Alanis Morissette: New doco Jagged more than just about the rise to stardom

Alanis Morissette isn’t happy with the Jagged doco about her historic breakthrough record but it’s a revealing examination of what female artists go through.

On the eve of Alanis Morissette meeting her Maverick Records boss lady Madonna, she was mugged at gunpoint in Los Angeles.

“When I walked in, they were whispering to her ‘Hey, she got held up at gunpoint, she’s a little PTSD, you know,” Morissette shares in the new documentary Jagged.

“And (Madonna) was like ‘I wanna get held up at gunpoint, that’s just such a cool story!’”

While the muggers got her wallet, they didn’t take the backpack which contained the lyrics and notes to songs for her historic record Jagged Little Pill.

Alanis Morissette in Jagged documentary which airs on Foxtel from Saturday. Picture: Supplied

The new documentary charts Morissette’s teen pop career before that historic record – 33 million copies and still counting – and the global explosion after its release.

Jagged has cool stories about how the songs, including hit singles Hand In My Pocket and Ironic, were created and the record’s triumph after being rejected by countless major labels.

But it also features horrific stories of Morissette’s music career beginnings, a 15-year-old pop aspirant being groomed for sex by older men, producers who monitored everything she ate to the extent she developed an eating disorder, and being slapped with the “angry” label by critics who reduced the record to its debut single You Oughta Know.

It’s unclear what about Jagged provoked Morissette to withdraw her endorsement of the doco, despite hours of interviews and access to her archives, ahead of its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

“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 post-partum depression during lockdown),” Morissette said in a statement at the time.

“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 was a teen pop star in Canada before Jagged Little Pill broke worldwide. Picture: Supplied

As the film launches throughout the world this week, director Alison Klayman is hopeful the fan reaction to this telling of Jagged Little Pill’s historic achievements may soften the subject’s opposition to it.

“This is not something I wanted to happen,” the director says.

“I know audiences will see this and respect her and respect the achievement of the album and then want to listen to the album and I just hope that is what she receives as this goes forward.

“That has always been what it was all about.”

Morissette’s authenticity as an artist is the ultimate takeaway from Jagged.

A 19-year-old songwriter dusts herself off after being dropped from her initial pop masters, forges her own path and makes music which not only continues to soundtrack the lives of millions but now enjoys another life as a musical theatre production which opens in Sydney next month.

Morissette’s confessional pop style paved the way for Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. Picture: Supplied

Klayman, and contributors to the film including Morissette’s friend and tour mate Shirley Manson of Garbage, say Jagged Little Pill’s legacy as a defining moment of the ‘90s and its ongoing influence on the impassioned confessional pop stars of now including Taylor Swift, Lorde and Olivia Rodrigo, can’t be understated.

There’s a montage of Swift, Beyonce and others singing You Oughta Know at concerts and award nights.

But what the film doesn’t do, and Morissette will never do, is name names and connect the dots on the men who may have influenced the record’s songs.

We will never know if Full House actor Dave Coulier was the You Oughta Know guy.

Morissette says in the documentary that the speculation focused on the celebrity boyfriends had discounted the fact there were other men in her life who were not as well-known but could have been the inspirations for her songs.

“The thing I am still amazed about with the whole Dave Coulier thing is I heard that rumour in the schoolyard; there was no Twitter in the ‘90s,” Klayman says.

“It’s such an interesting phenomenon of the ‘90s and how kids all around the world heard the same story because of just how big that album was.”

Jagged premieres on Foxtel on November 27 at 9.30pm and available on demand

Originally published as Alanis Morissette: New doco Jagged more than just about the rise to stardom