No. 1: Beyonce Never, Ever Looks Rough
I mean, come on. Hair piled perfectly atop her head, barefoot, curled up on a couch... She relaxes hotter than anyone in the world. (The one thing about this setup that kept throwing me off was whatever that THING is on the left side of the screen. I kept thinking it was a person ready to pounce.) But I want to see her when she's REALLY casual. Not "perfect makeup to look like there's no makeup; perfect elaborate topknot that probably took way longer than your average topknot." I want Roughyonce. That person may not exist though.
No. 2: Roughyonce Does Not, In Fact, Exist, Because She Looks Way Better In Extreme Close-Up On Skype Than You Ever Will, EVER
I know the light is all blown out, but seriously, HER SKIN. We talk a lot about the people we genuflect to at GFY HQ, but I'm actually really not a hero-worship person at all. So you can know that this is not just the current virulent strain of "OMG BEYONCE CAN DO NO WRONG SHE IS BEYOND" infecting my writing. She really just does have an unfair face that does not wrinkle.
No. 3: Beyonce Can Take Dance Class With Giant Hoop Earrings Hanging From Her Head
How does that not HURT?
No. 4: Beyonce Has Her Own Helicopter
Don't you?
No. 5: Beyonce Also Doesn't Look Too Shabby In Weirdly Lit Matrix-Like Self-Portraits
I can't even remember what the point of this shot was, except that... she did it.
No. 6: Beyonce Is Not Afraid Of Camera Angles
Have you ever nosed up to your Web cam like this? If not, DON'T, because it won't go this well. And if so, once you stopped sobbing and wailing, did you ever do it again, much less put that shot in your autobiographical movie? I didn't think so, but then again, see the aforementioned note about her total lack of wrinkles.
No. 7: Beyonce Really Is Filming Herself All The Freaking Time
This is a security-camera shot of Beyonce getting on while holding her laptop in front of her, filming herself doing nothing but ride an elevator. People sometimes ask if if we ever had wanted our own reality show (back in the heyday when any old yahoo could get one), and our feeling on that is: HOW BORING. It would be footage of us grocery shopping and parallel parking and typing all day. This shot reminded me of that. Granted, it's Beyonce, so most of her stuff is going to be more interesting, inherently, than anything we do. But still. The only reality show you could spin out of my life is Let's Watch Heather's Twins Do Stuff. Episode 1: "Why Are Those Dudes Playing Imaginary Golf With Spatulas?" Episode 2: "The Twins Recreate The Grammys, Except With More Golf, A T-Pain Microphone, And Pantomimed Horse Racing, Fewer Standing Ovations For Chris Brown, And The Same Amount Of Mumford & Sons."
No. 8: Beyonce Enjoys A Goofy T-Shirt Now And Then
This one is like an ode to Dilbert.
No. 9: Beyonce... ONCE HAD A GOLD TOOTH?!?
I mean... that IS a gold tooth in there, right? This was from back when Destiny's Child's first album hit No. 1 and THEY LOOK INSANE. Beyonce looks like Pimp Robin Hood. I enjoy that she has no shame about sharing this clip.
No. 10: When Beyonce Plays Her New Album, Every Single Person In The Room Does The Nerdy Head-Bob Of Approval
This scene was hilarious. She's sitting there at the head of the table, and they're listening to a clip of one of her new songs (they play it fast and loose and nonspecific with some of the timelines, but I THINK this is right before she released her most recent album, which came out in June 2011), and the camera pulls back to show EVERY person in the room bobbing his or her head to the beat exactly the same awkward, approving way, with exactly the same glassy smile. It's like Groupthink. It's Groupbob. And you know that the one person who was in there not really feeling it was like, "Shit, if I don't bob my head, I'm going to get so fired."
No. 11: Beyonce Could Be A Bond Girl
Okay, that wasn't the point of this shot, but: She shows herself brandishing a camera on her hotel balcony, taking photos of screaming fans, and there's something very Bondian about the way she's brandishing it like a weapon. Also, yes, you can see through that skirt. I don't know what this was for, but it feels like she was getting dressed up for a perfume ad.
