Introduction
Interview
Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently interviewed director Eva Aridjis-Fuentes about her new documentary feature Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus. The film will begin limited screenings in New York City and Los Angeles starting March 7, 2025.
Lightly edited for content and clarity.
Glen Dower:
Ms Aridjis-Fuentes, how are you, Ma’am?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Good, how are you?
Glen Dower:
I’m excellent, thank you for your time today. So Goodbye Horses, I went into the film coming off covering another musical documentary, which was based on the life of Jim Morrison. And I naively went into this thinking, okay, this will be another cool music documentary. I’m going to get a bit of a bio, some conspiracy theories, etc, It’s going to be this and that. But no. After six minutes, there’s Q! And I sat up surprised. ‘This is her? Wow. So, we’re right into it.’
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Well, I did want there to be mystery at the beginning, because she’s not a household name, but people who are fans of hers are very obsessed with her. And she has a cult following. So, I wanted to make it clear to new audiences, people who weren’t familiar with her, give an intro of who she was, what she was known for, and all the mystery around her disappearance.
What’s interesting, I think, is her telling not only the story of her 10 years when she was making music in the United States and England but also the reasons behind her disappearance, which were very dramatic. It’s her telling the story of her life and what wound up being very much like a cradle-to-grave biography. And I think one of the things that sets it apart from other music docs is only part of it’s really about music, you know? She opened up to me, told stories and showed vulnerability.
And there’s an intimacy that we don’t usually see in documentaries about public figures because they’re very protective of their image, you know, and they’re very protective. They don’t want to talk about mistakes that they made. They don’t want to show that vulnerability. And so I think that’s one of the things that strikes people when they see this film is, is that openness of hers. And I think it makes them fall in love with her.
Glen Dower:
Yes, the whole production comes across as very, very honest, of course. No PR, there’s no publicist. And she has those little calls she makes to you saying she can’t wait to see you because she feels she can be herself one-to-one with you. And we just believe her. Now, I’m no way a music fan anymore. I’m more of a movie guy. The last piece of music I bought was during the previous millennium. But I love ‘that’ song. Of course, like most people, the first time I heard it was the Jame Gumb dance scene during Silence of the Lambs. I remember thinking ‘Wow, this is something special’.
And you return to the official Q video throughout. She was such a beauty. She was so striking. Indeed, all the way to her passing. Do you think maybe if she hadn’t stuck to her guns so much and maybe gone down the Dionne/Aretha route instead of being a rock goddess, she could have been more successful?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Maybe. I think one of the reasons the music industry didn’t appreciate her or give her a record deal in the US or the UK, part of it was that she was working in these genres of music that are more white, or considered more white, especially in the 80s/early 90s. It was ridiculous too, because African-American singers invented rock and roll! The first Rolling Stones record was all of them doing covers of African-American songs from the States.
But the 80s was a time when people were superficial and materialistic, so I think it was a combination of the genres of music that she was working with and also her appearance. She was six feet tall. She was a large woman. She wasn’t Whitney Houston. She wasn’t skinny, but as you say, she was incredibly gorgeous, but she wasn’t a model type. Other singers from that time, like Debbie Harry, were very petite and, you know, more conventionally beautiful front women. So I think it was a combination of both of those things.
Glen Dower:
The music industry missed out for sure. Let’s talk about documentaries. Can we say that Goodbye Horses itself wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t got in that taxi that one miraculous time with her?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Definitely! She was missing. She was underground. She had been for 25 years. Nobody knew where she was, including her old bandmates and best friends. And so if I hadn’t gotten into a cab, recognized her, and I hadn’t given her my number, and she called me the next day.
Glen Dower:
How quickly did you recognize her when you got in?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
There were a few clues. One of them was in early 2019, a writer for Dazed and Confused magazine had tried to find her. Her real name was Diane Luckey. And they said, oh, there’s a Diane Luckey listed as living in Staten Island. And they had gone to this house to see if she was there. And a man came out and said, no, she doesn’t live here. It was her husband, but they didn’t know that. She didn’t want to be found, especially not by someone who was just knocking on her door. So I’d read that.
