By John Robert

AT THE CORE IT’S ABOUT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE! YES!

Directed by Amy Poehler
Produced by Michael Rosenberg, Justin Wilkes, Jeanne Elfant Festa, Nigel Sinclair, Amy Poehler, and Mark Monroe
Running time: 1 hour and 42 minutes
Premiere: March 4, 2022
Amazon Prime

Synopsis:

From director Amy Poehler, LUCY AND DESI explores the unlikely partnership and enduring legacy of one of the most prolific power couples in entertainment history. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz risked everything to be together. Their love for each other led to the most influential show in the history of television, I Love Lucy. Desi – A refugee from Cuba after his family lost everything during the Cuban revolution of 1933, became a bandleader, an actor, and eventually a brilliant producer and technical pioneer. Lucille came from nothing and, with an unrivaled work ethic, built a career as a model, chorus girl, and eventually as an actor in the studio system. She found her calling in comedy, first in radio. When Lucille was finally granted the opportunity to have her own television show, she insisted that her real-life spouse, Desi, be cast as her husband. Defying the odds, they re-invented the medium, on the screen and behind the cameras. The foundation of I Love Lucy was the constant rupture and repair of unconditional love. What Lucy and Desi couldn’t make work with each other, they gave to the rest of the world. LUCY AND DESI is an insightful and intimate peek behind the curtain of these two remarkable trailblazers – featuring interviews with Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, Norman Lear, Desi Arnaz Jr, Carol Burnett, and Bette Midler

THE (BACK) STORY OF THEIR LIVES

Just days after Desi Arnaz passed away in December of 1986, Lucille Ball was honored at The Kennedy Center Honors. He had written a letter for her, special for the occasion, to be read aloud during the ceremony for all to hear. The final line: “I Love Lucy was never just a title.”

LUCY AND DESI is the documentary debut of filmmaker, actress and comedian Amy Poehler, exploring the real-life world of the performers behind America’s most famous TV couple, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz somehow found in each other a unique once-in-a-lifetime connection, off which they built not only one of the most popular series in television history, but a Hollywood empire that invented and inspired many of the common production practices still used in today’s global entertainment industry.

Lucy spent her childhood in Jamestown, NY, raised by an authoritative mother and her loving grandfather. She left for New York as a teenager in 1928. First, she became a model, and eventually she made her way to Hollywood to become a Goldwyn Girl, and then onwards to years of work at RKO, becoming known as “The Queen of B Pictures,” for her roles in many smaller-scale movies.

Desi was raised in wealth and privilege in Santiago de Cuba, his father the mayor, with intentions of his son becoming a lawyer or a doctor. But with the Cuban revolution in 1933, Desi’s family was chased from power and jailed, and a 14-year-old Desi was sent to Miami. Having lost everything and starting from scratch, even cleaning canary cages, he soon discovered his skills as an entertainer. Through the mentorship he received by popular Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat, Desi became one of the most popular Latin artists in America at the time, famous now for introducing the Conga line to the USA.

He and Lucy met on the set of the 1940 RKO musical comedy, Too Many Girls, and were married six months later. But through most of the 40s, they rarely saw each other, with Desi’s work with his band taking him on the road for much of the year.

It wasn’t until 1948 when CBS decided to put Lucy on the radio, taking advantage of a rarely-tapped skill – her comedic talents – for a series called My Favorite Husband. When the network decided to bring both the show and Lucy to television, the actress took one of the first of many groundbreaking steps, insisting that her Latin real-life husband play her television one, bringing the first mixed-race couple to American television.

The two, along with the writing team from Lucy’s radio series, developed what became I Love Lucy in 1951, again breaking new ground in its production. The couple, which by then had a new family member, their daughter, Lucie, had no interest in producing the show in New York, as the network wanted, nor in sending low-quality kinescope copies of the show for broadcast on the West Coast. So, Desi created – a first – a production system of filming the show in front of a live audience with three film cameras, in a system crafted by legendary cinematographer Karl Freund (Metropolis, The Mummy), which delivered uniform quality prints for every time zone. Desi also arranged to own those prints, which ended up allowing for what became the creation of re-runs in television, along with their own solid vested interest in the show.

When their real-life family was about to grow in 1953, the duo once again insisted on breaking the mold, allowing Lucy to be seen on camera pregnant, something which had never occurred on television. The “Little Ricky” birth episode of I Love Lucy became one of the most-seen episodes in television history.

Their own real family life blossomed during these years, as seen in LUCY AND DESI via incredible, personal color home movies taken throughout this time, made available by Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill and the family Estate. The footage depicts the couple’s true life outside of the studio and the world of I Love Lucy, something rarely seen before now.

