There are three people who are no longer with us that I think about every day: my mom, my dad, and my old friend, Allee Willis. Not that Allee was a parental figure to me—in fact, she was often quite amusingly the opposite. And not that I necessarily choose to think about Allee on a daily basis—she’s just there. She can pop up anywhere, at any time. She’s simply in the ether.
Sometimes it’s personal, some random little reminder of something funny or great she said or did during one of our many amazing adventures together. Other times it’s visual, involving some colorful and cartoony image that reminds me of her paintings, set designs, or the unique ways in which she presented herself as a walking work of art. But usually it’s a sound—hearing even just a snippet of anything from her vast catalog of songs, which will live on forever. You might not realize it, but she’s in your mind, too.
Allee’s songwriting output was phenomenal. Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance,” the Friends theme “I’ll Be There For You,” and Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield’s “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” are just a few of the hits she co-wrote, but the list goes on and on. Sometimes it’s annoying, because a virtually inescapable song like “September”—which lifts everyone’s spirits, as Allee loved to do—can give me a bit of the blues. Since she’s always sort of around, it’s hard to believe that she’s gone.
Nearly five years after her death, I still haven’t fully processed the loss. But this beautiful new documentary has certainly helped. The World According to Allee Willis is a fascinating and inspiring exploration of the full-on technicolor life and legacy of a true creative maverick. Directed by Alexis Manya Spraic, the film celebrates the heart, mind, and soul of Alta Sherral “Allee” Willis, from her roots in Detroit throughout her lifelong journey of mining and divining various artistic mediums to find out who she was and where she belonged. Even the title captures Allee’s spirit, as she meticulously created, cultivated, and curated everything in her environment—she lived and breathed her art. When you engaged with Allee or her work in any way whatsoever, make no mistake, you were on her astroturf, you were in her world.
I met Allee in 2008 when an art gallery owner friend took me over to her magnificently cool little compound in the Valley called “Willis Wonderland,” figuring that we’d hit it off. We did. It’s hard to describe such a connection, but we were kindred spirits, sharing a love for the offbeat and obscure: strange vintage pop-culture stuff, kitschy art, weird roadside signs and attractions, where to find the best hot dogs. We even shared the same birthday.
Allee Willis in her home recording studioACCORDING TO ALLEE WILLIS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Maryanne Bilham. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Allee and I became fast friends, and soon we began working together—at first I was collaborating with her mainly just for fun, but quickly got swept up into it. I wound up in ever-shifting roles, which included acting at various times and often simultaneously as her driver, one of her publicists… Oh, hold on, speaking of that: Allee would want me to (in fact she’d outright demand that I) mention the following things here: she was a two-time GRAMMY winner, a Tony and Emmy nominee, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, her songs sold over 60 million records, People magazine once praised her for throwing parties that were “works of art,” plus she was nominated for and/or honored with something called a “Webby” (I tried to omit the “Webby” bit from a press release once, figuring maybe she wouldn’t notice, and let’s just say it did not go over well...). All of this would often somehow become “GRAMMY, Tony, Emmy, and Webby winner” in the resulting articles, which was of course just fine with her.
She’d also insist that I say that she possessed the world’s largest assortment of kitsch-related memorabilia, which I don’t think is true, but it was (and still is) quite an astounding collection, and if Allee said something was true, you just went with it. Not that she’d lie—she’d just often at least slightly inflate her resume when there was no earthly reason to. She never seemed to realize that what she’d actually accomplished was so freakin’ mindblowing.
Speaking of her collection, I also helped her set up her online Allee Wills Museum of Kitsch (AWMOK), which became sort of a mini social network for her fans. Allee actually saw the future of social media before there was any such thing as social media, and if it had been up to her, we would’ve all been cruising around her interactive “Willisville” community long before Myspace. Allee could’ve been our Tom, but infinitely more vibrant and fun.
Alle Willis and Paul Reubens at Grammy Awards / photo courtesy of the Estate of Allee Willis and Magnolia Pictures.
Back to my hats: I was her photographer, her videographer… OK, now on that note, I should point out that Allee was always videoing herself and/or had someone shooting video of her. Always. Since 1978. As she says in the documentary, “I was the original reality show.” Much of the new film is culled from the thousands of hours of this footage from over the decades. I’m very pleased that several clips from the hundreds of hours of video I shot of her made it into the movie, including Allee joyously fist-bumping the Joe Louis memorial while driving around Detroit.
I was also one of her live show producers when she returned to the stage after around four decades away to sing her songs and tell stories about her life. As a matter of fact, I was actually in her first show, wandering around on stage (with other figures in her life, including her housekeeper) and sitting at a little desk filming her. The whole thing was an absolute trainwreck due to catastrophic technical problems—imagine everything that went wrong during the entirety of Spinal Tap crammed into a single disastrous performance. None of it was Allee’s fault, and the only reason I mention this is that she had the incredible courage to try again later, and she continued performing and refining her show to tremendous success. Her bravery in this was truly astonishing.
Let’s see…I was her advisor, her fixer, her confidant, and, ultimately, sort of as a catchall, her—well, this one’s a little odd and might take some explaining… So the first time we flew on a plane together, as the flight attendant was going through the safety demonstration and got around to: “If you’re traveling with children, put your own oxygen mask on first, then…” Allee turned to me with a helpless look and said, “You got that, daddy?” I laughed, telling her not to worry, and this became a running unspoken joke, as she’d always glance over at me pleadingly during this announcement on every flight we took. She sometimes called other such folks her “babysitters,” but yes, even though she was nearly two decades older than me, I was “daddy” quite often.
