BTL: You mentioned in the Netflix documentary that there aren’t many pictures of Ma Rainey…. I saw it at one of its final previews before it opened up back in 1984. I wanted a sense, and Mark and I were very interested in the history of [it], so anytime you’re watching this visual, you’re seeing not only what it had become but a hint of what it was before it became what it became. When she boiled it, it actually ends up softening the hair, which then in turn, she built the wig from horsehair strand by strand. It’s that horrible, ugly white, so that the sun didn’t become the white do in the white sky, just to make this place called Chicago so alien, and so odd to the people who have come there to record i.e. We just went on from there, because I would go digging for stuff, and then I mentioned it to him, and then he’d send me a compliment on the thing that I was digging for. Members of the "Rat Pack," from left, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Joey Bishop, perform at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas Jan. 20, 1960. The thing which I love about working with Branford is that in addition to being such a skilled composer, he’s also a musicologist. And though these men were friends in real life, and did meet in the Floridian city in February 1954, some suspension of belief is required here. Wolfe: It’s telling the audience hopefully every single thing they need to know, so that by the time characters literally start speaking, we know everything. It’s hard to imagine Cassius Clay ever taking a back seat in a discussion or standing down from a fight, but his is by no means the loudest voice in the room in One Night in Miami. BTL: I have to ask about making the music and working with Branford Marsalis. You’re busy doing the thing. It’s so thrilling when you have these collaborations that don’t have — for lack of better words — that aren’t bogged down by the effort of two people or two artists collaborating, but they have sort of the exhilaration of two artists collaborating. Wolfe: Ma recorded with Paramount Studios, and Paramount Recording, and historically, as I understand it, they had inferior equipment compared to some of the recordings that were happening in New York City at the time. It is an effective opening that demonstrates the experience and point of view of all four will contribute to One Night in Miami’s successful portrayal of a common struggle, a burden they all must bear. BTL: I felt bad for the actor playing the upright bass, because that’s a tough instrument to have to lug around. He wasn’t doing it to show off. However, it is the conflict between Sam and Malcolm, with each given their turn to consider the other’s position, that sees both actors, and the film itself, excel. I like digging into worlds and finding out as much as I possibly can about every single aspect of that world, and then you have somebody who is totally knowledgeable, is a musical historian, who would fill in any of the blanks and answer any of the questions that I had. BTL: That opening scene is pretty amazing in setting up the overall look of the movie with the costumes, the cinematography, but it also seems like that one scene that’s less than ten minutes could have added a ton of money to the budget. George C. Wolfe: No, I didn’t really… August and I were working in New York at the exact same time. Charles Dutton was playing Levee, and it was this monumental, high up octane performance. Copyright © 2021 Cinevue. Invariably, we got to talking about some of his craft collaborators like Cinematographer Tobias A. Schliessler, Production Designer Mark Ricker and Costume Designer Ann Roth. Netflix adapting gay webcomic ‘Heartstopper’ into live action series Alice Oseman's popular gay comic follows two teens who start a friendship and end … Hunter will also be involved with writing screenplay for the project, reports ew.com. Wolfe: No, and the thing which was amazing is Ma Rainey had a horsehair wig in real life, so I felt with Anne Roth, we wanted a horsehair wig, so Mia [Neal], who did the wig, she found and bought some horsehair, which was covered in lice and manure, so she had to boil it. With a career that has spanned nearly thirty years, Wolfe has only directed six films during that time, but his latest, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, adapted from August Wilson’s 1984 play, is going to make Wolfe far more in demand and may even put him into the Oscar race. I loved it. Adapting his own 2013 theatre piece, playwright Kemp Powers penned the script for this who’s-who gathering of sporting, soul and political legends, and in King’s hands the material flies from stage to screen without missing a beat. So yes and no. “Just because I am a militant doesn’t mean I don’t know how to have good time,” says their host. • End of Week Production Notes 2/26/21: Paramount+ Launch Announcement, Next Fincher Flick and More News, • Guild of Music Supervisors Announces 11th Annual Award Nominees, • Art Directors Guild Announces Nominations for 25th Annual Awards, • Wooden Camera Launches New Canon EOS C70 Accessories, • 71st Annual ACE Eddie Awards Shifted Forward by One Day, • Sony Electronics Launches Small Scale FX3 Full-Frame Camera, • Over the Weekend 2/22/21: Industry Pleas to Senate for Pandemic Insurance/Relief and More News. We know that he’s trying to subvert her authority. The dynamic that I remember most is the combustion of Charles Dutton’s performance, and that’s like 9,000 years ago, 1984. BTL: Had you worked with Production Designer Mark Ricker before on something else? Wolfe: A lot of the beginning parts of the script for the play, it was the guys in the band room telling these extraordinary stories but waiting for Ma to show up, so I made a decision that we needed to see Ma right away because her name is in the title, and I don’t want to spend time waiting on a character to