By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --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 is 16 years old. 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."
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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