Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob Lefsets Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guests today are the team behind the documentary Billy Preston.
Speaker 1: That's the way God planned it. We have three people
Speaker 1: on the podcast, so I'm going to have everybody introduced
Speaker 1: themselves individually. Let's start is the order they are on
Speaker 1: my screen. Paris Barklay, tell me about yourself and how
Speaker 1: you got involved in this movie.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm Paris Barclay. I'm a director, producer, a writer,
Speaker 2: and generally a very busy guy. And I got involved
Speaker 2: in this when Stephanie Elaine gave me a call and said,
Speaker 2: wouldn't you love to do a documentary? And I said what?
Speaker 2: And she said, no, it's about Billy Preston. I'm making
Speaker 2: up this converse. There wasn't quite as much fun as that,
Speaker 2: but nevertheless I was enthralled. I know Billy Preston just
Speaker 2: like we do a a certain generation, but I didn't
Speaker 2: know a full story. And the deeper I got into it,
Speaker 2: the more I read about it, the more I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I meant this guy is a parallel person
Speaker 2: to me, and I identify with him in so many
Speaker 2: different ways. I got to do this documentary.
Speaker 1: How long ago was that conversation?
Speaker 2: About four years ago? Now, right, ladies, I think it
Speaker 2: was about four years ago, is just before COVID. If
Speaker 2: you can remember those days before COVID where we actually
Speaker 2: met live and we didn't do zoom and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It was in that time. I have to ask you, say,
Speaker 1: you see parallels you identify can you expand on that?
Speaker 2: Oh, Billy Preston, I had the records, I knew the
Speaker 2: hit songs, but since I didn't know about his life.
Speaker 2: It took Daniel Shaw, who was a writer and a
Speaker 2: great friend of the entire enterprise, who had written a
Speaker 2: book proposal that really laid out some of the stories
Speaker 2: of his life and how he developed and part of
Speaker 2: his genius that we didn't all see. And as I
Speaker 2: got into it, I realized, Wow, I grew up in
Speaker 2: the church, Catholic church versus Baptist. I was a piano
Speaker 2: player and an organist, not anything like Billy Preston, but
Speaker 2: you know I did have those skills. I do have
Speaker 2: those skills actually to this day, and I had a
Speaker 2: lot of parallels in my life. My brother died at
Speaker 2: a young age around the same time as Billy Preston's
Speaker 2: brother died, and I think that was a seminole thing
Speaker 2: in his life. I had some abusive situations in my
Speaker 2: life that I have always remembered, and I have always left
Speaker 2: a little bit of a dent in my personality which
Speaker 2: I've been dealing with. And I was an alcoholic and
Speaker 2: a recovering drug add just like Billy. So just like
Speaker 2: time and time again, as we went into the instance
Speaker 2: of his personal story, I felt a parallel. I felt
Speaker 2: a kinship, and it made it easier for me to
Speaker 2: be empathetic person and can tell me my audience a
Speaker 2: little of your history in the movie.
Speaker 1: Business, my history in the movie business, Well, I was
Speaker 1: in advertising before I did this whole thing.
Speaker 2: I spent ten years working in advertising in New York,
Speaker 2: which has really stood me in good stead in the
Speaker 2: movie business. And I left advertising my job as a
Speaker 2: creative supervisor to help a new struggling music video company
Speaker 2: called Black and White Television. I was the black and
Speaker 2: my partner Joe was the white, and we created a
Speaker 2: company that was primarily about getting minorities behind scenes and
Speaker 2: music videos because there were none for very very few,
Speaker 2: and all these great hip hop videos in the early
Speaker 2: nineties were being directed by white men, which we thought
Speaker 2: was okay, but I think we could do better, and
Speaker 2: eventually I got all Kool Jay as a client and
Speaker 2: did ten videos with him, including Mamison Knock You Out,
Speaker 2: which threw the attention of the people on the West coast.
Speaker 2: They said, this guy's a storyteller. He's not just doing
Speaker 2: a video, He's telling a story, which led to my
Speaker 2: first job in television, and from there I pretty much
Speaker 2: have stayed in television other than a couple of departures.
Speaker 2: I did a feature film called Don't Be a Menace
Speaker 2: to South Central Audrickeye or Juice in the Hood, which
Speaker 2: is a cult favorite. And you know, I've done some
Speaker 2: television movies, but primarily I've done series now one hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety two of them, most recently The Night Agent,
Speaker 2: which is on now Brilliant Binds. I did The Menenda
Speaker 2: Story and Domer Monster, lots of shows, and from there
Speaker 2: I've learned that there's a story and then there's a story,
Speaker 2: which is part of the reason why Billy Press was
Speaker 2: both a challenge for me and of the light.
Speaker 1: Okay, where are you from?
Speaker 2: Originally Chicago, Illinois, which is a great place to be
Speaker 2: from Okay to Chicago. There's the South Side and there's
Speaker 2: the suburbs.
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: I was in the South Suburbs, which was, you know, nice,
Speaker 2: but a little ghetto. It started out, as I grew
Speaker 2: up as a very nice suburban suburb. By the time
Speaker 2: I left, it was drugs and coke and everything and criminality.
Speaker 2: And now the town that I grew up in is
Speaker 2: the murder capital of the South Suburbs, which is something
Speaker 2: that they hold a great deal of private.
Speaker 1: Stephanie, it looks to me like, wow, that's a title. Okay,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna sound very general, But to what
Speaker 1: degree have you experienced racism in your life and career
Speaker 1: and has that affected you or held you back? That's
Speaker 1: a deep question. I have experienced some racism, but not
Speaker 1: as much as some friends of mine, to be honest.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason why I had success fairly early.
