Paul Anka: His Way
(USA, 98 min.)
Dir. John Maggio
Program: Special Presentations (World Premiere)
Superstar singer-songwriter Paul Anka gets the spotlight in this documentary that tracks a spectacular career spanning almost 70 years. We meet Anka, age 83 at the time of the most recent shoot, as he’s about to hit the outdoor stage at Times Square in New York City. Then the film, based mostly on extensive interviews with the star, himself traces his rise to the top of the charts where he’s remained for decades. He’s written for everyone from Buddy Holly to Michael Jackson to Drake.
When he was 15, Anka, with $100 in his pocket, left hometown Ottawa for New York City where he instantly got a songwriting gig. He recorded “Diana” when he was 16 which went directly to Number 1 and he followed it up with top 10 hits, including “Put your Head on My Shoulder” and “You Are My Destiny.”
Anka was smart and ambitious. Unlike other stars in his cohort – Bobby Vee and Frankie Avalon, for example – he wrote everything he sang, had the publishing rights, and knew that one-nighters across America with artists like those were not going to satisfy him. He made albums in French, Italian, and German, to name a few, and toured Europe to support them. But he tired of his screaming teenaged fan base, so he hit the clubs, grown-up clubs. First the Copa in New York and then on to Vegas.
Footage of his earliest performances come via TV shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand, but the more intimate archival sequences come via the NFB’s exceptional 1963 short film Lonely Boy. Indeed I don’t think His Way could exist without it, showing as it does how Anka managed superstardom and parlayed his success to get into more adult venues.
In his late 20s, Anka realized that he could maximize his earnings – and his energy – by writing songs for other artists. The most famous of these is “My Way,” written for Frank Sinatra, which he composed when Sinatra told him he was retiring. Anka, panicked that he’d missed the chance to compose for the Rat Packer, immediately secured the rights to the melody from a French song “Comme d’habitude” and wrote the lyrics in five hours. The song was covered by numerous artists; you’ll laugh when you watch Sid Vicious’s famous version.
The full story of how Anka got the gig to compose the theme music for Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show is a telling one. Without giving anything away, he made Carson an offer he couldn’t refuse. Anka made so much money off the deal – royalties every time it was played, weeknights for 20 years – that the rules had to be changed to prevent any more such extravagant deals from being made.
Concert footage of Anka reveals a singular talent who plainly always loves what he does. His entrances were dramatic, often from the back of the huge theatres he went on to play. He got off on heading into the audience to press the flesh – lips to cheeks especially – of audience members. He’s still performing, a point made by the frame of the film: his prep and performance on New Year’s 2024. And he can still sing.
The TIFF program blurb for the doc credits the star’s candour, referring to his openness about the stress fame put on his first marriage to Anne de Zogheb, which is a bit of a reach. Zogheb gave up her successful career as a fashion model to wed Anka and gave him five daughters. When they were finally empty nesters, she asked Anka to retire from constant touring. Anka wouldn’t do that and they divorced. Fame didn’t dissolve his marriage; Anka’s addiction to fame did. He remarried two times to women decades younger than he. But that’s how it was for male stars of his vintage.
Apart from these details, including a comment from his eldest daughter that Anka’s stints on the road were hard on her mother, this documentary qualifies as hagiography. Nobody else has anything bad to see about him. It’s a celebration of a prodigious talent and a brilliant businessman who maintained control over his career in ways unheard of for such a young performer. He plainly had a good deal of control over this aptly named film too. This is is Paul Anka, his way.
Lonely Boy premieres at TIFF 2024.
Get more coverage from this year’s festival here.
