Remembering Amy Winehouse: Film producer James Gay-Rees talks the making of Amy The Movie 

Producer James Gay-Rees details his "personal journey" making the Best Music Film-winning documentary featuring the late GRAMMY winner Amy Winehouse

(The Making Of GRAMMY-Winning Recordings series presents firsthand accounts of the creative process behind some of music\'s biggest recordings. The series\' current installments present insight and details about recordings that won 58th GRAMMY Awards.)

Producing a film like Amy, it\'s not really possible to get past the heartbreak of the story. The sad reality is that as one gets to know [

Amy Winehouse\'s] character more and more you can\'t help but fall in love with her. So making the film was a strange process — it became a weirdly personal journey with someone I\'d never met.    

When we began to make the movie, we didn\'t know much about Amy\'s story above and beyond the headlines we\'d all heard about — mostly from her grimmer later years. There were a lot of real low points in her story and there were times when we were questioning what we were trying to achieve with this film and what we were trying to say about Amy and the music business and the world we live in. But we discovered that there was enough about her to counterbalance some of the tragedy, and it became very satisfying to sort of reboot her legacy through the film.    

For me, the biggest revelation was in Amy\'s music. I started the film as a fan to some degree, but when you see how her music came directly from her life, you realize there aren\'t many people who write sincerely from the heart in such a completely fearless way, with such honesty and integrity.

There\'s a dynamic passage in which you see Amy and her boyfriend Blake [Fielder] wading through the paparazzi and you know their relationship is both incredibly passionate and incredibly toxic. Then you see her express all of that so perfectly and beautifully in a performance of "Love Is A Losing Game" at the Mercury Prize awards show. That\'s a very powerful moment where the film and the music really work together.

I was also really moved by the footage we used of Amy on a remote stage in London, where she performed via satellite for the 50th GRAMMYs. There\'s a great shot of her as Tony Bennett opens the envelope and reads her name as winner of Record Of The Year for "Rehab." Amy hugs her mum and whispers something in her ear. Watching the film, you can\'t really hear what she\'s saying, but what she was saying was, "It\'s Tony Bennett! It\'s Tony Bennett!" Amy was a real jazz lover, and the fact that a hero of hers was saying her name in the context of winning a GRAMMY just blew her mind. For that moment, her world was perfect.       

One of the most tragic elements of Amy\'s story was that she was just so vulnerable, and her very real struggles were reduced to a recurring joke in the media. Ultimately what I think I\'m proudest of with the film is that we had the honor and the privilege of reminding people of just how amazing a talent Amy Winehouse was before the demons kicked in, and we had the chance to remind everyone of just how much we lost.

(Producer James Gay-Rees\'s work on Amy garnered him a GRAMMY for Best Music Film at the 58th GRAMMY Awards. He recently completed work on an untitled documentary about Oasis to be released later this year, and is beginning work with Amy director Asif Kapadia on a documentary about Argentine soccer star Diego Maradonna.)

(Chuck Crisafulli is an L.A.-based journalist and author whose most recent works include Go To Hell: A Heated History Of The Underworld, Me And A Guy Named Elvis and Elvis: My Best Man.)

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