When he died on Christmas Day last year at age 53, George Michael was putting the finishing touches on a documentary he was making about his career.
Kate Moss tells us this fact at the beginning of “George Michael: Freedom,” airing on Showtime on Saturday. While the pop singer, as you would expect, doesn’t dig too deeply into the more scandalous aspects of his life, the documentary isn’t simply self-serving, either.
As the narrator, as well as co-director along with collaborator David Austin, Michael demonstrates a fair amount of self-awareness and humor about his career. Even if “Freedom” could have used more depth and voices from other parts of his life, it nicely reminds us of the immense talent Michael had.
“Powered by this desperate ambition to be loved, to be famous,” he and Andrew Ridgley became teen stars – “a joyride for two 18-year-olds” – as the pop duo Wham!, with hits like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”
“There was a humor about Wham! that no one gave us credit for,” Michael asserts in the doc, adding he already knew how “to make pop hits that could jump out of the radio.”
Strangely, we don’t hear from Ridgley, and the film quickly moves on to Michael’s solo career. Michael wanted to be on the same level as the like of Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna.
“If I was looking for happiness, this was the wrong road,” Michael says in retrospect, “but I don’t think there was any way I could control my ego enough to stop me from exploring the possibility of being the biggest artist in the world.”
In 1987, the album “Faith” propelled him to the top, and by 1988 he was the biggest pop star in the world, but he wasn’t happy.
“I lived in (expletive) sunglasses. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. I was bizarre,” the pop star describes the time.
For whatever reasons, Michaels had decided to only show himself in the documentary through archival footage and voiceovers. (Some of the narration had to be taken from a previous interview with a journalist.)
Among those who discuss Michael in the doc are Ricky Gervais, James Corden, Mary J Blige, Nile Rodgers, Tracey Emin, producer Mark Ronson, Sir Elton John, and Stevie Wonder.
A lot of the documentary focuses on the 1990s when Michael’s life hits some rough patches. When the pop star won R&B awards over black artists, it set off a backlash, prompting a musical response from Public Enemy. “You mean George Michael is white?” Wonder deadpans.
The pop singer’s response was the album “Listen Without Prejudice,” which Michael mostly refused to promote in order to step back from fame.
A long segment goes into the making of the video for “Freedom ’90.” Directed by David Fincher, it used supermodels, including Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, to lip-sync the song while the singer was nowhere to be found.
Michael wouldn’t make another album for six years because of a dispute with his record company, but his struggle with his sexual identity took the fore. He fell in love with a Brazilian man, who soon was diagnosed with AIDS and died. The singer would eventually acknowledge he was gay,
When the pop star returned with “Older” in 1996, he still racked up hits, but the documentary chronicles the last 20 years of his life in mostly a blur. Even in what is covered, there could have more perspective.
We do get a glimpse of Michael’s willingness to poke fun at his image. He appeared as himself on Gervais’ “Extras,” alluding to his arrests in a Beverly Hills restroom for engaging in a lewd act. In 2011, he did the first Carpool Karaoke with James Corden in a comedy sketch for Comic Relief Special, singing Wham! hits “I’m Your Man” and “Freedom.”
At the end of “Freedom,” Michael says he wants to be remembered as a great songwriter “and someone who had some kind of integrity.” He is.
George Michael: Freedom
What: Documentary covers the career of the late pop star.
When: 9 p.m. Saturday with subsequent viewings and also on-demand.
Where: Showtime.