Lucy and Desi formed their own studio, Desilu, to handle not only the production of their own show but the development of others which came after – The Untouchables and Star Trek, to name just a few. But as Desi’s tasks shifted from making comedy with his wife to running a studio, the stresses that were introduced into their marriage – and the unhappiness it brought to Desi – eventually caused the couple to divorce in 1960, after the last Lucy show was filmed.

Lucy went on to create her own series, The Lucy Show, not long after, and in 1962, bought out Desi’s share of Desilu, running the studio herself. She eventually found herself not enjoying the demanding life of being a studio executive, selling the company to Paramount in 1967. She created her last series, Here’s Lucy in 1968, which featured both her children as her onscreen kids. Both she and Desi found new people and remarried in the 60s, having long-term, happy marriages. Throughout this time, though, Desi remained in Lucy’s life, and her in his. As they embarked on a life-long friendship, Lucy often would call Desi to help her brainstorm on both of her later series. He would do what he always did best – ultimately, helping Lucy do what she always did best – which was to make us laugh, smile, and feel as one.

The Making-of LUCY AND DESI

It is often hard to tell the story of how something is made, yet for a documentary that goes behind-the-scenes as much as LUCY AND DESI does, the making-of in this film’s case is straightforward: it began with a team of talented producers finding the right director. Producers Michael Rosenberg and Justin Wilkes of Imagine Entertainment, Jeanne Elfant Festa, and Nigel Sinclair of White Horse Pictures, all had Amy Poehler on their minds when it came to who would be the best person to tell this story.

“I had seen her films, I knew she was directing, but I didn’t know if she wanted to do a documentary,” says Elfant Festa. “She was in our living rooms – we all felt like we knew her character, Leslie Knope, from Parks & Recreation – just like we feel like we know Lucille Ball, from I Love Lucy. But both are, of course, completely different people from their characters.” Adds Justin Wilkes, president of Imagine Documentaries, “We knew we needed a filmmaker who was somehow connected to the subject matter, someone who could really appreciate what Lucy and Desi stood for, and all of their firsts. And Amy had walked in Lucille’s shoes – she was a female comedian and had come up in the business, as a performer, as a writer, and as a director – all while having a family. We weren’t concerned about her not having directed a documentary before. She already knew this story from firsthand experience.”

Poehler’s earliest memories, as a child, of I Love Lucy are of countless chuckles coming from her family’s living room, hearing her parents’ laughter as they watched the show. “I Love Lucy and television were almost fused,” she states. “It was as if that show came with every television.” But it was not until she was deep in her own career that she truly connected with it – and with its stars. “It wasn’t until I got older, and doing comedy myself, that I really understood what they were doing, and was able to see the many layers to their genius. I’m inspired by the big swings that the two of them took. They came to their success with a lot of confidence. And, because of that, they said ‘No’ to a lot of things. They took giant leaps. They left their homes and worked really hard, and just kept gambling. And they didn’t play small. They were very, very brave.”

“The way into a lot of stories,” Poehler explains, “for most people, is a love story. It’s really universal. I knew I wanted to touch on important themes – the different ways they approached work, what kind of work comedy is, and what they did as pioneers for television. But we succeed and fail based on how much we care about their love story.”

Poehler was also keen to tell the story of how Ball and Arnaz completely turned the television world upside down, Sinclair notes. “Amy came to this with a very strong point of view about who Lucille Ball was – an insurgent or a disruptor of the business. They shot in L.A., they shot it on film, they used three cameras, they cast a man of color in the leading role for a national sitcom. This isn’t just a story of ‘funny’ – it’s a story of disrupting the TV business, and of a relationship that breaks and makes.”

Another key part of their story for Poehler quickly became evident. “One of the themes that I grasped onto very early on was the idea of ‘rupture and repair.’ Which is something that comedy can do really well. It’s what people turn to when their own lives are chaotic. And I Love Lucy was one of the early adopters of that genre: you have a problem, let everything unravel, but, don’t worry, it’s gonna be okay.”

As Lucie Arnaz describes it, “I Love Lucy really was about unconditional love and forgiveness. Somebody screws up really bad, and at the end of the 30 minutes, somebody goes, ‘Oh, honey… I love you, blah blah blah.’ I always say it could have been called, I Love Lucy Anyway!” And when it was mentioned to her that Amy was circling the project, that just kicked it up a whole notch for Arnaz. “Amy’s sensibility as a female, a comedienne, a mother, a performer, someone who works and tries to raise a family – I just thought that would be amazing.”

The principals in this story live that out in real life. “It’s so interesting that this iconic television family and marriage didn’t last,” remarks Poehler. “And yet, we do get a kind of repair, in the story of the film, and in Lucy and Desi’s lives. They do show us, by example, just by living their lives, what it could look like.”

Writer and Producer Mark Monroe was formally brought on board to help build the script, spending much of late 2019 and the majority of 2020 on the project. “I start with simple timelines – incredibly detailed timelines,” he explains, building separate ones for Lucille’s life, Desi’s life, and then of their life together. “And you can begin to see, then, what events shaped their decision-making.” Then, through discussions with Poehler and the producers, a framework is built to help determine the direction and parts of the story they plan to tell.