No. 12: Beyonce Is Not Afraid To Shoot Up Her Own Nose
There was a lot of this camera angle. She must not be an anti-nostrilite.
No. 13: Beyonce Really Loves Her Nephew
This is Solange's little dude, and he hangs out with Queen Bey in some of her home footage. It's cute, and he's a really cheerful little chap. And her affection for him comes off as very genuine and not at all like she's doing it because she's filming it, you know? You can see from her interactions with him that she wants kids/will be a good mom/is a good mom (they're never clear WHEN the footage is from, again, but in at least one of them she references her upcoming baby).
No. 14: If You Pay For Really Good Floor Seats At A Beyonce Show, You May Get A Really Intimate View Of Her Crotch
This shot is a stand-in because I couldn't get a non-blurry grab of the one where this all happens, but: There was a sequence where she is kneeling in front of the crowd, her knees practically touching their hands, and then she bends all the way back and thrashes around, so her crotch is more or less in people's faces (or hands), and so basically the price of an awesome ticket includes being able to give her privates a close examination. Bear that in mind next time you're complaining about ticket prices.
No. 15: Her Husband Is Jay Z, By The Way. Did She Mention That? She's Married To Jay Z. It's True. Really.
Bey talks about her hubby a lot. This movie doesn't present Jay Z as much of a person, more of a... mythical figure who drifts in sometimes and offers a spartan piece of commentary. My PERSONAL impression from this movie, which is PURE extrapolation tinged with my obvious fondness for melodrama, is that Beyonce is enamored of him but also has a LOT of hero-worship of him, given that they started dating when she was twenty and therefore really just a girl and he was already a giant (or at least well on his way). And that now without her father in her life as much, Jay Z is filling a bit of that role as well for her, so it's a lot of kinds of love mixed up into one cocktail. Whereas Jay Z comes off as someone who feels very warmly toward his hot young bride but doesn't burn for her or appear to need her as deeply as she clearly needs or yearns for him. It's interesting. Obviously, he might just be a more private, less demonstrative person, and actually that probably is what's going on. But the vibe he gives off in limited screen time -- and, in any time I've ever seen him on TV looking in her direction -- is very much more paternal and proud and loving in a non-passionate way, and the whole thing to ME makes me imagine that behind closed doors she is very anxious to please and hang on and make the magic, and that he doles out reassurance in that regard on his schedule because he likes calling the shots. I cannot stress enough that this is PURE extrapolation and that I hope it's all total incorrect b.s., because I like a good Happily Ever After.
No. 16: Beyonce's Hair Looks Great On A Boat, Even When It's Curly
If this were me and MY curly hair cruising around on the tropical seas, I would look like Phil Spector.
No. 17: Beyonce Is A Mac, Not A PC
She also spends valuable plane time editing things on Final Cut Pro, or whatever program this is. She's either looking at footage from THIS, or she's looking at rehearsal stuff... I don't know, but she seems to know her way around the thing. She ALSO ALSO has a bright orange manicure but I didn't get a shot of that, because I am a terrible person.
No. 18: Beyonce's Dancers Sneak Cheez-Its At Rehearsals
And she doesn't behead them for it. Because she's COOL, see.
No. 19: Beyonce Might Sometimes Cut Her Own Hair
She's dry-trimming it here, and it looks like she's done it before. Tina Knowles used to have a hair salon, if I remember this movie correctly, so Beyonce must have learned the trade by osmosis. I actually love it when she lets her hair do its natural thing. Viva the Curly Girls.
No. 20: Beyonce Once Owned These Pants
Guys, the '90s were intense. (I also believe Jessie J wore those pants this year and you'll be seeing them in Fug Madness next week.)
