Damon Winter/The New York Times
Justin Bieber with fans at a screening of his film, “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” in Times Square.
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Damon Winter/The New York TimesFans waiting in Times Square for tickets to the screening.
Standing in front of a theater packed with tween- and teenage girls at the Regal E-Walk Stadium 13 cinemas in Times Square, Mr. Braun was attempting to cajole or threaten them to take their seats promptly. If they did not, he warned, the evening’s preview screening of “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” a 3-D concert documentary, would not begin, and the floppy-haired 16-year-old pop-music sensation of its title would not join them in the theater.
“If you spend the entire movie turned around staring at Justin, he’s going to get really weirded out,” Mr. Braun said. “I promise if you watch the screen, you’re going to see him a lot.”
Mr. Bieber, who according to Nielsen Soundscan has sold more than 4.5 million copies of his albums “My World,” “My World 2.0” and “My Worlds Acoustic,” and more than 10 million digitally downloaded singles, did finally make a brief appearance before the film. Dressed in black D&G designer clothes and a purple bow tie, he shouted a quick “Wassup?” to the stunned, squealing masses and said, “I just want this movie to, um — to start.”
True to Mr. Braun’s promise, Mr. Bieber was visible throughout the night, in on-screen incarnations that were sometimes as revealing as the differing versions of him that showed up at the movie theater.
In “Never Say Never,” which is directed by Jon M. Chu and will be released by Paramount on Friday, Mr. Bieber is shown during his recent United States tour, singing innocuous hits like “Baby” and “One Less Lonely Girl” in 3-D performances as he seems to extend his hand directly to you or your daughter.
The home movies, documentary footage and YouTube clips that make up the rest of the film reveal more intimate facets of Mr. Bieber: the infant raised by a teenage mother in Stratford, Ontario; the 5- or 6-year-old whose innate sense of percussion is revealed by the Christmas gift of a bongo drum; the 12-year-old commanding sizable crowds as he busks around town with a guitar and a yearning little boy’s voice; and a 16-year-old traveling the United States at the center of an entourage of grown-ups.
At a red-carpet event held in a narrow cinema hallway before Wednesday’s screening, Mr. Bieber was exhibiting the same kind of preternatural poise he would show throughout the week on comedy programs like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “Saturday Night Live.” Facing a firing squad of paparazzi, he stared down the cameras one by one, shaking out his famous coif and blinking his eyes in rapid, robotic succession.
Yet sitting with Mr. Chu in an empty theater adjacent to the boisterous “Never Say Never” screening, Mr. Bieber seemed more like a typically restless adolescent who is very much on the edge of 17. He fumbled with his iPhone, field-stripped his 3-D glasses, relieving them of their lenses, and occasionally answered a reporter’s questions.
“You saw the movie yet?” he wanted to know. “You loved it?”
Mr. Chu, a 31-year-old director of the “Step Up” dance movie franchise, described his first meeting with the subject of “Never Say Never,” which occurred during Mr. Bieber’s summer tour.
“Justin doesn’t have any idea who I was,” Mr. Chu said. “So I walk in, I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m making your movie.’ And he’s like, ‘What movie?’ ”
Mr. Bieber offered a slightly different account. “I knew they were making a movie about me,” he said. “I just didn’t know who was doing it or what it was all about.”
Though he is followed by cameras nearly everywhere he goes, Mr. Bieber acknowledged the documentary process took some getting used to.
“It was really weird at first to have someone I didn’t know all up in my space, trying to video me,” he said of Mr. Chu. “But we got comfortable with each other, and it was good.”
Though Mr. Bieber said he trusted Mr. Chu to depict him as he hoped to be seen — “I wanted people to know that I’m not just some product, that I’m just a regular person, and I’ve been a musician my whole life” — Mr. Chu indicated that Mr. Bieber had some say over the final product.
“He would text me and be like, ‘Yo, I don’t want that picture in the bathtub,’ ” Mr. Chu said. He quickly changed his answer: “There’s no pictures of him in the bathtub. They do not exist.”
Mr. Bieber described several sequences in “Never Say Never” as “pretty crazy” (his performances with Miley Cyrus and Boyz II Men) or “pretty cool” (a brief appearance by his father, Jeremy, who is seen wiping away tears during his son’s concert in Toronto).
He seemed less interested in talking about the hometown friends he has known since childhood, who are seen early in the film but whose continued presence in Mr. Bieber’s life remains unclear.
“I mean, they support me,” Mr. Bieber said. “I don’t think they sit home and blast my music.”
Mr. Bieber was momentarily engaged when conversation turned to his impending March 1 birthday. Turning 16, he said, was “big because you get your driver’s license.” He added, “21’s big because you can legally go out and, like, party and stuff.” (Also: “Thirty is a big year. That’s when everyone just feels old.”)
But turning 17? “You’re just like another year,” he said.
Then Mr. Bieber let out a small yawn and said: “All right. We’re done, right?” His interview was over.
Remaining behind, Mr. Chu said the months he spent filming “Never Say Never” had made him more aware of the grueling schedule kept by Mr. Bieber, who will perform at the Grammy Awards on Sunday before resuming a world tour that runs through May.
“It can change you as a human being and make you a monster, and he’s not a monster,” Mr. Chu said. “He struggles days when he gets tired, but he really cares about the fans.”
Mr. Braun, who discovered Mr. Bieber on YouTube in 2008 and persuaded his mother to bring him to Atlanta to begin a professional music career, said in a telephone interview that the moment was right for Mr. Bieber to make his transition into films.
“People are asking, ‘Why do you want to do the movie already?’ ” Mr. Braun said. “I said, ‘Because Elvis did many movies.’ You know?”
Asked if he thought Mr. Bieber appreciated the work that went into making “Never Say Never,” Mr. Chu answered immediately that he did. Then he paused and reflected on the question.