The lights truly came on for the documentary when the filmmaking team struck gold with the treasure trove that was the family archive at Lucie Arnaz’s Palm Springs home. Within the archive, Elfant Festa found a small lockbox that contained, reel to reel audio tapes of the family with Vivian Vance and Desi Arnaz and the children reenacting their favorite I Love Lucy‘s. After more exploring, they uncovered additional over 20 audio tapes, recorded with reporter Betty Hannah Hoffman around 1965, for what was intended to be an article in Ladies Home Journal. The article didn’t run in the magazine, however, so noting that the two had already put in a lot of work thus far, Ball had suggested that Hoffman continue interviewing her and create a book from them instead (eventually released as Love, Lucy).

The recordings are sometimes Lucy with Hoffman, and sometimes just Lucy herself, answering questions the writer has provided. “It’s interesting, she’s very plain-spoken and not doing trying to be funny – she’s not doing standup,” Poehler points out. “She’s just telling her story.”

“I knew there were things like that, but I didn’t think they were that interesting,” says Arnaz. “But once we started to digitize things, I said, ‘I don’t know if there’s anything in here you really want to use, so let’s just listen to a few of them.’ And it was, ‘Oh, my God – is that what that is? I thought those were lost!’”

The Hoffman tapes made up about 70% of the reels found in Lucie’s collection, with another 10% her mother simply recording on her own. The other 20% were recordings Desi had made late in his life, for a never-published follow-up to his 1976 autobiography, A Book. While taped in a more haphazard fashion than his ex-wife’s, the recordings revealed many things Arnaz had never openly spoken about previously. “They were very telling,” says editor Robert Martinez. “He talks about how he doesn’t live in moderation, that he swings from one extreme to the other. His self-awareness was quite amazing.”

The collection also contained color photographs and color home movies, some of which Lucie Arnaz had used in her earlier 1993 documentary, LUCY AND DESI: A HOME MOVIE, but not to the extent seen in LUCY AND DESI. “We were blessed with the fact that this was a Hollywood family, that had access to a personal film camera – 8mm, in some cases, 16mm – which not everyone had back then,” says Wilkes. “And they documented their lives. There’s so much footage – at home, the kids growing up, vacations they took. It offers a very specific lens into that relationship.”

“I, somehow, trusted this group to turn over every single thing in my entire life to them, in our archive here,” Arnaz states.

The archive assets – and the tapes in particular – offered Poehler the ability to have the subjects of the film – Lucy and Desi – tell their own story, in their own words. “Once we knew that we were able to hear them speak, it just opened up this world,” Poehler explains. “We so often use words like ‘mavericks’ and ‘icon’ and ‘trailblazer,’ which are all very non-human words. Not only did I want to hear the way that they explained things, but it helps bring them back to life. And we also know, as sophisticated documentary audiences are now, we’ve learned that not everybody is a reliable narrator. And this allows us to hear, and judge, that for ourselves.”

The difference wasn’t lost on Arnaz either. “Listening to my mother tell stories, in her own words was very different than, say, reading her autobiography, which I read just placing her voice while I was reading. But finding tapes of her actually answering those questions, in-depth, things that never occurred to me that were on her mind, and spoken in that rhythm I know – that was invaluable to me.”

Documentaries are very much a team effort, in good part between the director and a very skilled editor. In this case, Poehler had the benefit of working with Emmy®-nominated Robert Martinez; the experience was a new one for Poehler, who had directed narrative films and episodic comedies but was approaching a new frontier with her documentary debut. “The relationship between an editor and a director on a documentary is like no other,” she explains. “It was a special privilege to work with Robert. He was really instrumental incoming at a lot of the material in a very fresh way. I just feel like we were always on the same page in what we were trying to do. It was really him, Mark and Nigel and Jeanne, the whole team.”

Poehler was every bit as hands-on as an editor and producers would hope for a director to be, sitting beside Martinez and working with him on a regular basis. “We were able to test out scenes and work together in person – even during the pandemic. I was able to be there every step of the way. Which was key, because when you’re working with real people and their lives, there are a million ways to tell the story. You have to make strong decisions early. And you have to get used to the fact that you’re not going to be able to get everything in. We’re really doing a story about two people for the price of one.”

“She was in it…the entire process,” Martinez states. “It was fantastic to just have her undivided attention. And she wasn’t afraid to get other opinions, try other things. There was no strict protocol of ‘We’re doing this.’ She was very open to collaboration. Our goal together was to apply the right intention to everything, then figuring out different ways to do it, with no ‘This isn’t my idea’ ownership thing. There were multiple ways to do it, and the best idea in the room always won.”

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