No. 21: Beyonce And Her Friends Used To Tape Their Slumber Party Sing-a-longs And Were Just As Goofy There As You Were
Kelly Rowland is in there somewhere but I never got a good shot of her. Basically, this is all of them bouncing around singing -- and delivering deliciously literal choreography -- to "Lovefool" by The Cardigans, while also snacking. I would have enjoyed being at that slumber party. In fact, I might have been. It was called college, and there was a lot of Melrose Place and ramen.
No. 22: Beyonce Will Change The Way You Walk Down Hotel Corridors
This is her rehearsing one of her dances, while an editor worked away inside the suite. She basically hung out in the hall and taped her routine. I am going to make this pose every time I go to a hotel from here on out -- it's so Kevin Bacon in Footloose.
No. 23: Beyonce Sure Does Go On Boats A Lot
She takes a LOT of vacation footage, usually while also talking about how great life is. It's nice that she appreciates it so much, but I would also love it if she'd take over the blog for a couple weeks so I could borrow her boat. Thanks much.
No. 24: Beyonce Had A Miscarriage
This part was sad -- we hear a song Beyonce wrote after her miscarriage, all about the life being taken out of her... it's something that could be an allegory for a breakup or somesuch, but once you know, it's really quite moving, and you can hear the pain in her voice. And she talks softly in an unbroken personal clip -- shot up her nose again, because that's how it goes with video diaries most of the time -- about how she had heard the heartbeat, and then a week later at another checkup it had gone. It's the most disarmingly personal moment of the whole 90 minutes, in my opinion. We've established she films herself doing almost everything, so maybe Beyonce just really does want a video record of the good AND the bad, or maybe she figured someday she'd do a project like this, or... who knows. If anyone is looking for a reason why she MIGHT have been cagey about her pregnancy at any point, though, I suspect this is it -- once you've gone through something like a miscarriage, it stays with you, and the fear of being excited about it and optimistic about it -- the sense that the switch is going to flip again and everything will disappear -- is very haunting.
No. 25: Beyonce Is Not Afraid To Tell People When They Are F'ing Up
I love this shot. Yes, this is her movie, but she also didn't have to put in any bits and pieces of her being a tough boss. She IS, however, a politely tough boss. Here, she is doing that age-old thing of having to tell someone that they didn't do what she'd asked for, after having REPEATEDLY been asked for it, and having to find a way to say, "Did I not ask for this like twelve times before?" She's nice but with an edge, the kind of person you don't want to disappoint as opposed to the one you want to stab.
No. 26: Beyonce Either Has An Ugly Sweater, Or A Moth Problem
Well, that might not be what she wanted us to take away from this scene (another in which someone is Not Doing His Job And OMG We're On The Clock Can Someone Please Just Freaking Get It Done The Way I Asked For It PLEASE K THX). But it's hard to focus on much other than her Swiss Cheese shirt. Well, that, and how much I really do love her au naturel hair.
No. 27: Blue Ivy Is In This Picture
I cannot imagine anything I would rather wear LESS while gestating -- even at the early stages. In fact, maybe especially, because I call those stages "pregnant or donuts?" although Beyonce appears immune to the spare tire. The movie never says HOW pregnant, but nobody knew yet, and if I am piecing things together correctly, she herself had only just confirmed it. So pretty early. But still. Pregnant. In that. And doing a lot of heavy dancing. Subtitle for this slide: "Beyonce's Body Is Basically The Best."
No. 28: Blue Ivy Is Also In This Picture
This is from a bit where she's complaining about needing to barf a lot, and being shoved into tiny costumes even though she's "starting to show." Which... I am showing more than that right now, and I'm not pregnant. Ah, the beauty of being super fit. Although I would have thought when you're THIS fit, you'd show REALLY fast because there is nowhere for the womb to hide, so to speak. At any rate, Beyonce is showing both boob and baby, supposedly. I guess you can't stop wearing gold lame onesies or else people will start to suspect. Ah, the headaches of being a megastar with a Uterine Secret. Jay Z ducks into be all, "YEAH," and that's all he says. Thank you, kind sir.