Along those lines, since Allee could sometimes seem a bit like a kid, I found a lot of joy in engineering situations to make her happy. It was often just some minor thing, such as when she told me the current residents of her childhood home in Detroit had turned her away several times and never let her come inside to visit. I did a whole passionate spiel about Allee at their front door, and somehow we wound up in there for an entire lovely afternoon. Allee was thrilled.
There was something magical about hanging out with her, always a bit of kismet going on—you never knew what was going to happen. Never did I think I’d be visiting The Brady Bunch house with the actual Cindy Brady while cruising around town in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, sitting down to an outdoor formal dinner with several renowned artists in the middle of a working junkyard in Detroit, organizing Earth, Wind & Fire karaoke in a back alley parking lot with actual members of Earth, Wind & Fire, or spending the night in a tiny little room upstairs in the suburban home of some woman named Muffin in Madison, Wisconsin.
All of these escapades did ultimately have a purpose. There was always some method to the madness. When we stayed at the house of Muffin, Allee’s sorority sister from college, Allee had been invited to conduct the marching band during the homecoming football game at her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. Allee had no clue how to “conduct,” but man did she wave those freakin’ sticks around with a fiery passion as the more than 300-member band blasted out several of her hits in front of over 80,000 people. She later even went on to “conduct” the orchestra at a performance of The Color Purple—her musical for which she cowrote the music and lyrics—at the historic Fox Theatre in Detroit.
Allee Willis with
This was a theme in all of Allee’s art and in the way she conducted her entire life: If you have an idea or a goal, just go for it, whether you know how to do it or not. Her work was highly motivational—she constantly promoted the concept of turning your weaknesses into your strengths. And looking deep inside yourself for the answers.
By the way, Allee extensively wrote about all of these things in her Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch blog, including most of our adventures I’ve mentioned above. Her online content is a tour de force rabbit hole of words, wisdom, photos, and videos—endless entertainment, hilarious, enlightening, and inspiring.
As she wrote in her AWMOK blog about that Wisconsin trip, discussing her creative process, “I may write about crazy objects that I’ve collected forever, but ultimately my feelings about the objects are all a key to myself. I’ve long been aware that as an artist my primary canvas is myself. My songs, if I have any control of the lyrical content, are completely autobiographical. My art has always explored some kind of situation I was in whether I was conscious of it or not.”
Allee Willis with the sheet music for “September” in late 1970s, from THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ALLEE WILLIS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of the Estate of Allee Willis and Magnolia Pictures.
Allee longed for recognition—she wanted to be not only heard, but seen. In the very first line of the documentary, she says, “Six weeks ago, I’m sitting in my house thinking, ‘No one knows me. No one knows who I am.’” It was something Allee thought about a lot, and one of the primary motivations that drove her to be such a prolific workaholic. She never seemed quite satisfied. She was always chasing something, she wanted more exposure on every level. Despite the fact that her music was everywhere, she told me several times that she’d always dreamed she’d someday come across a street musician who’d be playing one of her songs, but that it had never happened. In a world where folks were increasingly becoming famous for doing nothing, she wanted to be recognized for what she did do. Allee wanted to be able to tell you, “I wrote that song!”
One of the main reasons I love this movie is that it not only portrays Allee as the wildly independent thinker and artistic trailblazer she was, but it also just as importantly examines her insecurities, foibles, and struggles as a human being. All revealed through Allee’s own lens, along with insightful thoughts from friends and colleagues, including Lily Tomlin, Mark Cuban, Luenell Campbell, Mark Mothersbaugh, Bruce Vilanch, Paul Reubens, Patti LaBelle, Verdine White, Cyndi Lauper, Pet Shop Boys, and Allee’s partner of 28 years, Prudence Fenton, one of the producers of the film. Allee would want you to see this documentary. She prepared for it her entire life.
When I watched the movie for the first time, I went through an insane array of emotions. But as it started to wrap up, I became absolutely enraged that something I’d caught on video with Allee in Detroit hadn’t made it in there. I’d been hoping it would pop up, but, alas, the screen went black, and I pounded my fist on my coffee table—I mean, if you’d just asked me to pick one ten-second snippet out of the endless footage I shot of Allee over the years, it would’ve been…OMG, the screen was still black, but I could hear it coming—boom! There it was! Yes! The clip I was looking for! As a little coda! Unbelievable! I literally cheered out loud!
No spoilers, but that joyous little moment at the end of the film was perhaps the happiest I ever saw my amazing friend Allee, at least the brightest and fastest I ever saw her light up in an instant. It was something I’ll never forget from one of the most treasured and rewarding friendships of my life.
While The World According to Allee Willis does provide me with a little more closure, it’s still way too easy to lull myself into thinking that Allee’s always just over on the other side of the Hollywood Hills, buzzing around right here in her beautiful pink house in Valley Village, working on whatever crazy brainstorm is next. I say “right here” because that’s where I am now: I’m sitting here at Willis Wonderland as I write these words. It’s eerie. Everything is exactly the same as the last time I was here, with her. The GRAMMYs are right there on the shelf, there’s the ever-present giant bowl of candy for her guests, the portrait I made of Allee out of jelly beans is still hanging on the wall just outside her kitchen. Hmm. I did notice that her ‘55 DeSoto Fireflite isn’t in the driveway as usual, so maybe she’s just off on some big adventure. I know she’s out there somewhere.
Ba-de-ya, dear Allee. We do remember. FL