appear. The film's screenplay is by David Hare, known as a widely produced playwright and for writing the series Collateral seen on BBC Two last year. BTL: When you watch it a second time, you really start noticing that stuff, so the movie has some great replay value, which I always enjoy. But to do so overlooks that this is a superbly constructed film in its own right. Wolfe: There are seven. It is February 25th 1964 and the day that Cassius Clay will fight Sonny Liston in Miami. You may have the best movie idea of all time, but if your script isn't formatted correctly, there's a high chance it will never even get read. BTL: I was curious if there were any pictures of her in the studio or the studios at that time, because I’d sometimes ask if I had pictures of my studio days, and I’d just say, “No, we were working. Which is amazing. Less than a year after this night, two of these shining lights would no longer be with us and that knowledge hangs heavy in the air of that motel room. Ben-Adir’s weary, browbeaten performance betrays a knowledge that he may not be long for this world, and taking his brothers-in-arms into his confidence before the inevitable – which only he seems able to see – is vital. Wolfe:  I think he had been working on it before, and then once I got involved, for me, it was a clean slate, because I had to figure out how to make it work, so I dug in and started working with him, but also just sort of processing and ingesting the material and doing what I needed to do. Sometimes, we’d be finished the song, and he was still playing it to try to show me that he was still growing with it. The world of film is extremely competitive. Hodge, more of a calming safety blanket to throw over fiery tempers, is nonetheless well aware of the injustice he has a responsibility to combat as an icon of sports, and soon to be action hero. They worked very hard. Plummer’s film debut came in Sidney Lumet’s “Stage Struck” in 1958. When I first got involved, I said, “Okay, we need to find Levee’s sound, because Levee is the future. BTL: How did you work with him and his art team to design that studio, which also has a control room overlooking the studio, so it’s clearly well researched before they built it. Kings of their own sporting professions, Goree’s diction and delivery is spot-on for the exuberant, ebullient Clay and a role of the eyes as he says “I told you he’s ugly” during the Liston fight is just superb. Adapting his own 2013 theatre piece, playwright Kemp Powers penned the script for this who’s-who gathering of sporting, soul and political legends, and in King’s hands the material flies from stage to screen without missing a beat. BTL: This was my first experience with this August Wilson play, but I moved to New York to work in recording studios, so I was pretty excited when I saw them recording Ma’s tracks to lacquer, which obviously isn’t something that’s been done in almost 100 years. There’s a lot to pull apart and King does so extremely well. How to Write Movie Scripts. I had a tremendous amount of fun working with him. It wasn’t built to be a recording studio. If art in its most simplistic explanation is a reflection of the human experience, then the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created a particularly harsh experience for artists, ready with a The undue attention it attracts is alluded to as his paranoia mounts. Wiip is adapting the play "1984," based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," as a five-part series for television. Wolfe: That was Michael Potts, and Branford said that by the time Michael showed up, he had learned every single thing. I had the idea that it would be a factory, and that elevated area was where the managers would sit up there and watch the workers working down below. BTL: I don’t want to age you, but had you actually seen the original run of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Broadway? BTL: I would guess that 90% of the audience wouldn’t understand what they’re watching in that scene. The guys arriving on the El Train, that was crafted – the stairs descending were crafted by Mark – and we did the green screen work around it so that we can build up this whole industrial working class neighborhood. Someone gave me a free ticket, I remember very specifically. Denzel and I were talking, and he asked me to direct Ma Rainey. It became really thrilling, because everybody was so invested. BTL: Was the outdoor scenes done on a backlot? While that was happening, they would leave rehearsals and go to their musical tutoring sequences. Darren Aronofsky is getting into the A24 business with his next directorial feature “The Whale,” adapted from Samuel D. Hunter’s critically acclaimed 2012 play of … BTL: Talking about the heat, that kind of leads to the makeup and hair for Viola and for Chadwick. BTL: You can tell there’s an amazing amount of research involved. I was probably 29-30, something like that. The actors were invested in embodying the truth, and everybody working on the project, from people making wigs, to props, to everything, was so invested in getting every single detail right. Does Malcolm’s constant anger and castigation of their oppressors help or hinder him? BTL: And all of the actors actually learned the instruments they were playing? He says the original idea for the new film … At one time, he once asked me to direct a play of his, but he hadn’t written it yet, and I was tied up, because I was running the Public Theater at the time. There's an important question that lies at the heart of The Seven Sides of Shakespeare, one it seems director Tom Miller and writer-star Shamrock McShane did not ask themselves before adapting the one-person play: outside of those living in and familiar with the local stage scene in Gainesville, Florida, who will care about the Bard's… “I filled Joe up with my life,” says Powers, whose