And then when she picked me up in her car service, her GPS wasn’t working. And she started going completely the wrong way and told me like, oh, sorry, I just don’t know which way to go because I live in Staten Island. I was going from Brooklyn to Manhattan. So that was one of the clues.
Another one was she had a whole CD collection and she was listening to this Neil Young record, Harvest. A lot of times if you get in a taxi or an Uber or whatever, drivers listen to the radio. They don’t usually have their own CD collection! So that immediately let me know like, OK, this is a woman who cares about music. And, you know, and she was the right demographic. She was an African-American woman, maybe late 50s at the time. And I knew that she’d been a taxi driver in the 80s. And it wasn’t inconceivable that she was doing that again. So those were some of the clues.
Glen Dower:
And you say she called you straight away, the next morning. How quickly after that did the camera start rolling?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
So we met for lunch and I told her I was a filmmaker because at that point she didn’t even know that. And we started talking a bit about her past, and we started filming, I guess it was probably like two or three weeks later. She wanted to clean her house! She had to prepare a little bit after 25 years for her return to the public eye and the camera.
Glen Dower:
And you mentioned her husband as well. What a sweet gent. And of course, her son. Did you play with how quickly or late in Goodbye Horses they would be introduced?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Yeah. I wound up doing everything in chronological order, other than the beginning, you know, where I’m introducing who she was, what she did, her disappearance, and then sort of tell the story of how I met her.
Then she takes over and tells her story. Originally the film was going to end with her comeback concert, her return to the stage after 30 years with her old bandmates from England. So originally, the structure was going to be more like cutting back and forth between the past and the present, and sort of moving towards her return to the stage, at the same time, moving towards revealing why she had disappeared. But when she passed away I rethought the structure and obviously, that wasn’t going to happen anymore. So I made it a little more about my relationship with her.
Glen Dower:
It’s an incredibly heartfelt ending as well because it hit me. After all, my mother’s been through a similar operation, the hip replacement. And of course, my mother is a different demographic, so I can try and empathize with her son, James, who brings it up that she was a victim of malpractice. So sad. But you’re taking the documentary on tour, imminently. New York, Toronto, and many more. Would this have been a similar tour had Diane still been with us?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be bigger if she was still with us. I think she would be with me, you know, doing all the press, promoting the film, traveling with it, going to festivals, doing concerts, you know.
In addition to me losing someone who had become a very close friend, which was the worst part of it, it was also bad for the film because we weren’t done filming. I do take solace in the fact that she knew the film was happening. She got to see some of the footage. She knew there was going to be a record, the soundtrack. So, you know, her final years, the three years that we were working together, the last three years of her life, like she was full of hope and dreams and excitement, you know, for the future. And when she did pass away, it was very sort of unexpected and sudden.
I like to think that she’s aware of what’s happening now from somewhere. She was a very spiritual woman. She grew up singing in Baptist churches and was from a very religious family.
Glen Dower:
And she found her voice with her church choir, which is an awesome story. What can you tell us about her album?
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Yeah, the album was released on February 21st by Sacred Bones Records, so it’s available now. And I think people are going to watch the movie and then they’ll hopefully buy the record, which has all 23 songs from the movie on it. It’s sort of the official soundtrack. And if anyone wants to find out about screenings and theatrical runs, go to goodbyehorsesmovie.com.
Glen Dower:
Goodbyehorsesmovie.com it is. Eva, thank you so much, and best of luck with the film and the tour.
Eva Aridjis-Fuentes:
Thank you, Glen. Bye. Take care.
Goodbye Horses can be screened at the following locations:
March 7-13 Los Angeles (Nuart) & London (Rio)
March 14-20 New York City (Village East)
March 19 Toronto (Revue Cinema)
March 22 Asbury Park (Showroom Cinema)
March 30, April 3, Austin (Austin Film Society)
