The Jazz Age
How the hell did a first-time director get Wynton Marsalis to score his silent Louis Armstrong biopic?
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[ silence is golden ]
It would've been enough if director/screenwriter Dan Pritzker had just made Louis, a sparklingly psychedelic sepia-toned silent and bloodlust-y mythological take on the young life of trumpeter Armstrong. But he had to throw in flickeringly sensual cinematography courtesy of Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter) a delightfully Chaplin-esque spin by comeback kid Jackie Earle Haley (Shutter Island, 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street) and a sexy turn-of-the-century period score composed and played by Wynton Marsalis, who'll repeat the favor August 31 at the Keswick with an all-star lineup — including classical pianist Cecile Licad — as accompanists. Then he had to throw his back story at you: Pritzker, the son of late Hyatt Hotels owner Jay Pritzker and member of the band Sonia Dada, had never made a film before, and he's got another on the 2011 docket — Bolden! about the legendary Buddy Bolden, who arguably invented jazz.
City Paper: So, here you are with a boldly unique silent homage to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, brothels and the birth of jazz in New Orleans. What came first in the process, your love of jazz or film?
Dan Pritzker: I wouldn't say either. I've always been musical and I've always loved jazz, though I wouldn't consider myself a snob. I like film. I see them reasonably often. Maybe six times a year. For me, the real impetus to do [Bolden!] was the notion that there may have been one guy who invented jazz and we've largely never heard of him. That to me is an emotional wrenching and compelling story. The storyteller side of me came out; I just had to tell it, so I made two films.
CP: So it's a personality-driven process as opposed to a specifically aesthetic or discipline-centric one. Why not just write a book?
DP: No [laughs]. I mean music has always been a big deal in my life. And maybe I'm underplaying my love of film. It's just that neither of those things alone were the reason for me to make two movies about one guy who changed my life as a musician and I'd never heard of that guy. Buddy Bolden. You ever hear of him?
CP: I did. But my family all played jazz and big-band stuff in orchestra pits. Let's start there: Why make a silent film about jazz and its most vocal proponent, literally and figuratively?
DP: That idea tickled me. While I was writing dialogue I went out and saw Chaplin's City Lights with the Chicago Symphony playing while it screened. I was blown away. I never had that experience before — it wasn't so much about the film as it was the black-and-white photography of it. I love old still photography. I thought it would be a worthwhile challenge trying to tell a real narrative through just pictures and music. I thought that it would be amazing to have this Bolden film, which is a full, dialogue-rich work, and a companion piece that's filled with a lot of the same characters and themes turned on their head but that was silent.
CP: Which is Louis — operatic, melodramatic, spectacular to look at. Honestly, no background in film?
DP: Other than paying eight dollars to see one — no [laughs]. It's a steep learning curve. OK, I hear your incredulity. I had worked in an R&B band for a while ... I was in Sonia Dada, wrote their songs, so I worked in collaborative arts. When I was playing a show in Boulder, one of the area's DJs turned me on to a book he was reading about Buddy Bolden, "the guy who invented jazz" he told me. He dropped an elephant on my head. I was playing a form of the music he created. It was poetic and tragic. And it fit into my wheelhouse. But I don't really like biopics. Ray was OK as was the Charlie Parker film [Bird] that I think Clint Eastwood made.
CP: Biopics are overly obvious with an awkward sense of exposition.
DP: Right. You know Parker's and Charles' story. But you don't know Bolden's because there's so little to know. He made no recordings, he went mad.
CP: Nothing to do but make up a story.
DP: Yes. It was an invitation to mythologize and from there, make myth of other stories surrounding his, like Louis Armstrong's. Here's little Louis in 1907 New Orleans who wants badly to learn to play trumpet. So, he saves the girl from the evil clutches. It's a melodrama. It's not history. There are historical sign points — his mother and her circumstances, [New Orleans drummer] Black Benny, the fact that Louis shot the gun off [to celebrate New Year's, which leads, in most accounts, to Armstrong learning how to play cornet in reform school], only in our story the gun shot is done out of altruism. Turn history on its head.
CP: Where are you in Bolden!? You're using the same cast, crew and composer for both films. You did it simultaneously.
DP: Middle of editing it. Hopefully it will come out end of 2011. I thought I was being completely efficient with the same crew and cast. If I knew then what I know now ...
CP: So how did a novice filmmaker get Wynton Marsalis, Vilimos Zsigmond and Jackie Earle Haley? I've made films and I didn't get Marsalis to score it.
DP: Did you ask him? As soon as I started I knew there was only one guy to do the music. I told that to my producer and asked him to make a meeting with Wynton. I asked my producer to do it rather than having me call because I didn't want to hear him say no. Oddly enough, Wynton immediately took a dinner meeting with us in New York City. Anything Buddy Bolden, he wants to hear the pitch. My producer asked me about my rap to Marsalis and I told him the film was about myth. He was born, died and was put in an asylum. There's no recorded music and one photo — that's a myth.
CP: Your producer must have sweated that since Marsalis is so steeped in the accuracy of the history of jazz and New Orleans, in particular.
DP: He did; until Wynton at the dinner turns to me, with a cup of tea in his hand and says ,"If you're going to do something on Bolden, it's going to have to be a myth." I thought my producer was going to fall over and die. Same thing sort-of happened with Vilmos. I was looking for an old master who learned how to light for black and white. I wanted classical photography, not someone hand-carrying a camera. I wasn't looking for something modern where you could tell what year it was made. I wanted something timeless. Again we asked — and he's an unforgettable character — and he agreed. He drove me out of my mind but he is one of the most inspiring people ever. And the look well, it's on the screen.
CP: True. It looks like a '20s silent but it's also dusty, bright and psychedelic like Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace.
DP: That's where I live. That was my secret intention.
CP: And Earle Haley: Here's this guy experiencing his own renaissance. How did you get him to go gloriously and effortlessly Chaplinesque?DP: He dug the idea of the Bolden film but he was really shocked about the silent film. It conjured a true "wha?" moment. He was really perplexed. He flew to North Carolina and we watched some Chaplin films, we talked and he was in. He was a nominee when he came down but he was willing to place his faith in a guy who not only had never made one film but was making two — one of them silent. Jackie's an artist. His contrast in work between the silent and the sound film — same character, different personas — was amazing. I think he thought "When am I ever going to get a chance to make something like this again?"
DP: You got three noted artists to work on your first-ever films. You must be confident.
CP: I have an enhanced sense of my own abilities [laughs]. Truly, I'm driven by my passions and genuinely think the people around me saw that and felt that. I'm inherently lazy unless I'm that passionate. Then I pull the camel through the eye of the needle. My sense from them, and so much of the crew, was that I was operating so small and independently that they knew exactly who was leading the project and how truly passionate I was. And remember if you have an idea that you want Wynton Marsalis to score, you should just call him.
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