Film on jazz pioneer took circuitous path
More than two decades after the seed was planted in Dan Pritzker’s mind to make a movie about jazz cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden, the world is finally getting to see the story he’s been trying to tell.
The writer-director’s film “Bolden” reimagines the life and music of the musician, of whom little is known. Many consider him the father of jazz.
The movie, playing this weekend at Town Square, stars Gary Carr (“Downton Abbey”) as Bolden, who was born in 1877 and died in Louisiana’s state asylum in 1931. It also features the musical talents of jazz master Wynton Marsalis, who wrote, arranged and performed music for the movie and was an executive producer on the project.
“This is a poetic, tragic story about a guy who changed everything about American music,” Pritzker said. “Let’s be clear, though, it’s not a biopic. It’s more of an allegory about the soul of America in my view.”
Pritzker, a guitarist and songwriter for the Chicago band Sonia Dada, said there’s little historical information about Bolden.
“There are no known recordings of him. None of his music exists, and it’s left to people’s imagination what he might have done. And there’s just one photo of him. Up until Donald Marquis’ book, ‘In Search of Buddy Bolden,’ people questioned whether he was even real,” Pritzker said.
He hadn’t heard of Bolden until a show promoter in 1997 mentioned him offhandedly as “having invented jazz.”
“I was shocked that I had not heard of the guy that had such a deep impact on me and millions of others,” Pritzker said.
“It seemed to me quintessentially American to relegate to anonymity the black American man that changed the fabric and tempo of the country. It struck me as tragic and poetic.”
Pritzker began filming the movie 12 years ago but reshot it in 2009 and 2010. Five years later, he tossed major parts of the script, then rewrote, recast and reshot much of the film again in Wilmington, North Carolina; Atlanta; and New Orleans.
Asked what took him so long to bring the project to fruition, he said bluntly, “I didn’t know what I was doing.
“I had never made a film,” Pritzker continued. “How do you really do that? It’s one thing to have an idea, but it’s another to capture it on film. I had to teach myself how to do this.”