Director R.J. Cutler and the Making of ‘Elton John: Never Too Late&…

Director R.J. Cutler draws a finely detailed and moving portrait of Elton John as he follows the trajectory of the legendary singer's career in the documentary Elton John: Never Too Late, which premieres Friday on Disney+.

Cutler, who co-directs along with John's husband David Furnish, focuses on a few emotionally trenchant moments to bring the full-circle journey back home: John's explosive early years, his plaintive public admission of his sexuality, and the lead-up to his final North American concert at Dodger Stadium.

Those loose associations, powered by newly uncovered concert and audio footage, demonstrate Cutler's ability to capture the turbulent psyche of a person being ground down by his success, then lifted to hard-earned contentment through the journey itself.

Cutler spoke to us in detail about his life-long interest in Elton John and documenting the transformative effects of mortality, family, and authenticity.

You've taken on such a broad array of topics in your career. How did this project transpire? Why Elton John and why now?

A few years ago right before the COVID shutdown, I was invited to have lunch with David Furnish, who told me that he was considering making a film about the final months of Elton's touring career, as Elton had decided to stop touring so that he might spend more time with his family and specifically with his young sons.

David wondered what I thought of that idea, and I told him that I had long thought there was a wonderful possible movie to be made about the first five years of Elton's career. During that time he released thirteen albums, seven of which went to number one, and had an extraordinary, meteoric rise that redefined what pop music was, and yet he was personally deeply unhappy, all of which led him to make an incredibly important decision in his life, which was to come out to Rolling Stone magazine.

David and I started talking about the resonance between those first five years of Elton's career and the final months of his career, and about the fact that those two time periods might form an incredibly compelling narrative and window through which to consider Elton's career and life, and to explore the theme of consequential decisions that we make which define our lives.

Elton John in 1974

In what ways did co-directing with Furnish, Elton's husband, affect the film's emotionality?

David was a great emotional barometer for the film and he and I worked in such a way that he was able to maintain a little bit of distance and perspective. I would take the lead in editing sections of the film and then show them to him so he could respond, and his responses were extremely wise, but also very emotionally instinctual. So it was David, for instance, who first said he felt that the early work we were doing in the edit was infused with a kind of desperate longing. Not only from Elton during the early years of his career, but also contemporary Elton, on the road, longing to be with his family.

Also when I first decided to play around with the Alexis Petridis [ghostwriter of John's autobiography Me] interview material as a narrative spine for the film, I played some material for David, and he called me very moved to say that he had heard this voice from Elton, but he didn't think anybody else ever had, and he felt that we were getting to a core emotional truth of who Elton was. This is principally an emotional film. It tells a compelling narrative, of course, but it functions really as an arrow that goes straight to your heart, and that is, in large part, I think because of the way that David and I directed together and where our directorial vision found harmony.

R.J. Cutler, Elton John, and David Furnish

Excerpts of the original audio of Elton's 1975 Rolling Stone interview serve as narration. It's like time traveling. How did finding that footage alter your vision of the movie?

The Rolling Stone interview with journalist Cliff Jahr is really the emotional peak of the film, certainly, in terms of the part of the film that takes place in the 1970's. Looking at the film in 2024, it's hard for us to even fathom how courageous it was for Elton to come out to Rolling Stone in 1975. This was a time in which coming out in the press could end your career, and doing so threatened certainly to end Elton's career. For Elton, who was at that time the single biggest figure in popular music, to feel the need to be honest about who he was and to act on it was, as I say, an act of extraordinary courage.

And it was not only life-changing for Elton, it was, of course, life-changing for so many others who, because of Elton's courage, were able to be honest about their own lives. So when we discovered that Cliff Jahr had bequeathed his life's work as a journalist to the New York Public Library, and we dug into the New York Public Library archives and found the audio of this interview, and then also found still photographs that had never been seen before, we knew that we had identified something exceptional, and that that we could recreate that interview in a way that would move audiences as much as it moved us.

There are so many parallels and juxtapositions in the film. How quickly did you identify the documentary's themes of mortality, family, and authenticity?

One of the very first times Elton and I spoke, we spoke about mortality in the context of the fact that we're both older dads. And that was also part of the conversation that David and I had when we first met. For all three of us, family is everything, and David and I realized, really almost immediately, that mortality in the context of family was going to be a central theme of the movie.

Elton's FaceTime with his sons is such a personal look and a strong indicator of his decision to stop touring. Did anyone have any reservations about showing his family life?

You'll have to ask David and Elton about what their reservations were, but that FaceTime scene is really a golden moment in the film because it is truly authentic. You're not only able to see this beautiful relationship that they have, but you're also able to understand the price that Elton is paying for being on the road, and why he's so motivated to change his life. It really is an anchor moment in the film.

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