Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023)

This documentary about the self-proclaimed king of rock ‘n’ roll (“shut up!”) makes a solid case that Little Richard Penniman is the one and only, accept no substitutes, and at the same time keeps it well shy of adoring hagiography, as much as he deserves adoring. Director and coproducer Lisa Cortes (The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion; All In: The Fight for Democracy) keeps the focus on Little Richard’s complex status as a Black, queer icon. She ropes in a handful of celebrities to provide sound bites (Nona Hendryx, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Nile Rodgers, John Waters who admits his pencil mustache is an homage), rounds up another handful of academics to offer insight and context, and lets the music play. The Todd Haynes movie Velvet Goldmine gave Little Richard his just deserts, but I Am Everything benefits from actually having a rich well of archival footage of Little Richard himself, often in superior form. It charts his career from his earliest work trying to break in in the early ‘50s until his death in 2020. He first rejected show business for the church in 1957 because of a vision. By 1962 he was running out of money and turned to rock ‘n’ roll again. From the footage, the ‘60s was the time to see him. Later he would return to the church again, and even marry in the ‘70s, before running low on money again. The pattern repeated for much of his life. The Specialty label recorded all his early hits but kept the royalties for themselves after 1957, because he broke their contract in his spasm of religion. The performance footage from all eras is often wonderful. He refers to himself as the king of rock ‘n’ roll a few times—I suspect Elvis getting the honors more widely may have vexed Little Richard nearly as much as it did Jerry Lee Lewis. In Little Richard’s case, however (and Chuck Berry’s, while I’m at it, and Jerry Lee Lewis too why not?), the claim has at least as much weight as the one for Elvis. Give Elvis his due, but one thing I Am Everything slyly does is show clearly how, on the ‘50s covers of Little Richard’s hits such as “Tutti Frutti,” Elvis is a lot closer to Pat Boone than Little Richard. Little Richard was the one and only, he was the original, and he felt rejected most of his life for being what he was, rejected most tragically perhaps by himself, who never really strayed long from piety (though he strayed very far). A moment here where he finally feels acknowledged and honored at a 1997 ceremony gives a rare moment of evident peace for him, when he was 64. All the rest was God. Worth seeing.