The pop star doesn’t hold back on everything from her failed relationships, to her feud with Madonna, to her struggles as a woman in the music industry.
Lady Gaga isn’t holding anything back.
The 31-year-old pop star is laying it all bare in her new documentary, Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two, streaming now on Netflix.
During the one-hour-forty-minute runtime, Gaga tackles a myriad of tough subjects, including her own struggles in her love life, her public feud with Madonna and the challenges she’s faced as a woman in the music business. Preparations for Gaga’s 2016 album, Joanne, and her Super Bowl halftime performance serve as the threads tying the doc together, as cameras follow Gaga through celebrations, breakdowns and everything in between.
Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two is directed by Chris Moukarbel and produced by Live Nation Productions. The film premiered earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival. Here's just a few of the things Gaga gets candid about in the super-personal film:
1. On her relationships with men:
“My threshold for bullshit with men is, I don’t have one anymore. I don’t care. I don’t know if it’s cause I’m 30 and I feel better than ever. All my insecurities are gone, I don’t feel insecure about who I am as a woman, I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of what I have. I feel more sexy, sexual, all of that shit is better.”
2. On her chronic pain, stemming from a broken hip suffered on the 2012 Born This Way tour:
“If I get depressed, my body can spasm, like into a full body spasm. And it all kinda originates from this trauma in my hip from years ago."
3. On her feud with Madonna:
“The thing with me and Madonna, for example, is that I admired her always and I still admire her no matter what she might think of me. No, I do. The only thing that really bothers me about her is that I’m Italian and from New York so, like, if I got a problem with somebody, I’m gonna tell you to your face. But no matter how much respect I have for her as a performer, I could never wrap my head around the fact that she wouldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that I was reductive or whatever… No no no, like I saw it on f**king TV. Telling me that you think I’m a piece of sh*t through the media -- it’s like a guy passing me a note through his friend: ‘My buddy thinks you’re hot, here’s his…’ F**k you! Where’s your buddy f**king throwing up against the wall and kissing me? I just want Madonna to f**king push me up against the wall and kiss me and tell me I’m a piece of sh*t.”
4. On her struggles as a woman in the music industry:
“When producers, unlike Mark [Ronson], start to act like they’re the -- ‘You’d be nothing without me’ -- for women, especially, those men have so much power that they can have women in a way that no other men can. Whenever they want, whatever they want. The cocaine, the money, the champagne, the girls -- the hottest girls you’ve ever seen. And then I walk in the room and it’s like, eight times out of 10, I’m put in that category. And they expect from me what those girls have to offer, when that’s not at all what I have to offer in any way. That’s not why I’m here, I’m not a receptacle for your pain. I’m not just a place for you to put it.”
“The methodology behind what I’ve done is, when they wanted me to be sexy or wanted me to be pop, I always f**king put some absurd spin on it that made me feel like I was still in control. You know what, if I’m going to be sexy on the VMAs and sing about the paparazzi, I’m gonna do it while I’m bleeding to death and reminding you of what fame did to Marilyn Monroe, the original Norma Jean, and what it did to Anna Nicole Smith, and what it did to, yeah, you know who.” *
*After this conversation, Gaga tells the camera operator with a laugh, “You can use none of that footage.”
5. On her fashion evolution:
“I don’t need to have a million wigs on and all that sh*t to make a statement. I know that we want to elevate everything, I’m trying to elevate everything, but, like, I can’t elevate it to a point where I become Lady Gaga again. Because then it’s like, why did I even make this record?”
“Honestly, we’ve just seen me f**king glamorous for 10 years. It’s boring, it really is boring... I just want to have a uniform and I think my uniform should be a black t-shirt and black jeans and black boots. I just wear that a lot and we get versions of that made.” *
*Halfway through this conversation, Gaga removes her bikini top and continues completely topless. “Sorry, this is more comfortable."
6. On her fears about her health:
“Do I look pathetic? I’m so embarrassed. I don’t even know what a child birth will be like. … I think I can get pregnant, I just don’t know, what are my hips gonna do? I don’t f**king know. I’m not afraid of those things, like, getting pregnant and becoming older with the fans. I’m excited. I want to become an old rock star lady.”
7. On going through a public breakup while promoting her album:
“It’s hard enough when love isn’t working out the way you want it to and you’ve gotta walk down the street and have somebody go, ‘You OK?’ I had to go into the deepest pain of my life, I had to go into the part of myself that you don’t want to face."
“I just want to make music and make people happy and go on tour and have a family and I can never get it all right… My love life’s imploded. … It’s a sad day when it’s like, I’m doing the Super Bowl and I’m so excited to do it, but I can’t help but realize that when I sold 10 million records I lost Matt. I sold 30 million, I lose Luke. I get the movie, I lose Taylor. It’s like a turnover. This is the third time I’ve had my heart broken like this.... I’m alone every night. All these people will leave, right, they will leave and then I’ll be alone. I go from everyone touching me all day and talking at me all day to total silence.”
8. On the significance of performing at the Super Bowl halftime show:
“I’ve never really done a lifetime achievement award or a performance that was meant to celebrate my career, and I feel like this is that moment. And I was thinking this morning about it, and the truth is that there really isn’t anything bigger than this. So I really better enjoy it today because it’s never going to happen again.”
“It’s almost a little sad. It doesn’t get bigger than this. What am I going to do after this?”
9. On giving Beyonce a panic attack:
“That was the night that I gave Beyonce a panic attack,” she tells Mark Ronson in a post-credits scene. “I just always feel like when I’m with her and Jay-Z, I’m hanging out in the corner with like, nine joints hanging out of my mouth being like, ‘What’s up!’ And she’s like, ‘You’re not a lady, why? How is this working?’”