No. 29: Blue Ivy... Might Be In This Photo?
She uses this footage under some VO about pregnancy, and working, and stuff, but it's never totally clear that there was a fetus involved with this bodysuit. Hence the conspiracy theories, I suppose. WOULD a person with a Uterine Secret continue wearing these? Wouldn't you be super self-conscious about people analyzing every new curve, however miniscule?
No. 30: Blue Ivy Is Supposedly 20 Weeks Big In This Photo WHAT
So, here we have Beyonce right before the Billboard Music Awards. She says she's 20 weeks and that the baby might need to announce itself the next day at the performance. And this is where she started to lose me a LITTLE to the conspiracy theorists. Because any woman who is currently 20 weeks pregnant and wonders why she does not look like this should NOT, repeat NOT, be upset with herself. This seems VERY WEE to me. It is not helpful to compare my pregnancy experience with hers, because a) she is Beyonce, and b) I had twins, but seriously, at 20 weeks I could already rest a snack plate on my bump. This is more like, "Beyonce has ordered pizza two nights in a row."
No. 31: Beyonce Did Squats On-Stage, In Heels, Moments Before Announcing She Was Pregnant
And this is the next night, when she famously revealed she was pregnant by ripping open her coat and cupping her bump (well, technically she revealed it when she said on the red carpet, "I'm pregnant," but almost nobody saw that, including anyone watching MTV -- she said it on the non-televised portion -- or anyone in the venue). And...maybe it was just a bad camera angle before, because doesn't she look substantially MORE 20 weeks pregnant here than she did in the previous slide? Maybe she didn't show much and so she padded this out so that people didn't miss her point. Or maybe it WAS a bad angle before. Or maybe she was never pregnant. Doesn't it seem like a AWFUL lot of effort to fake a pregnancy, though? The other throughline of this movie is, "Beyonce is SUPER BUSY," and I feel like despite what soap operas tell you, inventing a pregnancy while in the public eye would actually be very time-consuming.
No. 33: Holy Crap, Beyonce Has A Lot Of Fruit In Her House (Subtitle: Gwyneth Paltrow Might Be Near This Shot)
This is a nifty piece of home video of Beyonce giving a toast after her wedding, both to their nearest and dearest, and to her husband. It's when she confirms they got together when she was 20, and she tells him he taught her about being a woman and a business partner and a friend and all this other sweet stuff that kind of made me wonder if Celine Dion said the same thing when she married her manager. Which is neither here nor there. But I remember all the stress and secrecy shrouding that wedding, and the paparazzi shots of people arriving, and so it's lovely to think they actually DID get a private moment where they could kick back and relax and thank each other and eat some bananas.
No. 33: Bey and Jay Love Them Some Coldplay
This is the lovebirds singing "Yellow" to each other (and to the camera), which is about as regular as Jay Z ever seems. It's amusing. But it also feels weird becaue before I saw it, I had read the blind item that's circulating that implies Jay Z and Gwyneth have hooked up on and off over the years, and obviously I know that is an allegation and that blind items are often whispers and little else, but the fact remains that I READ it and I can't un-read it and it tainted this for me a little. But only a little. They're grown-ass people and Beyonce is no dummy and it will all work itself out.
No. 34: Beyonce Knows When To Deliver Pregnancy Footage Right When You Are Starting To Wonder If Any Exists
We've all seen the Wendy Williams Show analysis of the bump-folding, and yes, I agree with Wendy -- when I was pregnant, my bump never did that. Ever. I also couldn't get into a sitting position that way. At all. But we've also established up to now that Beyonce is more superhuman than most people and rides boats a lot, and things, so who the heck knows what her body can and can't do when it's gestating.
