ANY OTHER WAY: THE JACKIE SHANE STORY
Where: The Vic Theatre, 808 Douglas St., Victoria
When: Friday, Aug. 16; Saturday, Aug. 17; Monday, Aug. 19; Thursday, Aug. 22
Tickets: $17 from victoriafilmfestival.com
The story of soul singer Jackie Shane had an air of mystery to it, for reasons which are revealed in the new documentary, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story.
The film by writers/directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee unspools the complicated life of the transgender Black woman, who was born in Nashville but found success in Montreal and Toronto for an extended period of time during the 1960s. Little Richard was a friend and peer. But unlike the hugely successful Tutti Frutti singer, Shane never reached lofty commercial heights. She all but disappeared around 1971, and died in 2019, at the age of 78, never having returned to the spotlight.
Any Other Way — named after Shane’s signature song from 1962 — was produced for the National Film Board of Canada by Banger Films, the award-winning Toronto production company co-founded by Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn. The University of Victoria graduates serve as executive producers on the new documentary, which premieres Friday at the Vic Theatre.
When Mabbott brought the idea for the documentary to Dunn, he was “completely blown away” by the story of the singer he knew very little about. “There were so many elements to her,” the Victoria-raised Dunn said of Shane, who lived life as a woman but did not officially come out as transgender until later in life.
“She was living the life of someone who was born male but identified as female, at a time when fully expressing yourself in that way was dangerous. Many who loved her music wondered where she disappeared to. She was a hit on the Toronto club circuit, and had some success in Canada. And then she basically disappeared.”
Mabbott made contact with the singer when she was still alive, and befriended Shane over the course of several phone conversations which took place over a year. She agreed to tell Mabbott her life story, and allowed him to record the calls, which opened the door to Any Other Way. “When Michael brought this to me, from a storytelling and creative standpoint, it was a slam dunk for us,” Dunn said.
Dunn and McFadyen have completed more than 30 projects under the Banger Films banner, including Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005), Iron Maiden: Flight 666 (2009), Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (2010), Hip-Hop Evolution (2016), and Long Time Running, a 2017 documentary about the Tragically Hip’s final tour. Any Other Way has been one of the more remarkable ones to produce, according to Dunn, as it required extensive rotoscope animation to make up for the lack of video footage. Live performances by Shane are limited in the film to a single black-and-white clip from 1965 of her performing on a Nashville TV show.
Only slightly more audio of Shane exists, and some of that comes via bootlegs of her music (including a concert Shane performed at Toronto’s former Saphire Tavern.) She lived long enough to see her music make a slight comeback — Any Other Way, a 2017 two-CD compilation documenting Shane’s brief musical output, earned a 2019 Grammy Award nomination for best historical album — but the singer died in her sleep a year before the film began to take shape. That meant storytelling would need to be a key element.
Dunn feels the documentary works, even without preponderance of live footage and recorded music to draw from. That is a tribute to Shane, who leaps off the screen, despite being represented mostly through audio from phone calls.
“Jackie was a bold, strong voice who spoke her mind from on the stage and off the stage,” Dunn said. “That boldness, that personality, and that courage is what really can be a huge inspiration for a lot of people today. To get up on stage and present as a woman, at that time, was off the radar within mass culture. One can only imagine how difficult, and to put it mildly, anxiety-provoking leading that life would be.”
