Â鶹´«Ã½

Skip to main content

Alanis Morissette blasts documentary 'Jagged' as 'salacious'

Alanis Morissette attends the "Jagged Little Pill" Broadway opening night in New York on Dec. 5, 2019.  (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP, File) Alanis Morissette attends the "Jagged Little Pill" Broadway opening night in New York on Dec. 5, 2019. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP, File)
Share
NEW YORK -

Just hours before the HBO documentary "Jagged" was to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday, Alanis Morissette criticized the film about her life as "reductive" and "salacious."

Morissette participated in the film, directed by Alison Klayman, sitting for lengthy interviews. But in a statement issued by her publicist, the Canadian musician said she would not be supporting the film, named after her breakthrough 1995 album, "Jagged Little Pill."

"I agreed to participate in a piece about the celebration of `Jagged Little Pill"s 25th anniversary, and was interviewed during a very vulnerable time (while in the midst of my third postpartum depression during lockdown)," wrote Morissette. "I was lulled into a false sense of security and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film. This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell."

Morissette didn't specify her issues with "Jagged," which is to premiere Nov. 19 on HBO. But its most sensitive material includes Morissette discussing sexual encounters when she was 15 that she calls statutory rape. The Washington Post earlier reported on that section of the film.

"It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part," Morissette says in the film. "I would always say I was consenting, and then I'd be reminded like `Hey, you were 15, you're not consenting at 15.' Now I'm like, 'Oh yeah, they're all pedophiles. It's all statutory rape."

Canada's age of consent has been 16 years old since 2008. A person under the age of 18 cannot consent if the sexual activity is with a person with authority over them. Youths 14 or 15 years old can consent to nonexploitive sexual activity when the age difference is no more than five years. Before 2008, the age of consent was 14. Morissette doesn't go into any detail on who the encounters were with.

Representatives for Klayman didn't immediately return requests for comment Tuesday. In an interview with Deadline Hollywood published Tuesday, Klayman, whose films include "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" and the Steve Bannon documentary "Brink," lamented that Morissette wouldn't be there for the premiere.

"It's a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself," Klayman said. "I think she's incredibly brave and the reaction when she saw it was that it was a really -- she could feel all the work, all the nuance that went into it. And again, she gave so much of her time and so much of her effort into making this and I think that the movie really speaks for itself."

Morissette is currently on tour and is to perform in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Wednesday.

"I have chosen not to attend any event around this movie for two reasons: one is that i am on tour right now. The other is that, not unlike many `stories' and unauthorized biographies out there over the years, this one includes implications and facts that are simply not true," said Morissette. "While there is beauty and some elements of accuracy in this/my story to be sure -- I ultimately won't be supporting someone else's reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell."

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

British Columbia saw a rare unanimous vote in its legislature in October 2019, when members passed a law adopting the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, setting out standards including free, prior and informed consent for actions affecting them.

A pedestrian has died after reportedly getting struck by an OPP cruiser in Bala early Sunday morning.

Two and a half years after losing her best friend and first love to suicide, Brooke Ford shared her story of grief and resilience at the CMHA Windsor-Essex Suicide Awareness Walk.

opinion

opinion How to make the most out of your TFSA

The Tax-Free Savings Account can be a powerful savings tool and investment vehicle. Financial contributor Christopher Liew explains how they work and how to take full advantage of them so you can reach your financial goals faster.

Local Spotlight

A tale about a taxicab hauling gold and sinking through the ice on Larder Lake, Ont., in December 1937 has captivated a man from that town for decades.

When a group of B.C. filmmakers set out on a small fishing boat near Powell River last week, they hoped to capture some video for a documentary on humpback whales. What happened next blew their minds.

A pizza chain in Edmonton claims to have the world's largest deliverable pizza.

Sarah McLachlan is returning to her hometown of Halifax in November.

Wayne MacKay is still playing basketball twice at Mount Allison University at 87 years old.

A man from a small rural Alberta town is making music that makes people laugh.

An Indigenous artist has a buyer-beware warning ahead of Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Police are looking to the public for help after thieves broke into a Lethbridge ice creamery, stealing from the store.

An ordinary day on the job delivering mail in East Elmwood quickly turned dramatic for Canada Post letter carrier Jared Plourde. A woman on his route was calling out in distress.