“He shows you his appreciation in different ways,” Mr. Chu added. “Yesterday he punched me in the stomach and he said, ‘You’re a beast.’ In Justin’s world, that means, ‘You are amazing and thank you very much.’ So I take that.”
“If you spend the entire movie turned around staring at Justin, he’s going to get really weirded out,” Mr. Braun said. “I promise if you watch the screen, you’re going to see him a lot.”
Mr. Bieber, who according to Nielsen Soundscan has sold more than 4.5 million copies of his albums “My World,” “My World 2.0” and “My Worlds Acoustic,” and more than 10 million digitally downloaded singles, did finally make a brief appearance before the film. Dressed in black D&G designer clothes and a purple bow tie, he shouted a quick “Wassup?” to the stunned, squealing masses and said, “I just want this movie to, um — to start.”
True to Mr. Braun’s promise, Mr. Bieber was visible throughout the night, in on-screen incarnations that were sometimes as revealing as the differing versions of him that showed up at the movie theater.
In “Never Say Never,” which is directed by Jon M. Chu and will be released by Paramount on Friday, Mr. Bieber is shown during his recent United States tour, singing innocuous hits like “Baby” and “One Less Lonely Girl” in 3-D performances as he seems to extend his hand directly to you or your daughter.
The home movies, documentary footage and YouTube clips that make up the rest of the film reveal more intimate facets of Mr. Bieber: the infant raised by a teenage mother in Stratford, Ontario; the 5- or 6-year-old whose innate sense of percussion is revealed by the Christmas gift of a bongo drum; the 12-year-old commanding sizable crowds as he busks around town with a guitar and a yearning little boy’s voice; and a 16-year-old traveling the United States at the center of an entourage of grown-ups.
At a red-carpet event held in a narrow cinema hallway before Wednesday’s screening, Mr. Bieber was exhibiting the same kind of preternatural poise he would show throughout the week on comedy programs like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “Saturday Night Live.” Facing a firing squad of paparazzi, he stared down the cameras one by one, shaking out his famous coif and blinking his eyes in rapid, robotic succession.
Yet sitting with Mr. Chu in an empty theater adjacent to the boisterous “Never Say Never” screening, Mr. Bieber seemed more like a typically restless adolescent who is very much on the edge of 17. He fumbled with his iPhone, field-stripped his 3-D glasses, relieving them of their lenses, and occasionally answered a reporter’s questions.
“You saw the movie yet?” he wanted to know. “You loved it?”
Mr. Chu, a 31-year-old director of the “Step Up” dance movie franchise, described his first meeting with the subject of “Never Say Never,” which occurred during Mr. Bieber’s summer tour.
“Justin doesn’t have any idea who I was,” Mr. Chu said. “So I walk in, I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m making your movie.’ And he’s like, ‘What movie?’ ”
Mr. Bieber offered a slightly different account. “I knew they were making a movie about me,” he said. “I just didn’t know who was doing it or what it was all about.”
Though he is followed by cameras nearly everywhere he goes, Mr. Bieber acknowledged the documentary process took some getting used to.
“It was really weird at first to have someone I didn’t know all up in my space, trying to video me,” he said of Mr. Chu. “But we got comfortable with each other, and it was good.”
Though Mr. Bieber said he trusted Mr. Chu to depict him as he hoped to be seen — “I wanted people to know that I’m not just some product, that I’m just a regular person, and I’ve been a musician my whole life” — Mr. Chu indicated that Mr. Bieber had some say over the final product.
“He would text me and be like, ‘Yo, I don’t want that picture in the bathtub,’ ” Mr. Chu said. He quickly changed his answer: “There’s no pictures of him in the bathtub. They do not exist.”
Mr. Bieber described several sequences in “Never Say Never” as “pretty crazy” (his performances with Miley Cyrus and Boyz II Men) or “pretty cool” (a brief appearance by his father, Jeremy, who is seen wiping away tears during his son’s concert in Toronto).
He seemed less interested in talking about the hometown friends he has known since childhood, who are seen early in the film but whose continued presence in Mr. Bieber’s life remains unclear.
“I mean, they support me,” Mr. Bieber said. “I don’t think they sit home and blast my music.”
Mr. Bieber was momentarily engaged when conversation turned to his impending March 1 birthday. Turning 16, he said, was “big because you get your driver’s license.” He added, “21’s big because you can legally go out and, like, party and stuff.” (Also: “Thirty is a big year. That’s when everyone just feels old.”)
But turning 17? “You’re just like another year,” he said.
Then Mr. Bieber let out a small yawn and said: “All right. We’re done, right?” His interview was over.
Remaining behind, Mr. Chu said the months he spent filming “Never Say Never” had made him more aware of the grueling schedule kept by Mr. Bieber, who will perform at the Grammy Awards on Sunday before resuming a world tour that runs through May.
“It can change you as a human being and make you a monster, and he’s not a monster,” Mr. Chu said. “He struggles days when he gets tired, but he really cares about the fans.”
Mr. Braun, who discovered Mr. Bieber on YouTube in 2008 and persuaded his mother to bring him to Atlanta to begin a professional music career, said in a telephone interview that the moment was right for Mr. Bieber to make his transition into films.
“People are asking, ‘Why do you want to do the movie already?’ ” Mr. Braun said. “I said, ‘Because Elvis did many movies.’ You know?”
Asked if he thought Mr. Bieber appreciated the work that went into making “Never Say Never,” Mr. Chu answered immediately that he did. Then he paused and reflected on the question.
“He shows you his appreciation in different ways,” Mr. Chu added. “Yesterday he punched me in the stomach and he said, ‘You’re a beast.’ In Justin’s world, that means, ‘You are amazing and thank you very much.’ So I take that.”
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