No. 35: Beyonce Let The Camera Pan Down So You Couldn't Claim It Was A Trick Of Editing
I kept thinking, "This woman is so excited about having a baby, there is no way she didn't lovingly document her bump every step of the way, so where is THAT Webcam footage?" And then this came up. And it raises AND answers questions. Because it doesn't look faked, and it looks like the kind of artsy thing that a lady might think her child would want to see someday, versus a shot of her standing on front of her laptop and going, "CHECK IT! Stretch marks, what-whaaaaat!" But remember, Beyonce filmed herself WALKING INTO AN ELEVATOR. Surely she filmed herself trying on maternity clothes.
No. 36: Beyonce Looked Awesome Even When She Was Pregnant Or "Pregnant" Or Whatever You Want To Believe
All of which is to say this: I tend to come down on, "Faking a pregnancy is too crazy and too much work." But having said that, this movie, as Jezebel noted at the time, really doesn't do the job of convincing people there are no stones to overturn. There are a lot of weirdnesses with this whole thing, and the fact that a silhouetted Beyonce is presented as one of a very few pieces of "proof" is one of them. The more convincing argument here would have been a montage of various shots of her video diaries, and I cannot imagine those shots don't exist. You could argue she wanted to keep them private, but to that I say: She didn't keep THIS shot private, and she's making a plotless movie that makes a point of addressing the conspiracy rumors, so where is the line? Why NOT make it a slam-dunk, if you can? It seems like you either have to address your critics by saying, "This is ALL private and off-limits and none of your business and I do not have to prove myself to you or anyone else," OR by overwhelming them with your "GOTCHA, check out ALL THIS FOOTAGE OF MY BUMP, YOU HAVE BEEN SERVED" media. And anything in between is going to give the skeptics fodder. Having said THAT, clearly nothing short of a shot of her crowning, frame frozen and fully telustrated, was going to do the trick, so whatever.
No. 37: Beyonce Went Full Estelle Getty In Her Birthing Suite
It's so Golden Girls. All it's missing is a lanai and a cheesecake.
No. 38: Beyonce's Bump Allegedly Looked Like This When She Gave Birth
The footage here was grainy and choppy, like it was shot with somebody's iPad, or ancient moving-picture taker from days of yore. It was like she banished actual good cameras from the birthing room, which... come to think of it, is not such a bad strategy, because in that situation the blurrier some people look, the happier they are. Being as this is Beyonce I am shocked her laptop wasn't just set up on a table the whole time, while she stuck her flawless face up in its grill and said in a controlled whisper, "Okay, I just pushed, and it hurts like hell."
No. 39: Blue Ivy Is Super Crazy Cute
Muffin! At the end of it all, who the hell cares how the baby got here? She's SO CUTE and very loved and wanted and the rest is NOMB (none of my business). And look, if it WAS a secret surrogate, one thing I DO believe is that it wouldn't have been for some goofy vanity thing. Even in a Beyonce-produced and Beyonce-conceived documentary, one thing that really rang true was her pain about the miscarriage, so IF there was any undercover stuff going on here, I would guess it came from private medical or physical needs rather than any concern about her figure. Because let's face it, she has no reason to think her body wouldn't have bounced right back anyway. She's Beyonce. She's a kajillionaire. She probably has a home gym on one of her yachts.
No. 40: Beyonce Will Always Prevail And Probably Will Look Like This Until The End Of Time
The movie ends with more concert footage, and just in case you doubted it, more skimpy costumes. I did learn that the lady sure knows how to put on a show -- the Super Bowl bit was a thud compared to some of the performance footage she stuck in this movie. At the end she basically says that although times were hard (somehow I missed a screen grab of her sniffling about the breakup with her father, but it wasn't as dramatic as I hoped it would be anyway, and besides, of course that's what she's going to do -- in Beyonce: The Movie, she's not going to turn around and go, "Cutting my dad out of my life was easy-peasy," even if it was true, because adversity is the more interesting story), she's learned a lot and her life is great and she's a hard worker... I kept expecting her to turn to the camera and coo, "Life IS but a dream," but fortunately she resisted that urge. Still, as interesting as it was to SEE certain bits and pieces, about the only moral of the story was, "Beyonce: GET ON BOARD." Okay then.