BEFORE: I've got to pause here and talk about my new approach to documentaries - when I started really focusing on them in 2015, I treated them like a little break from fictional movies, I think the first year with a doc break I focused on arty things, like, well, art from Vermeer to Banksy - but also chess, Lance Armstrong, grizzly bears, Edward Snowden and Atari games. OK, so I was a bit all over the place. But in 2017 I narrowed the focus to about a week and a half on geeky things like Comic-Con and fan films, and if interviewed subjects or actors making cameos carried over from one film to the next, all the better, but if there had to be a break in the chain, so be it, because docs follow different rules, after all.
Last year, I really hit my stride, with a 53-film long documentary chain (almost) all about rock, pop and the music industry, from the birth of the Beatles to the last concerts from Black Sabbath and Rush, and in-between were docs on everyone from the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, David Bowie and the Who right up to George Michael, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse. I covered them all - Chicago, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Elvis Presley, The Doors, Springsteen, James Brown, the Talking Heads, Michael Jackson, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot and Metallica. I didn't even have to be a FAN of every band, if there was a rockumentary available to me, I watched it.
And the amazing thing was, I found a chain that linked through ALL of them, because there was so much overlap in subject matter, plus the same people got interviewed time after time, and also because you really can't make a rockumentary without having some footage of a Beatle or a Rolling Stone in there somewhere, it seems. I got really lucky, but if I wasn't hooked on linking films together before, that really sealed the deal.
So, I've got another line-up of documentaries coming up in June/July, and I made sure they all link together - and since I'm currently working on a "perfect year" with no breaks yet, I've got an intro and an outro planned so the doc break won't break the chain. But, what should I do with the docs that DON'T fit in with the subject matter of those, and also don't seem to have any appearances by the same actors? Well, I can use them as bridging material if I get into a jam - today's documentary on Quincy Jones certainly had a lot of possibilities, with footage of everyone from Tom Hanks to Will Smith. But mostly it's got music industry people in it, and I've DONE all those docs before - this would have easily fit into last year's chain, only it got released a few months too late, and I didn't have access to a screener of it until January 2019, and now, of course, it's on Netflix too.
So, I'm going to use it to get me closer to "Avengers: Endgame", and if you can't figure it out from the credits below, by tomorrow it will be very obvious how that's going to happen. Oprah Winfrey carries over from "A Wrinkle in Time", and two people will carry over from this to tomorrow's (hint, hint) recently Oscar-nominated film. And going forward, if there's an opportunity to link between a fiction film and a doc, and that helps me out of a linking jam, I'm just going to take it. Right after my Mother's Day film next month, there's another doc that I can link to that will keep my chain alive, for example.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives" (Movie #3,022), "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall" (Movie #3,026)
THE PLOT: An intimate look into the life of icon Quincy Jones. A unique force in music and popular culture for 70 years, Jones has transcended racial and cultural boundaries.
AFTER: Now, this also means I'm probably going to be fighting with the IMD again. I spotted no less than 55 notable people who did NOT appear in the IMDB credits for "Quincy", because they appeared in archive footage, not footage shot FOR this film - but they still should be listed on the IMDB with the attributes "archive footage" and "uncredited". (I know, it seems like a contradiction to list an "uncredited" credit, but that is a real thing. Any notable person appearing in archive footage SHOULD appear in the IMDB listing, even if they're not mentioned in the closing credits.)
I also have to keep my own list during the year of all cameos and uncredited appearances, because they affect my totals at the end of the year. But when it comes to musicians and singers, IMDB will also count a SONG in a film as an appearance, and that's where we differ. I'm only going to count the times that Beyoncé appears visible on screen, or does a character voice for an animated film, and not an appearance of her voice when it's in a song that was licensed for a film's soundtrack. I know, it's a fine line between those last two, because they're both the voice of the same person in a film, but that's where I choose to draw the line. So again, I'll count archive footage of Bruce Springsteen, like in a concert or being interviewed on the news as an "appearance" but the IMDB doesn't, not in their search engine, anyway. And I WON'T count the use of a Bruce Springsteen song as an "appearance", but the IMDB apparently does. Until their web-site learns to filter out song credits from acting credits, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this.
This is sort of a warts-and-all documentary, with a lot of footage recorded by Quincy's daughter, during times when he was in the hospital after suffering a stroke, and then a blood clot a few months later. This prompts Quincy to stop drinking and start exercising again (after a long period of heavy drinking and not exercising, one assumes) and the rest of the time, he's traveling here and there, from Stockholm to Brazil to NYC, and finally to Washington to produce an event celebrating the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture. It's probably the intense travel schedule that put him in the hospital each time, but who can say?
