3/5 Informative, but boring
  by Rebecca E. Moore (Bartlett, NH USA)
I am a middle school music teacher, and I bought this movie to add to my history of rock and roll unit. I was torn between "The Buddy Holly Story," with Gary Busey (which I've seen before and is great), and this one. In the end, I chose the "Real" version, because it is more historically accurate. It certainly is, but was comprised of mainly interviews, and a few clips of Buddy and the Crickets concert footage. I was disappointed, because I thought Paul McCartney would make a more exciting tribute to Buddy Holly. So, in short, factual and boring: yes, exciting and stimulating: no.

5/5 Great biography
  by D. Madir (Twin Cities, MN USA)
Interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and music industry leaders of 1950s make this as close to an autobiography as we're ever going to get from Buddy Holly, especially as it was produced only 20 or so years after his death. It's been 50 years since this talented 22 year old left us tragically, and still we ponder the unanswerable question "what if?"

This documentary sets the facts straight even if the details will always be open to interpretation, if only because each person's perception is their reality. One person will remember an event as evidence Buddy was brash and stubborn, while for another it proved he was sweet and polite; truth is in the eye of the beholder.

The lyrics to one of Buddy's final songs, That Makes It Tough, have become haunting in retrospect. "Memories will follow me forever, though I know my dreams cannot come true." And that's the impression of Buddy that I was left with by the people interviewed: an ambitious and talented "good ol' boy" from Lubbock, focused on his dreams, worthly of being remembered as fully human and not just a musical legend.

5/5 A splendid collection of contemporary interviews and vintage photos and film
  by Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
As Paul McCartney expresses it at the beginning of this fine documentary, he was dissatisfied with the version of the Buddy Holly story as told in the movie by that name, and hoped in this film to tell THE REAL BUDDY HOLLY STORY. He therefore set out to interview as many of the people who were either friends or family or fellow musicians and who are still alive. If you have read John Goldrosen's highly regarded biography THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY there will be little here that is unfamiliar, but it is always great to see film footage, some of it very raw, that can, of course, never be contained inside a book. The documentary manages a pretty balanced view of Buddy's life, though it politely skips over some of the more controversial aspects of his life, such as the somewhat acrimonious breakup of the Crickets near the end of Buddy's life and the complexities created by Buddy marrying a Hispanic female at a time when such a thing was pretty unusual. The film also ignores or minimizes other aspects of Buddy's life. For instance, there is some mention of his religious convictions, but no indication of how deep those were. In fact, Buddy remained a devout Baptist throughout his short life and even tithed to the church (giving 10% of your income to your local church). At the end of his life he was forming plans to record a collection of religious songs. Items like this are usually left out of accounts of Buddy's bio.

Still, this film has a lot of great footage and some wonderful interviews with a lot of great people, not just people who knew and performed with Buddy, but some who were deeply influenced by him, like Keith Richards. McCartney is a solid if not terribly penetrating interviewer (his position in the rock world would prevent his asking any uncomfortable questions, such as probing for details about the reputed fight between Buddy and a bandmate before appearing on Ed Sullivan).

The one thing that I've always regretted was just how little quality film footage there is of Buddy Holly performing. We've a lot a photographs and a satisfying number of studio recordings, but few recordings of Buddy performing live. Even one of the sequences found in this film shows Buddy lip synching rather than performing live. The film does include a great deal of rather raw footage, where we get visuals of Holly performing with either inadequate or no audio.

There may someday be a better documentary film about Buddy Holly, but it is unlikely that we will ever see one with as much first-rate original interview footage. And no film is likely to do a better job of documenting just how central Buddy Holly was to the development of rock music in the early sixties, when bands like the Beatles, following the example of Holly, started writing their own songs instead of doing covers of those written by others. It has often been stated that of all the deaths of performers in the history of music in the rock era, it was Holly's that most impoverished our culture. Only 22 at the time of his death, Holly could well have taken our music in completely new directions. We'll never know what he might have done, but what he actually accomplished was extraordinary.

1/5 The Real Buddy Holly Story
  by Susan Mcnevin (Phoenix AZ)
Anyone who was a Buddy Holly fan, this DVD is excellant to have. There is real footage, that will bring you back to that era. Paul McCartney did a wonderful job.
This is the best DVD on the market. Only wish there was more live footage, but Buddy died at the height of his career, so this is all that has been around.
Worth every penny!

5/5 Remembering Buddy Hollly
  by Mrs. Robert J. Long (Marietta, Georgia)
Great, wanted share with my children. Did it around the time the music died. Thank you for making it available.