David Cassidy knew that his phone calls with Saralena Weinfield, who was the executive producer of the documentary about his life, were being recorded.
Weinfield says, “It was a way for us to get to know each other and get ready for filming.” “I asked him if I could start recording the calls, and over the course of working with him, we had a lot of calls.”
The 67-year-old former “Partridge Family” teen idol would record a tribute album to his late father, singer/actor Jack Cassidy. This would be the subject of a documentary. But when Cassidy got very sick, things went in a completely different direction.
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When he was in the hospital, he shocked Weinfield by telling him over the phone that he was still drinking, even though he had denied it many times before. He also said that dementia he had talked about in public in February 2017 was caused by his long-term drinking.
Cause of Death of Cassidy
Cassidy died in November 2017 from organ failure, which is shown in “David Cassidy: The Last Session,” which airs Monday night on A&E as part of the network’s “Biography” series. The phone call is also shown in “David Cassidy: The Last Session.”
Weinfield says, “The audience is really hearing what I was hearing.” “That was my first phone call with David after he was taken to the hospital. I wanted to see how he was doing and see if he needed anything. Cassidy’s admission surprised her.
“I was surprised that he wanted to go there and talk so openly about it,” she says. “We didn’t talk about [his alcoholism] while we were filming. We knew his history, of course. I think David was thinking about his life and this is what he wanted to say about it.
“The Last Session” is a sensitive look at Cassidy’s life. It starts with him in a Chicago studio, barely able to walk and clearly having trouble with his memory and speech, to record the tribute album “Songs My Father Taught Me,” which came out after he died.
In September 2017, Cassidy talks openly about his relationship with Jack Cassidy, who died in 1976. It’s clear that their relationship was very rocky, even before Jack married Shirley Jones, who later played David’s mother on “The Partridge Family.”
Cassidy and Susan Dey in “The Partridge Family” Everett Collection “The Last Session” follows Cassidy in and out of the studio (he sees a neuropsychologist and gets a brain scan); archival footage (screaming fans, concerts, women fainting) and a series of revealing 1976 interviews Cassidy did with Elliott Mintz show his pain at being a teen idol who wasn’t respected for his musical skills.
“This story is about so much more than what happened when David died,” says Weinfield. “It’s really about a man who wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, the nature of fame, and the relationship between a father and son. We really tried to show David the way he wanted to be seen.
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After Cassidy’s death, Weinfield is asked if the documentary’s makers thought about ending it. “To be honest, we had a lot of talks and phone calls about whether or not to keep making the documentary,” she says. “We had to really take stock. David kept saying that he wanted this to be a three-dimensional portrait of him, and we felt that as a way to honor his death, we had to move forward and show him in a complicated way.
She says, “I hope people see him as the whole person he was.” “We grew to like and respect him as both a person and an artist so much.”
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