Yeah. Steven Tyler is the father of Liv Tyler who’s in the film, Armageddon. But I’m curious to know how that pan out. 

Bess Kargman: So, when Diane wrote that song, originally she thought maybe a female voice would take that song. And then, The redhead I had a good interview with, I don’t know why I forgot. Anyway I can tell the story without saying her name. Basically with ‘Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’, what was interesting is Diane had originally thought it would be right for a woman’s voice. And then the minute she heard Steven Tyler sing that song, she had this epiphany like, Oh my God, this voice was meant to have this song.

And she even was, like, grateful that it didn’t go to a woman’s voice because she said now, she thinks it would be annoying to hear a woman say these things to a man. And it’s so much more romantic to hear a man say these things to a woman. Which is fascinating. And then she said that Steven Tyler took the song and made it his own, made it better than she could hear in her head. She gets very excited when that happens. 

Q : Yeah, it turned out to be a worldwide success. So that really turned out to be great. I’m also curious to know that she also wrote a song for Milli Vanilli for ‘Blame it on the Rain.” Was she aware that they’re lip- syncing back then? Did she even talk about that? 

Bess Kargman: With “Blame it on the Rain”, she wrote that song, this is her process. She writes a song and when she feels done, it’s done. She gives it to someone that she doesn’t micromanage, she hands it over. Which is actually really impressive, because I could see maybe some songwriters maybe being territorial, or demanding that they be in the recording session, or giving notes to the singer. That’s not really Diane. She gives it, and then it goes into the world. So with that song, “Blame it on the Song”, she gave it to Clive Davis. And he then passed it on. And it became Milli Vanilli. So Diane really wasn’t at all involved in the long tail of that song after she passed it on. 

Q : Do you think that she set an example on how to deal with record labels? Particularly when she dealt with music producer Jack White when she signed with his label with a basic contract that included a monthly payment, and five year exclusivity, but it’s only a two hundred dollar a week payment, which is like a really ridiculous price to actually sign with any of the artists. So, do you think she set the example for other songwriters to pave the way? Do you think those days and today are different because streaming the music online has changed, so talk about how perception has changed while she was dealing with this contract issue and now. 

Bess Kargman: That’s a great question. I would love to reach out to a music historian to understand the history of artists. Retaining their own music publishing rights because back in the 80s, it was uncommon for songwriters to retain their publishing rights. And I want to say, and I need to get this right…maybe you can research, I believe Diane was probably one of the first songwriters in the history of music to retain all of her music publishing rights at such a young age.

It was a lucky thing, she says that she and Jack White got into a lawsuit because without that she would have signed with another publishing company. She never would have formed her own publishing company. As a result, her music catalog is worth nearly three quarters of a billion dollars.

Owning that money, if she had been able to sign with another publishing house, but she couldn’t because she was entangled in this lawsuit with Jack White, so interestingly enough, she is grateful now to Jack White and there’s no strain in their relationship and he was happy to be in this film because they mended all. How should I say it? There’s no bad blood between them now, she realizes what a blessing in disguise their lawsuit was. Everyone truly does have an exploitation story. 

Starting out in the world of arts and entertainment. So, her story unfortunately about being exploited is not a unique one, but the outcome of that is so fortuitous that I’m just happy for her because she loves to control, considers her songs her babies. So to be able to control her babies. Publishing rights, it’s very meaningful to her and it never would have happened without that lawsuit. 

Q : Has your perception changed over the course of three years of making this film and talking to Diane? And what are the elements that you learn from Diane that you might probably apply into your life?

Bess Kargman: So, I never knew on the spectrum, Diane was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, actually very few people knew that only her closest friends. She doesn’t feel that it defines her. So It’s not something she really needs or cares to talk about publicly, and so I’m actually relieved to have learned that only because then now I have a better understanding of why she would do certain things and have certain habits that other people misinterpret.

So an example is she has this real true compulsion, this obsession to songwriting, so sometimes she would leave shoots early. And at first I was like, this is incredibly rude. And then after getting to know her, she’ll tell us you had three hours with her and then she’ll just sneak out and give us two hours.

After getting to know her and understand her, she’s not rude. She’s not disrespectful to the process of making a movie. She’s not trying to be difficult. This is part of her DNA, the way her brain is wired to actually become anxious when she’s around too many people and having too much stimulation and being around crowds.

She doesn’t like to be in a quiet environment. She likes to create. So that was something that I learned along the way and it surprised me and then now it doesn’t drive me insane when Diane disappears to write songs, she’s not being rude, it’s just who she is when she’s pushy about her music. She’s not trying to be difficult or rude. It’s just the way her brain is wired to operate like that. 

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