Bob Ezrin: The Damn Book
2025 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Tara Johns
Genres: biography, documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Music producer Bob Ezrin, daunted by writing his memoir, turns to Alice Cooper and his own children and finds the real story lies in family and love behind the rock legends.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A music producer's memoir doc that pivots toward heartfelt family stuff instead of rock-star mythology—fine, but it's doing the exact emotional work everyone expects from this genre, and I'm not sure the whimsy earns its keep when sincerity is the real agenda.
Johns threads together interview, archive, and intimate testimony with the formal restraint of someone who understands how documentary sits in conversation with the biographical essay tradition—five minutes that know exactly where the weight should fall, and it lands with genuine compositional grace.
The choice to let Bob's children and Alice Cooper do the reframing rather than Bob himself is quietly brilliant; that single narrative pivot transforms what could've been a vanity piece into something about how legacy actually lives, and it's all sustained by the specificity of who gets to speak when.