'Tina' the recent HBO doc has been freed from its HBO shackles and can now be streamed on Amazon. I watched it last evening, and my reaction, as a 50+ year fan of Tina, is: WOW! The lady has told her story for decades now so I was not too enthusiastic about yet another re-hashing, but this doc has much to recommend. For a long-time fan it was great to see [[and hear) so much archival material that we have not heretofore been exposed to. And, the new interview with The Lioness at Rest is perhaps the image I will now always carry of 'my Tina'.
Personally I would have preferred a tad less Ike and more information of the development of Tina's stage personality/performance. To my knowledge we have never been given much information about just when Tina realized she could not only dance, but ... dance! And though we are told that every early I&TT Revue played to packed audiences, I would like to know if there was any early press coverage.
And, being that Buddhism was such an important factor to Tina's self-realization, I would be interested to hear her opinion of her birth-self vs. her conditioned response to life and her adaptation to becoming a self-realized success.
In the end I came to my own realization that my love of Tina came not only from her stage presence and talent but also from a shared experience of early-life less-than-optimal experience that formed and challenges many of us. Be well, Tina - you did good. You really, really, did good.