Despite the connection with his daughter as his constant traveling companion for several months, in a way this continues my theme this week about absent fathers, because Quincy Jones, over the years, had seven children with five different women - six daughters and one son. He can say over and over that "family is the most important thing", but come on, there's no way he stayed constantly in touch with ALL of those kids all of the time, not when this ex lived in Sweden, and THAT one lived in L.A., meanwhile he was a constantly-in-demand music producer and arranger for so many decades.
I didn't realize that his career began as a musician and went so far back, playing in the band of Lionel Hampton and doing several tours before moving to New York City and finding work arranging music for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. I also didn't know that he played trumpet in the studio band that backed up Elvis Presley in his first few TV appearances. But he had to move to Paris to advance any further, because in American people somehow believed that black people could not arrange music for white artists - I'm not sure if this was just overtly racist, or if people just didn't think any of them had the technical skill for it. Anyway, he found arranging work in France that proved that theory wrong, either way.
When he came back to the U.S., he found work arranging music for Frank Sinatra ("Fly Me to the Moon") and also set his sights on breaking in to composing for film and TV, which is apparently where the real money was. He had a full 7-year run on many films, some of which I've never heard of, but the notable ones are "In Cold Blood", "In the Heat of the Night", "The Italian Job", "The Out-of-Towners", "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" and "They Call Me Mister Tibbs". TV themes he composed ranged from "Ironside" to "Sanford & Son". Then, of course, he produced the soundtrack to "The Wiz" and this led to working with Michael Jackson and producing the "Thriller" album.
But then, I'm glad the movie chooses to show his human side also, the parts that are medically not up to snuff - but considering this man survived brain aneurysms in the 1970's, and then the stroke and the blood clot during the making of this film, it's a wonder that he's still alive, and working hard in his mid 80's. A confessed workaholic who also admits to being bad at marriage, he'd better find a way to slow down or ease his workload, or he won't make it to 90 at this rate. It's great to do charity work, travel around and donate your time and effort to good causes, but at some point you've got to realize your limitations and think about your own health.
Also starring Quincy Jones (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Lionel Richie (ditto), Stevie Wonder (ditto), John Legend (ditto), Rashida Jones (last heard in "Inside Out"), Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Dr. Dre, Al Jarreau, Kendrick Lamar, Peggy Lipton, Will Smith (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chloe Bailey, Halle Bailey, Tony Bennett (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Carlos Santana (ditto), Beyoncé (last seen in "Amy"), Mary J. Blige (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Bono, Michael Caine (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Dave Chappelle (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Tom Hanks (ditto), Chuck D (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), D'Angelo, Lady Gaga (last seen in "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Jay Z (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Paul McCartney (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne"), Ricky Minor, Willie Nelson (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Colin Powell (last seen in "Fair Game"), Snoop Dogg, Billy Dee Williams (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Neil Young, Geoff Edgers, Adam Fell, Paulinho Da Costa, Greg Phillinganes, with archive footage of Louis Armstrong (last seen in "High Society"), Count Basie (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Chuck Berry (ditto), Miles Davis (ditto), Ray Charles (last seen in "20 Feet From Stardom"), Bruce Springsteen (ditto), Duke Ellington (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Little Richard (ditto), Don Cornelius (ditto), Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Aretha Franklin (also last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Dionne Warwick (ditto), The Notorious B.I.G. (ditto), Tupac Shakur, Ice-T (last seen in "Lemmy"), Lesley Gore, Lionel Hampton, Michael Jackson (last seen in "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Big Daddy Kane, Melle Mel, Suge Knight, Cyndi Lauper, Bonnie Raitt (last seen in "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"), Diana Ross (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Louis Johnson, John Robinson, Bruce Swedien (also last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall), Rod Temperton (ditto), Clark Terry, David Brinkley, George W. Bush (last seen in "12 Strong"), Laura Bush, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage"), Kool Moe Dee, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Vice"), Barack Obama (ditto), Michelle Obama, Jesse Jackson, Nastassja Kinski (last seen in "Town & Country"), Henry Mancini, Nelson Mandela, Steve McQueen (last seen in "The Cincinnati Kid"), Luciano Pavarotti, Sidney Poitier (last seen in "Lilies of the Field"), Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Back in Time"), Desmond Tutu, Pope John Paul II.
RATING: 6 out of 10 visits from a schizophrenic mother
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