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Celine Dion Offers a Portrait of Resilience in New Documentary

Canadian singer Celine Dion attends the New York special screening of the documentary film "I Am: Celine Dion" at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 17, 2024. (AFP)
Canadian singer Celine Dion attends the New York special screening of the documentary film "I Am: Celine Dion" at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 17, 2024. (AFP)
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Celine Dion Offers a Portrait of Resilience in New Documentary

Canadian singer Celine Dion attends the New York special screening of the documentary film "I Am: Celine Dion" at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 17, 2024. (AFP)
Canadian singer Celine Dion attends the New York special screening of the documentary film "I Am: Celine Dion" at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on June 17, 2024. (AFP)

Music legend Celine Dion vowed Monday her "passion as a performer will never disappear," despite health struggles she says are still just a small part of her monumental story.

"I'm not dead," the singer told AFP on the red carpet ahead of the premiere of the new documentary "I Am: Celine Dion" that focuses on her soaring career and more recent struggles with a rare neurological disorder that has hampered her ability to perform.

"When life imposes something on you, you have two options. You deal with it or you don't want to deal with it," Dion said, calling her decision to speak out about her condition in the documentary both "the greatest gift and the greatest responsibility."

"It's not going to go away," she said of the disorder. "I'm going to have to deal with this. And I am."

The 56-year-old first disclosed in December 2022 that she had been diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome, a progressive autoimmune disorder with no cure.

Treatment can help alleviate symptoms of the condition that can cause stiff muscles in the torso, arms and legs as well as trigger severe spasms.

"The show will still go on," she promised, but said it was important to be honest about the struggle.

Irene Taylor, the Academy Award-nominated director behind the film, told AFP that Dion's one ask was to be able to tell her own story, in her own words.

"Would that be possible? Instead of other people talking about me?" she recalls the superstar requesting.

"That was like music to my ears as a storyteller," Taylor said.

"She just opened up and was very authentic ... in her joy and also in her suffering."

The documentary will begin streaming globally on June 25 on Prime Video.

Dion was forced to cancel a string of shows scheduled for 2023 and 2024, saying she was not strong enough to tour.

She made a surprise appearance earlier this year at the Grammy Awards, presenting the Album of the Year award to Taylor Swift.

Dion has sold more than 250 million albums during her decades-long career.

The Quebec-born star's "Courage World Tour" began in 2019, and Dion had completed 52 shows before the Covid-19 pandemic put the remainder on hold.

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Entertainment

Martin Mull, Hip Comic and Actor from 'Fernwood Tonight' and 'Roseanne,' Dies at 80

Martin Mull participates in “The Cool Kids” panel during the Fox Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File
Martin Mull participates in “The Cool Kids” panel during the Fox Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File
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Martin Mull, Hip Comic and Actor from 'Fernwood Tonight' and 'Roseanne,' Dies at 80

Martin Mull participates in “The Cool Kids” panel during the Fox Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File
Martin Mull participates in “The Cool Kids” panel during the Fox Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File

Martin Mull, whose droll, esoteric comedy and acting made him a hip sensation in the 1970s and later a beloved guest star on sitcoms including “Roseanne” and “Arrested Development,” has died, his daughter said Friday.
Mull's daughter, TV writer and comic artist Maggie Mull, said her father died at home on Thursday after “a valiant fight against a long illness.”
Mull, who was also a guitarist and painter, came to national fame with a recurring role on the Norman Lear-created satirical soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and the starring role in its spinoff, “Fernwood Tonight."
“He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials,” Maggie Mull said in an Instagram post. “He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the sign of a truly exceptional person—by many, many dogs.”
Known for his blonde hair and well-trimmed mustache, Mull was born in Chicago, raised in Ohio and Connecticut and studied art in Rhode Island and Rome.
His first foray into show business was as a songwriter, penning the 1970 semi-hit “A Girl Named Johnny Cash” for singer Jane Morgan.
He would combine music and comedy in an act that he brought to hip Hollywood clubs in the 1970s.
“In 1976 I was a guitar player and sit-down comic appearing at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip when Norman Lear walked in and heard me," Mull told The Associated Press in 1980. “He cast me as the wife beater on ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.’ Four months later I was spun off on my own show.”
His time on the Strip was memorialized in the 1973 country rock classic “Lonesome L.A. Cowboy" where the Riders of the Purple Sage give him a shoutout along with music luminaries Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.
“I know Kris and Rita and Marty Mull are hangin' at the Troubadour,” the song says.
On “Fernwood Tonight” (sometimes styled as “Fernwood 2 Night”), he played Barth Gimble, the host of a local talk show in a midwestern town and twin to his “Mary Hartman” character. Fred Willard, a frequent collaborator with very similar comic sensibilities, played his sidekick. It was later revamped as “America 2 Night” and set in Southern California.
He would get to be a real talk show host as a substitute for Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show."
Mull often played slightly sleazy, somewhat slimy and often smarmy characters as he did as Teri Garr's boss and Michael Keaton's foe in 1983's “Mr. Mom.” He played Colonel Mustard in the 1985 movie adaptation of the board game “Clue,” which, like many things Mull appeared in, has become a cult classic.
The 1980s also brought what many thought was his best work, “A History of White People in America,” a mockumentary that first aired on Cinemax. Mull co-created the show and starred as a “60 Minutes” style investigative reporter investigating all things milquetoast and mundane. Willard was again a co-star.
He wrote and starred in 1988's “Rented Lips" alongside Robert Downey Jr., whose father, Robert Sr., directed.
His co-star Jennifer Tilly said in an X post Friday that Mull was “such a witty charismatic and kind person.”
In the 1990s he was best known for his recurring role on several seasons on “Roseanne,” in which he played a warmer, less sleazy boss to the title character, an openly gay man whose partner was played by Willard, who died in 2020.
Mull would later play private eye Gene Parmesan on “Arrested Development,” a cult-classic character on a cult-classic show, and would be nominated for an Emmy, his first, in 2016 for a guest run on “Veep.”
“What I did on ‘Veep’ I’m very proud of, but I’d like to think it’s probably more collective, at my age it’s more collective,” Mull told the AP after his nomination. “It might go all the way back to ‘Fernwood.’”
Other comedians and actors were often his biggest fans.
“Martin was the greatest,” “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig said on X. “So funny, so talented, such a nice guy. Was lucky enough to act with him on The Jackie Thomas Show and treasured every moment being with a legend. Fernwood Tonight was so influential in my life.”
Mull is survived by his daughter and musician Wendy Haas, his wife since 1982.