There are just a few giants that belong on a Mount Rushmore of rock ‘n’ roll, the people who created a genre of music that electrified the world. One certainty is Chuck Berry. The other is Little Richard. Director Lisa Cortés’ new documentary Little Richard: I am Everything tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock ‘n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance footage that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Throughout his life, Richard careened like a shiny cracked pinball between God, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. The world tried to put him in a box, but Richard was an omni-being who contained multitudes – he was unabashedly everything.
We’re thrilled to screen Little Richard: I am Everything for one night only at our Claremont, Encino, North Hollywood, Glendale and Newhall theaters. Come experience the movie the Hollywood Reporter called “wildly entertaining;” the Chicago Reader called “exhilarating;” Essence called “profound;” Variety called “exhilarating;” the Toronto Star called “the definitive documentary on a complicated icon;” and Film Threat said “brilliantly connects the past, present and future.”
