Alanis Morissette Jagged Film To Premiere On HBO November 19

Photo: s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

The long awaited premiere of the Alanis Morissette film Jagged will have its television premiere on HBO on November 19th 2021. The documentary film that focuses on the rise to stardom by Alanis Morissette at the time of her 1995 release Jagged Little Pill was directed by Alison Klayman. The film looks back at the career of Alanis Morissette when she was a young teenager in Canada when she was being groomed to be a teen pop star in her native home. Alanis Morissette recorded two albums at the time before she became one of the biggest rock stars of the 1990s with the eventual release of Jagged Little Pill. Those two early albums would become collectors items as they were issued in limited release and pulled from the shelves as soon as Alanis Morissette became the huge star in 1995. They sounded nothing like the Alanis Morissette we all discovered on Jagged Little Pill and both Alanis Morissette and her record company wanted no part of them. While the documentary looks back at that time period before Jagged Little Pill , the majority of the film focuses on the Jagged Little Pill experience and all that came along with it.

The documentary film Jagged was directed by Alison Klayman. Before directing the Jagged documentary, the filmmaker was mostly known for her award winning film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. That documentary film released in 2012 won numerous awards and helped make a name for the young documentarian. Jagged would become her sixth film release. The Jagged documentary first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of 2021. The film was produced by HBO who will be releasing it on their channel as part of one their new musical project series called Music Box. Bill Simmons stood as the executive producer on the Jagged documentary.

Alanis Morissette had agree to participate in the film and is featured in multiple interviews talking about her past as well as clips and interviews from the 90s. However upon seeing the first cut of the film, Alanis Morissette has withdrawn her support for the film stating that while she we being interviewed she was “was lulled into a false sense of security,” with the filmmakers. She states that at the time they were making the film she was suffering from a third postpartum depression during lockdown. Alanis Morissette has said in recent interviews that the final version of the film was not the story that she wanted to tell. She admitted that there were many accuracies in the film, but in the end it was someone else’s vision that she did not agree with.

The film focuses deeply on the issues that many females in the music industry as well as all other industries have had to deal with during their careers and in life in general. Issues of gender inequality, exploitation and statutory rape. Alanis Morissette as a young girl at only 15 had to deal with many of those issues and they would continue when she became a big star. She is very much offended when people make comments asking why some women wait so many years before speaking up about past issues of rape and abuse by stating “Women don’t wait. Our culture doesn’t listen.”

In the film Alanis Morissette also speaks of how the industry was so focused on the female appearance having people around her making sure she didn’t eat too much and that she maintain her weight. She recalls how those voices and demands eventually led to her issues with an eating disorder that went on for decades.

When Alanis Morissette released her Jagged Little Pill album in 1995 she was an unknown in the United States. However, fueled by the release of magnificent single “You Oughta Know,” which was groundbreaking in so many ways, her rise to International stardom happened very quickly from that point on. The Jagged Little Pill album became a record that kept on giving. Five more singles were released from the album after “You Oughta Know” including “Hand in My Pocket,” “Ironic,” “You Learn,” “Head over Feet” and “All I Really Want.” The album went on to sell thirty three million records making it one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Jagged Little Pill was also nominated for nine Grammy Awards as it would eventually wind up winning five Grammys. Is was an album that would inspire countless female artists not just from a musical perspective but from a female empowerment perspective. It stands as one of the most influential rock and roll records ever released.

The success of Jagged Little Pill was so phenomenal that Alanis Morissette really never had a chance to follow it up with anything that would come close to its commercial success. Still, since the release of the record she has become one of the most loved rock stars of all time. Throughout the course of her career so far, Alanis Morissette has released nine studio albums and thirty seven singles. The Jagged Little Pill album has been re-issued multiple times in different versions and was eventually turned into a Broadways Play that earned 15 Tony Award nominations. That is a successful career.