Randy Schmidt was just 13 and a student at Cordell Junior High when he watched The Karen Carpenter Story, a made-for-TV movie of the week on CBS.
That was 35 years ago. The next day, with the assistance of local librarian Alice Humphrey, he started researching the life and music of the 1970s pop music superstar.
That was just the beginning of a journey that would last for decades and lead the 1993 Cordell High School graduate to write a bestselling biography, Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, published in 2010, and write and produce a new award-winning film.
Since starting the documentary project in 2019, Schmidt has interviewed a number of Karen’s friends and insiders, including Carol Burnett, Olivia Newton- John, and Suzanne Somers. He also sat down with several singers inspired by Karen’s music, including Belinda Carlisle, Kristin Chenoweth, and Carnie Wilson.
These and numerous others are included in the documentary Film Threat magazine calls “an archival buffet of the Carpenters, their family, performances, appearances, and work sprinkled with interviews from several friends who are all celebrated writers, musicians, and artists.”
Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February 2023 and has since screened at nearly 30 film festivals across the country and around the world. A pay-per-view streaming premiere is forthcoming and it will be available on Amazon Prime later this year, but first Schmidt brings the film home to Cordell and the Washita Theater for a special fundraiser to benefit the historic theater.
The film begins at 3:00 p.m. this Saturday, January 20. There will be a Q&A afterwards and Schmidt will sign copies of his books. Tickets to the screening are just $3 and available online and at the door.
What follows is the film’s official synopsis from AMS Pictures: She was the first in a long line of celebrities to suffer from an eating disorder during an era when the vastly misunderstood phenomenon brought shame and public humiliation.
For the first time, we hear Karen Carpenter’s personal struggle in her own voice through never-before- released recordings—and through the legendary voices of those who knew her and were inspired by her music.
As the #1 American musical act of the 1970s, the Carpenters were on “Top of the World,” producing a string of pop masterpieces, including “Close to You,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
But behind closed doors, Karen’s quest for perfection resulted in low self-esteem, a disheartening love life, and a public battle with anorexia nervosa, which resulted in her untimely death at the age of only 32.
Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection is a captivating, revealing, and unvarnished documentary providing astounding new insight into the singer’s tragically short life and enduring musical legacy.