Billie Eilish has revealed how Justin Bieber’s concert films influenced her own tour documentary, which was co-directed by James Cameron and hits cinemas this week.
The global pop star shared the director’s chair with the iconic Avatar and Titanic filmmaker for Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour, a 3D film documenting her performance of the namesake 2024 album at a show in Manchester last year.
The doco sees Billie join a long line of other artists who’ve translated their tours to the big screen, which naturally begs the question: what does Billie, a bonafide and well-documented Justin Bieber superfan, think of Never Say Never and Believe?
“Those are kind of the only two concert films that I ever really loved and cared about, or even watched,” Billie told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“Not only do I watch and love those, but I watched them over, and over, and over again for years.”
Billie has made no secret of her enduring Belieber status. She recalled meeting him for the first time in 2019 at Coachella in her previous doco World’s A Little Blurry, and she once shared old pics of her childhood bedroom littered with Justin posters, including of Believe.
That pic later became the cover art for Billie and Justin’s collaborative remix of “Bad Guy” in 2019. Flash forward to this year and Billie got a full-circle moment when she joined Justin on stage for his performance of “One Less Lonely Girl” during his headlining Coachella set.
With such a storied admiration of his work, Billie told us Justin’s concert movies were part of the appeal when agreeing to do her own Hit Me Hard and Soft doco.
“The idea of a concert film or documentary was only appealing to me in the first place because of my love for those films,” Billie told P.TV.
“So of course, those [movies] are the reason that it’s interesting to me.”
While Billie’s fandom played some role in driving her own movie, she also said the “amazing” pitch for the Hit Me Hard and Soft doco was its own reason for bringing the tour to screen.
“Separately, I thought this was an amazing idea and had never done anything like it, and had never seen anything like it. So I think that was the other reason,” Billie said.
For his part, James told P.TV that while Billie’s doco isn’t his first foray into concert movies, since his production company was involved in Justin’s Never Say Never, it was definitely a more hands-on tour film credit.
“I was always at a distance,” James said of his company’s previous tour docos.
“So this was an exciting opportunity to do something so radically different from what I’ve been doing for the last few years. That’s always exciting in and of itself,” James added.
Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour hits Aussie cinemas on Thursday, May 7. P.TV’s full interview with Billie Eilish and James Cameron below.
Lead images: Billie Eilish/instagram, P.TV and Getty Images
The post Billie Eilish Rewatched Justin Bieber’s Concert Movies ‘Over & Over’ Before Making Her Own Film appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