credits include the stage and film versions of Amazon Studios’ awards contender One Night In Miami. Brendan Fraser ( The Mummy , … The film is celebrated for its thought-provoking depiction of the anxiety over whether a nonhuman entity could mimic or exceed human abilities, but analyzing the early sections of the film, before artificial intelligence is even introduced, reveals a compelling examination of humans’ inability to articulate their thoughts and feelings. In the film, Ma has come to Chicago to record some new records, but her ongoing conflict with her showboating trumpet player Levee (the late Chadwick Boseman), her manager and the record label’s white management leads to a less-than-desirable recording experience. He played the bass – it was amazing. I loved the detail of how it was done – it was so endlessly fascinating to me. BTL: I’d be interested to know what you ended up cutting from the play. We know that there’s a rivalry between Ma and Levee or there’s a rivalry with him. I think he and I literally only met once, strangely enough. Wolfe: No, this was our first time. If you were to judge a director by the number of movies they’ve released into movie theaters, you’d be paying a huge disservice to Director George C. Wolfe, who has won multiple Tony, Obie and Drama Desk Awards for his stage direction as well as a Directors Guild award for directing the 2005 HBO television film, Lackawanna Blues. Wolfe: But it’s one that actually functions, so even though they don’t understand the details of it, they understand the archaic nature and what it’s there to do, even though they won’t be able to analyze it. That’s one of the things that I love about film is that everything matters, everything matters. Zachary Levi has become a popular addition to the DCEU, playing the kid-turned-adult superhero in Shazam! BTL: Did you connect with the material when you first saw it? Naysayers will decry her adaptation of the stage play material retaining too much of its theatrical provenance and – for the majority of its runtime – one-room setting. You’re not recording the fact that you just did the thing that you just did. It was very important, and I also wanted to take advantage of the fact that except for the beginning and end of the film, it all takes place in one day. British actress Naomi Ackie is to play Whitney Houston in a new film about the late singer's life. For it is togetherness, solidarity and the power of a collective voice from four of the greatest talents of the Civil Rights Era that define Regina King’s remarkable feature directorial debut. We had a two-week rehearsal period in which I work with them on script and character and all this other stuff. And does Sam really sit on the fence, or not see the line in the sand between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as Malcolm says – or is he more shrewdly playing the system his own way? Ma is in many respects the past.” I got off the phone with him, and within an hour, he had sent me these recordings of all these artists who were the embodiment of what the future sound was. It is February 25 th 1964 and the day that Cassius Clay will fight Sonny Liston in Miami. Or, at least, not all the time. That I remember very vividly. I love contrivances which very frequently are used in film is there’s a time crunch and so I wanted to intensify and magnify that equation as well. And you can’t cheat on anything. Wolfe: Extraordinary. It existed behind a chair manufacturing company in Chicago, so the idea that this was a repurposed room. If you do have to age me, life is doing that quite well. No one was taking pictures.”. I would assume you were friends with August Wilson or at least peers since you both were working on Broadway at the same time? Wolfe: No, we had to build it, because we had to spend so much time in there, but isn’t that equipment extraordinary? It became this really great fun collaboration. I don’t keep track of how much money gets spent, somebody else can do that. But with no women, booze or food, two tubs of vanilla ice cream are all that Malcolm has to offer. It shows how fragile, and here she is the quote-unquote “Mother of the Blues.” One of the things that’s been so thrilling to me about the response to the film is not just the response to everybody’s work, but it’s ignited an authentic curiosity about Ma Rainey and who she was and her music. The film is based on award-winning playwright Samuel D. Hunter's stage play of the same name. They did such an amazing job, and they look so different, I’m not sure I would have known it was them going into it. Wolfe: Absolutely, and the entire crew was so ferociously dedicated to getting it right and putting forth the truth, because when you’re doing a period piece, the truth is in every single detail. (He also received an Emmy nomination for that last one.). I wanted to see her, get to know her, know the dynamics in this, what I like to call “the prologue” that happens before the first dialogue happens, which is her in the South to the North, to her and Levee creating a rivalry on stage, and then going on from there. So I’m very thrilled and very proud of that. So that’s what it really was about. Through the course of it, I ended up probably cutting hours’ worth of material out of it in order to adapt it into a film. The title character of Ma Rainey, played by Viola Davis, is fashioned after the well-regarded “Queen of the Blues,” whose career in the early-to-mid 1920’s inspired so many other musicians and singers despite not getting nearly as much credit as her peers. Chadwick, a very, very, very very driven actor wanted to know the exact fingerings, so Branford had someone do the fingering for all of the music that he was going to be playing, and he dug into it and evolved that. Below the Line: I feel that this project came together fairly organically since Denzel Washington [one of the film’s producers] directed and co-starred with Viola Davis in Fences. No doubt thanks to her own wealth of acting experience, King elicits outstanding performances from her cast, proving that big boys do cry when the stakes are high enough and love, respect and hope triumph over hate. Wolfe: Absolutely. I knew Viola from New York… it’s all these New York connections. I made the decision that the sky would never be blue — the sky would be white. Total. Look past, or even simply ignore the source material, and One Night in Miami is a fraction in time of a period that resonates today. I’m just deeply invested in the storytelling, and also giving the audience all the information and the weapons they need, so they can relax into the story. 