As the years mount and as I at least on paper grow older I’m arguably most uncomfortable with the fact that there are fewer and fewer things that I have known and enjoyed my entire life–especailly active performers whose careers actually predate it–that are still even around at all, let alone culturally relevant enough to warrant a documentary.
That’s why I’m especially anticipating what’s is dropping tonight that on trailer alone looks downright captivating. Buddy Aihn of THEMUSICUNIVVERSE.COM did a decent job of capturing the nuts and bolts with this preview that accompanied said trailer’s drop late last month:
The HBO Original documentary Paul Anka: His Way, directed and produced by Emmy-winning filmmaker John Maggio (HBO’s Mr. Saturday Night), debuts on Monday, December 1st at 9 pm ET/PT…From teen idol to chart-topping songwriter, Anka has spent seven decades as one of the most prolific musicians in the world, and he’s still going. Part road movie and part living biography, the film traces the iconic Canadian’s journey through stardom and constant reinvention in an ever-changing industry.
GOLDMINE’s John Curley provided a few more reasons why my level of anticipation is so high:
Anka’s appearance in New York City’s Times Square to perform at the New Year’s Eve 2023 celebrations is shown at both the start and end of the new HBO documentary Paul Anka: His Way to bookend the telling of the story of his lengthy and very successful career as both a singer and songwriter. Unlike many of his contemporaries who performed but were not writers, Anka, very early on, understood the importance of writing songs not just for himself but for other artists as well.
At the young age of 15, he went to New York City to seek a deal with a record company. He found one at ABC-Paramount Records. Anka’s career soon took off. Clips of Anka promoting “Diana” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957, “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” on Sullivan’s show in 1959 and “Lonely Boy” on American Bandstand in 1959 are shown. Anka discusses his friendship with Buddy Holly and discusses writing “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” for Holly. Anka states that the song was his first major hit for an artist other than himself.
Anka was always looking forward, even as a young artist. In addition to his belief in the importance of being a songwriter as well as a performer, Anka also knew that there was a danger of becoming a flash in the pan if he continued to perform and record for a mostly teenage audience. Moving into the clubs was important to him for that reason, to widen his appeal for a more mature audience. And that was the reason he set his eyes on performing in Las Vegas. Anka speaks with wonder of performing with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr at the Sands in Las Vegas. And he says that the famous Rat Pack trio referred to him as “the kid.”
That “kid” became downright iconic when he penned what many consider Sinatra’s most enduring work, the stirring MY WAY. And as I would see the older and more introspective version of Sinatra as a frequent talk and variety show guest during my childhood, one where my parents considered him and not Bruce Springsteen nor Jon Bon Jovi as the most consequential singer to hail from Jersey, he’d inevitably honor some “request” to belt it out. It became his de facto theme song and forged a lifelong alliance and friendship, one that the NEW YORK POST’s PAGE SIX yenta Nicki Gostin couldn’t resist sharing with her readers yesterday:
Paul Anka is happy to confirm the longstanding rumors about Frank Sinatra’s crown jewels. “Yeah, it was huge,” he tells Page Six in a recent exclusive interview, before laughingly adding, “I don’t know what that does for you!”. “I had trouble with eye contact,” Anka cheekily says before noting that Sinatra had nothing on Milton Berle.
If nothing else, that anecdote may supply a subliminal reason why the song’s concluding crescendo includes the lyrics “the record shows I took the blows”.
Anka also became inexorably associated with Johnny Carson, who would bolt onto the TONIGHT SHOW stage with what was simply titled JOHNNY’S THEME, Tom Jones, whose SHE’S A LADY is still arousing animal instincts in women as his own career endures in the second quarter of the 21st century as well, and Kodak, which used his syrupy TIMES OF YOUR LIFE as its soundtrack for an ad campaign that helped vaunt it to the top of the charts during my high school years where it seemed every aspiring theatre major would use it as their audition piece.
Yes, it’s one thing to look back with memories as that commercial implored, back in a day when the need to capture them with a stand-alone device called a camera and the requirement you take said cartridge to something called Fotomat for prints to have them was as much of a part of most folks’ daily commute as a drive-thru Starbucks’ (which took over quite a few of those now-defunct businesses’ locations) is now. But as Maggio lovingly reminds, Anka is still very much active and as appealing to the grandchildren (great-grandchildren?) of those he first initiated tingly feelings in before even I was born.
As he concedes in what I’m sure will be one of the film’s more tear-jerking moments, he’s sort of aware the end is near, but he’s nowhere near ready to face the final curtain. He makes that clear, he states his case; of that I’m certain. And, may I say, not in a shy way.
Until next time…