Suzanne Joe Kai’s Like A Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres is an unexpectedly emotional, deeply moving tribute to journalism, curiosity, and integrity all wrapped up in the documentary profile of Ben Fong-Torres, the writer who helped shape Rolling Stone during the magazine’s formative years. Kai includes a treasure trove of archival material, including some incredible audio clips from interviews that Fong-Torres conducted with everyone from Jim Morrison and Marvin Gaye, to Stevie Wonder and Elton John. Modern day interviews with colleagues, musicians, friends and family, and those who were influenced by Fong-Torres are all insightful and honest, and the interviews with Fong-Torres himself are filled with a beautiful candor. The photographs that accompanied many of his stories – as well as the other archival footage – are laid out across the screen like a magazine spread throughout the film, and audio clips are often played over text from his articles, so we’re given the opportunity to see how Fong-Torres took the raw material of an interview and transformed it into a finished piece. The film pointedly addresses the racism he endured in his youth – and the racism that still exists today – and it embraces the notion that the politics of art are inseparable from the art itself. This is a rich and beautiful biographical documentary about a remarkable music journalist.