MUSICALLY YOURS: Chadwick Boseman, playing James Brown, and director Tate Taylor work together on the sets of Get On Up.
Getting it together for James Brown biopic was a tough call.
Nevertheless, the film is finally set for release. By Lorraine Ali
Before James Brown became the Godfather of Soul, before he donned the cape, before he even cut a record, he was an impoverished kid from rural Georgia. In the new biopic Get on Up, the singer’s hardscrabble childhood sets the stage for a tumultuous fight to the top. Brown (played in his boyhood by brothers Jamarion and Jordan Scott) is raised in a brothel after being abandoned by destitute parents. He spends his nights as a barker, singing and dancing on the roadside.
One Sunday, he’s awakened by a glorious sound. In worn boots, he walks the dusty path to a nearby gospel church. Inside, he’s swept up by the joyous voices of the choir, but it’s the flamboyant preacher — clad in a crisp, white suit with dollar bills pinned to his lapels — who seals the deal.
Between the dirt and the heavens, James Brown’s musical aesthetic was born. It’s one of many pivotal scenes that capture the singer’s rise from staggering poverty and neglect to one of the most revered, misunderstood and game-changing performers in modern American music.
Starring Chadwick Boseman (42), the story follows the hardest-working man in showbiz from his childhood in the ’30s through a career apex during the civil rights era to the drug-addled, shotgun-wielder in the ‘90s. Director Tate Taylor knew what most of us did about James Brown before making the film — he was a larger-than-life character who popularised soul, founded funk, had countless children and often tangled with the law. But Taylor was intent on showing the man behind the multiple hits, hairdos, wives and money woes.
“It’s the showmanship, his missteps, his blunders that people tend to remember: Eddie Murphy on ‘SNL’ playing Brown in a hot tub or some of the poor decisions (Brown) made later in his life,” said Taylor, a white Southerner whose last film, The Help, also dealt with black culture in the Jim Crow South.
“But when I looked closer, I saw this brilliant, complicated genius. I don’t think people know what he did to change music, to change what people of his race felt they could accomplish in this world. He was an unsuspecting hero.”
Yet like Brown’s career, it wasn’t easy getting the Universal film, which opens tomorrow, off the ground. Musical biopics have had a mixed track record at best — for every Walk the Line there’s a Jersey Boys or Great Balls of Fire! — and Brown’s complex legacy presented particular problems. It took heavy lifting and big names from both the film and music worlds — Brian Grazer and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger — to make it happen.
Grazer tried to make the film before Brown died in 2006 but was unsuccessful because of liens, family and legal issues (South Carolina has taken control of the estate) and questions of ownership over the performer’s songs. Jagger was thinking of making a documentary about Brown. The Rolling Stones had ties with Peter Afterman, a music supervisor who’d worked with Brown’s estate to iron out publishing issues related to the soul singer’s vast song catalog. When Jagger heard about Grazer’s stalled project, he combined forces with the producer.
“In my formative years as a performer, he was very important to me,” said Jagger, who first met Brown in 1964 at the famous TAMI Show, a multibilled concert (Jan and Dean, the Supremes, among others) at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium that was shot and made into a film. “The way he super-energised the audience, the way he interacted with them. A lot of that comes from the church. I didn’t have that, so I learned a lot from looking at James, the way he moved, the way he held an audience’s attention.”
Though Boseman physically doesn’t resemble Brown, he musters enough moxie, charisma and athletic ability (the strut, the spark, the multiple stage splits) to play a convincing Godfather of Soul. He also portrays a troubled artist who, while amassing a fan base, drove away those closest to him with a punishing work ethic and a demand for perfection.
The volatile Brown character is a far cry from the more internal role of Jackie Robinson that Boseman played in 42. “I tried to find out, did (Brown) change when he came off that stage, and did he even know it if he did?” said Boseman, 32. “He was a complicated person, but he was also just a man.”
It’s those complexities (and of course the music) that attracted Grazer. “On one hand, he’s a really tough guy who couldn’t trust anybody,” said the producer. “But on the other hand, he’s a guy who can sing Please, Please, Please or Try Me, so there’s inner vulnerability and beauty about him.”
At a hotel in Santa Monica, Boseman and Taylor discussed the film — also featuring “Help” stars Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as well as Nelsan Ellis and Dan Aykroyd — and what it took to bring Brown to life on-screen. Taylor is outgoing and animated, Boseman low key and a bit shy. Both spoke with Southern accents (Taylor is from Mississippi, Boseman is from South Carolina), and bonded over their roots.
To research the role of Brown, the two studied footage of the performer, combed recordings, read numerous biographies and interviewed family members (of which there are many). The pacing of the film is as frenetic as Brown himself, jumping back and forth among time periods and scenarios, as if challenging the audience to keep up.
One of biggest challenges in making the $30mn film, though, was re-creating the spirit of Brown in his moves onstage. Back in the day, the singer’s shows went on sometimes for hours, filled with dance moves that have yet to be duplicated (see Prince/ Bruno Mars for close approximations).
That’s where Jagger stepped in. Unlike many musical biopics that never seem to get that rock-star thing right, Get on Up had one of the world’s best consultants. Jagger, who helped choose songs for the film, also helped Boseman with the live scenes.
“Just the physicality of being a performer,” Jagger said by phone from New York. “We played the music, and I tried to get across to Chad what it felt like to be a performer. How it was out there. We played (Brown’s album) Live at the Apollo quite a lot and talked about how James was managing it, how he was teasing the audience.”
Boseman mastered choreography such as the mashed potato and that signature shuffle for the numerous performance scenes in the film. He also sang along to master recordings like Please, Please, Please and Cold Sweat, so the music heard in the film is a combo of the actor and the real James Brown. — Los Angeles Times, MCT
Bradley learns
to flip burgers
Actor Bradley Cooper, who will be seen as a chef in his next film, tried to learn how to flip burgers at a fast food chain in preparation for the role. The Hangover star decided to practice his cooking skills in London’s Leicester Square branch of Burger King, as part of his preparation for upcoming film Adam Jones, in which he plays a chef training to get a third Michelin star, reports contactmusic.com. And it seems the actor was a natural at the grill, with a source telling British newspaper The Sun: “Bradley was training alongside genuine Burger King staff. The aim was to learn the ‘art of the flip’, which he nailed fairly quickly.”
“There was no real fanfare from him. You’d never know he was a big star by the way he spoke to people. He spent Sunday night learning the skills while the restaurant was open to the public and then filmed for most of the day on Monday,” the source added. — IANS
Jamie Foxx to play Tyson
Actor Jamie Foxx will reportedly be transformed into Mike Tyson for a new biopic. Foxx, 46, would be transformed by the CGI technology that changed Brad Pitt from an old man to a baby in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, reports mirror.co.uk. The boxer, 48, who was the youngest heavyweight champion at 20, also said Raging Bull director Martin Scorsese, would be involved. Tyson said: “Me and Jamie Foxx are in discussion, and we gonna do it. “Within a year to 18 months, we’re going to do the Mike Tyson story and he’s going to portray me, and now they have this new animation; because you know Jamie’s pretty much my age so he can’t portray me but they have this new system.” The film may be titled Champion. – IANS