20 live jobs - The Stage Jobs has the biggest selection of theatre jobs and jobs in the performing arts including backstage theatre jobs, offstage theatre jobs and performer jobs. Paste Movies is your guide to the best in film, whether you're watching in a theater or at home on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO or on demand. Wolfe: No, we did that in Pittsburgh – we filmed in Pittsburgh. The two-time Oscar nominee coped with darkness and birds in the movie Penguin Bloom, the true story of a northern beaches woman paralysed in a holiday accident. THE pandemic has taught us all to expect the unexpected. We know that he’s very ambitious. Wolfe: Exactly. Below the Line spoke with Mr. Wolfe over the phone last week. NEARLY half of UK exporters are facing difficulties in adapting to changes in the trade of goods arising from the new post-Brexit arrangements, a large-scale study has found. The weight, and that it takes three minutes for that weight to drop, which is why most of the recordings were three minutes. Michael Potts, Glynn Turman and Colman Domingo in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. An even-handed prequel to the main bout introduces us to Clay (Eli Goree), fighting Henry Cooper a year previously in London; Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) making an ill-fated debut at the Copacabana; legendary NFL running back Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) visiting supposed family friends in Georgia; and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) returning home to his wife, as his plans to leave the Nation of Islam come close to fruition. Wolfe: They all had tutors. BTL: Tobias did an amazing job with the cinematography, something I definitely noticed on second viewing. I would say things like, “I live in New York City where in August, it’s so unbearably hot, you can almost see the heat.” In talking to him and then talking to visual effects, I said, “I want to be able to sese the heat.” The play was set in winter, and I wanted to set the film in summer just to magnify the intensity of the emotions that everybody was going through. Take nothing for granted in the world right now – every routine is suddenly subject to change. Obviously, Ma Rainey was someone who had a huge impact on music, first on the blues but then also on rock ‘n’ roll. I remember Theresa Merritt was playing Ma Rainey, and it was a new voice. He was just doing it, because he was just obsessive with getting it right. How did you work with him? Ma and her band. BTL: Had Denzel already been adapting the play when he asked you to direct? He’s a historian. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom can be viewed on Netflix. Most small business owners in Ireland are optimistic about their future, despite the ongoing challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. George C. Wolfe (L) on set with Viola Davis, If you were to judge a director by the number of movies they’ve released into movie theaters, you’d be paying a huge disservice to Director George C. Wolfe, who has won multiple Tony, Obie and Drama Desk Awards for his stage direction as well as a Directors Guild award for directing the 2005 HBO television film, Lackawanna Blues. On the planet. The idea was that we would then take an old factory, as the head of the studio did, and turn it into a recording session. Wolfe: Yeah, I did. I’ve known Denzel for a long time, I knew Viola for a long time, and I knew August, but I knew him the least, if you will. A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film.The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. The play, which was first staged in 2012, is about a reclusive 600-pound man eating himself to death at his apartment on the outskirts of Mormon County, Idaho. Ready to celebrate his title fight victory against Liston, the larger than life Clay – on the verge of joining the nation and becoming Muhammad Ali, unaware that Malcolm X seeks to leave – joins his pals at a cheap motel for a party to remember. George C. Wolfe (C) on set with Viola Davis (L) and Chadwick Boseman. This will not be a night to forget, but not for the reasons three of them think. The film will be an adaptation of playwright Samuel D. Hunter‘s 2012 stage play of the same name, with Hunter on board to write the screenplay. All rights reserved. We had a really glorious collaboration, and we worked extremely well together. Wolfe: Bradford and I first worked together on my last film, which was Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and that’s where he and I started our collaboration in many respects. We found this one street in Pittsburgh, and once again, just found these fabulous cars and it was Pittsburgh dressed for 1927 Chicago. The Film That Lit My Fuse is a Deadline video series that aims to provide an antidote to headlines about industry uncertainty by swinging the conversation back to the creative ambitions, formative … Did you find a real studio to dress it up for the majority of the film or did you build it? (He also received an Emmy nomination for that last one.)
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