Nate At The Movies

After a weekend of new releases, I got back on the Oscars Death Race grind, and I’m actually pretty close to the end already. Before tonight, I only had five feature films left, and now that number is just four! I wasn’t exactly looking forward to Diane Warren: Relentless, but of the three films that I could watch from home, it was the shortest, so that was the move.

I’ve only recently been introduced to Diane Warren and her journey for her first Oscar, and this documentary was eye-opening to just how many hits she’s written over the years. There were a ton that I loved that got mentioned, from “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, and for most of these, I had no idea she wrote them. That’s the same experience that I had during Music by John Williams, which is always fun.

However, from its opening moments, I couldn’t help but feel that this documentary was obnoxiously honorific of Warren. Even Warren herself teetered between “I’m not a good songwriter, I don’t belong with the greats” and “no one writes like me, I’m a hit maker”. She came off as a bit of an asshole, which I frankly imagine a lot of successful musicians are, so even as they rotated through her hits, I had a pretty sour expression on my face. The second half of the documentary was somehow more insufferable as they followed Warren chasing that elusive Oscar. I get it—we all want to win and be recognized—but releasing a documentary that essentially functioned as a 90-minute advertisement for your next Oscar-nominated song? Not a great look, especially in a year where Warren is likely to get toasted by “Golden”.

While my opinion of Diane Warren’s catalog strengthened during this documentary, my opinion of her as a person and of those that seem to only be capable of worshipping her worsened as the film went on. I enjoy how music films can highlight oft-underappreciated songwriters, but this documentary’s turn to desperate campaign in its second half was rough. Couple that with Warren being annoying to follow as she threw out more “fucks” than The Wolf of Wall Street, and you get a documentary that 1) I wouldn’t have watched if not for the Oscars, and 2) I will forget the second the Oscars have ended. The nominated song was fine, but at this point, these nominations feel silly. Either give her the trophy or stop nominating her.