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[Referring to John Kelly’s performance as Joni Mitchell;] He sounds just like Joni Mitchell, he imitates her stage banter, he’s in drag and looks like a ghoulish version of the little pixie Joni Mitchell from the ‘60s. You’re laughing, but you’re laughing at yourself, at your own intensely serious investment in Joni Mitchell when you were in high school. But you’re also crying at the beauty of the music, and for that person in high school who loved those songs and who you feel rekindled. There’s this freedom to go from one emotion to the next, neither one undermining the other. If the real Joni Mitchell was up there, you’d be going, oh god, she’s older, oh she can’t hit that same note -- you get caught up in all the discrepancies of the real. There’s something about a beautiful surrogate that opens up this wealth of feeling that you wouldn’t have with the real thing. And to me, the best kind of cinema is not about the real -- it’s about a distance that you fill in, participate in with your life experiences, your memories, and your associations.
-- filmmaker Todd Haynes, quoted in the Village Voice
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