How ‘Pretty Baby’ Director Lana Wilson Tapped Into Brooke Shields’ Story After Years of Exploitation

variety.com:

Elizabeth Wagmeister Chief Correspondent The last time filmmaker Lana Wilson chronicled the life of a global superstar, she followed Taylor Swift in “Miss Americana,” which opened Sundance in 2020.

Three years later, Wilson was back at the Park City festival with another documentary that debuted to a packed theater and rave reviews: “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.” Wilson — who was nominated for an Emmy for directing the Hulu and ABC News documentary about Brooke Shields — has showcased her ability to tap into great emotional depths, rarely publicly seen, of two of the most famous women on the planet.

But by sharing their stories, she hopes to tell a much larger story. “With Taylor, it was a verité, present-day look at her life at this really specific transformational moment in her life,” Wilson says. “She was going from being a person who is focused more on what other people want from her and how to make other people happy, and then going into, ‘What do I really want?

What do I really believe?’” “With Brooke,” Wilson adds, “it was how she evolved over decades.” The filmmaker looks for aspects of a star’s life that isn’t about being famous, focusing on “something that’s deeper that’s relatable to anyone anywhere.” In “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” Wilson crafts a culturally relevant narrative about a young girl who was overly sexualized by the media, commodified and exploited in the 1970s and ’80s.