‘Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story’ editor Alex Trudeau Viriato on the ‘ticking time bomb’ that crystallized the story [Exclusive Video Interview]
Jon Bon Jovi loved the ESPN+ docuseries “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” so much that he wanted the entire team to work on a Bon Jovi docuseries as the band approached its 40th anniversary. “I was standing right here when I got the phone call that Jon Bon Jovi wants you to tell his story,” “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story” editor Alex Trudeau Viriato tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: TV Editors panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). “You go through a lot of emotions at that time, like that work paid off. You took a chance on this other project and you’re watching it come to fruition and what does he want us to do? What does it look like? What is Bon Jovi’s story? What do I not know? And you kind of get into excitement, research mode to figure out where you’re at.”
The four-part Hulu series features two parallel storylines. One chronicles Bon Jovi’s rise through the ’80s, their turn-of-the-century resurgence when their 2000 album “Crush” and its lead single “It’s My Life” won them a new generation of fans, Richie Sambora‘s exit in 2013, their 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and everything in between. But Viriato, who also produced the show, and director Gotham Chopra weren’t just interested in a biographical rehash. They found the real spine of the story when Jon Bon Jovi developed vocal cord issues as the band was readying a 2022 tour.
“It all kind of came together when he started having those vocal issues and we realized that was going to be an A story and a B story,” Viriato says. “We’re gonna take you through the ’80s and we’re gonna have that fun and that was great, but that would almost be the easier story to tell because we could find that archival, we could dig into that. We could share the stories and we could interview the band members. But there’s this other ticking time bomb of his voice. Is Jon Bon Jovi ever gonna sing again? And that’s what I really wanted to tap into. People can’t relate to being the greatest band in the world or a rock star lifestyle, but they can relate to not being able to do the thing they love anymore. And you’re watching that guy go through that in real time. He just happens to also be Jon Bon Jovi.”
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Viriato used the two timelines to complement and contrast one another. “Something that was happening in the ’80s — look how great he was doing then — cut to he’s having a hard time now. Or to complement it — similar challenges were happening back then to today,” he continues. “And that was really the balance of our A and B story and how often we would cut the two to really create a unique story that both had the stakes of 2022 and the stakes of what they were going through in the ’80s.”
Bon Jovi underwent surgery in March 2022, as seen in the series, and has since recovered, but obviously there was no way of knowing that would happen while they were filming. Some of the most poignant moments in the show are when the singer is reckoning with the very real possibility of never being able to sing again and having to retire. In one moment post-op, Bon Jovi, having just seen “Elvis,” remarks that despite Elvis Presley‘s health issues that led to his death at 42, the King of Rock and Roll never lost his voice. But he, Jon Bon Jovi, would rather still be here in his 60s trying to rebuild his voice.
“The Elvis one, particularly, was one of the first three scenes I had sent to Jon. When Jon asked us to do it, we had one interview and we had whatever archival we could get off the internet. I had made three scenes for cadence, style, music choices and just kind of, this is kind of how I see this going and where we wanna go from here. And the Elvis one was something I really liked. That one sentence really meant a lot to me, like, what is it that you have that you’d rather have these things than your voice? What are those things? And that’s the documentary. That’s part of Jon’s story. Tell me what those things are that you’d rather have than just your voice and nothing else as is the Elvis example.”
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