Speaker 1: And once you're successful, color seems to sort of fade away.
Speaker 1: But when you're struggling, it's a very important thing. This
Speaker 1: is a black director. I don't know if we need
Speaker 1: you know, it becomes a thing. It becomes a thing
Speaker 1: that makes people decide to work with you or not.
Speaker 1: I dealt with much more homophobia.
Speaker 2: Than I dealt with actual racism in my career, and
Speaker 2: that has been a struggle. It led me to coming
Speaker 2: out quite early, unlike Billy Preston, to be openly gay
Speaker 2: seem to be the best solution to me. So I
Speaker 2: would say homophobia top racism when it comes to obst Okay,
Speaker 2: did you go to.
Speaker 1: College after being in South Chicago? Yes, I did. I
Speaker 1: went to a little known college called Harvard, which is
Speaker 1: in Boston area, which took me five years to graduate
Speaker 1: from because A I did go to class, and B
Speaker 1: I was much more interested in music and theater than
Speaker 1: I was in the many great professors that I had.
Speaker 1: And if I had it to do all over again,
Speaker 1: I would certainly go to class. And so if you're
Speaker 1: at Harvard, now go to class, because you'll wish you
Speaker 1: did when you're my age. Yeah, I went there, and
Speaker 1: then then I went to New York. And how did
Speaker 1: you end up in advertising? I just thought it.
Speaker 2: Would be easy. Also, I love Bewitched, and Bewitched was
Speaker 2: filled with Darren Stevens, and you know, they always had martinis.
Speaker 2: Samantha was making him a martini as he came home
Speaker 2: and it just made advertising look so delightful and as
Speaker 2: you can tell him fairly talk to it him pretty glib.
Speaker 2: And so it became a good job for me. And
Speaker 2: also I could do my musical you to work at
Speaker 2: night because the job was relatively easy, and I could
Speaker 2: then work on musical theater and shows in New York,
Speaker 2: which is really what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, And how do you know, when did you meet Stephanie? Wow?
Speaker 1: When did I first meet Stephanie? A very long time.
Speaker 2: I think we were children back in the day. She's
Speaker 2: a producer. I've always admired She produced a lot of
Speaker 2: things that I thought were essential viewing for people, especially
Speaker 2: for black people, but for everyone. Her work with John
Speaker 2: Singleton and bringing him to the four was a very
Speaker 2: big deal. So she was a sort of celebrity.
Speaker 1: In my world.
Speaker 2: And her husband, Stephen Bray, is a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: and we've met socially and so we never we hadn't
Speaker 2: worked on anything together before. We just knew each other
Speaker 2: and had a mutual admiration society.
Speaker 1: So, Stephanie, where are you from?
Speaker 3: I am from New Orleans.
Speaker 1: New Orleans, Okay. What was growing up in New Orleans.
Speaker 4: Like well, I spent a couple of years in New Orleans,
Speaker 4: but my father, who was in school, drove us to
Speaker 4: California in nineteen sixty five, so I pretty much grew
Speaker 4: up in LA. I spent the summers in New Orleans
Speaker 4: with my grandma, and.
Speaker 1: We're in La Miracle Mile, Miracle Miles. So what was
Speaker 1: it like growing up there? And this was before or
Speaker 1: after the watch riots that you give this.
Speaker 4: We came the summer of the riots, so I think
Speaker 4: it was in July or Yeah, it was pretty it
Speaker 4: was a big deal, I remember.
Speaker 3: But you know, we grew up in Wiltshire area.
Speaker 4: You know, I went to Catholic school, like I don't
Speaker 4: know if Paris went to Catholic school when you were young.
Speaker 1: I did, of course, so in my high school too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I went to all girl Catholic High school
Speaker 4: in Inglewood Saint Mary's And uh yeah. My father is
Speaker 4: a was a biochemist. My mother's an educ cater. But
Speaker 4: I just fell in love with books. I fell in
Speaker 4: love with reading, and I fell in love with movies
Speaker 4: at a very very young age. So and I didn't
Speaker 4: even know there was a movie business, to be honest,
Speaker 4: I didn't know what a direct. I didn't know anything
Speaker 4: except for when I read The Godfather and then saw
Speaker 4: it on the screen, or when I read The Exorcist
Speaker 4: and saw it on the screen. I just there was
Speaker 4: a connection there. So I went to USC, I dropped out,
Speaker 4: moved to Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I waited a couple of questions. One what's better Godfather
Speaker 1: one or two?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: One is so classic, but two is even better.
Speaker 1: I agree. Okay, when you went to USC, I mean
Speaker 1: USC is legendary on the West Coast for film studies.
Speaker 1: Were you in that division?
Speaker 4: No, I was pre law I was I was in
Speaker 4: I was yeah. I was taking and ethics and political
Speaker 4: science and things that I had no idea.
Speaker 5: I was very unhappy.
Speaker 4: I went to see the counselor and he said, well
Speaker 4: quit and I said really, he said yeah.
Speaker 5: So I dropped out and I moved to Hawaio.
Speaker 1: How long did you go before you dropped out? And
Speaker 1: what did your parents say?
Speaker 4: I was I went for a year and a half.
Speaker 4: My mother cried. My father I can't remember what he said,
Speaker 4: but I just I was so unhappy. So I moved
Speaker 4: to Hawaii, which created a lifelong connection with Hawaii. It's
Speaker 4: still my happy place, and I realized that I actually
Speaker 4: could be in the arts. Because my parents like a
Speaker 4: lot of folks law, medicine, smart things, you know, things,
Speaker 4: professional things. There were no artists in my family. So
Speaker 4: then I realized I was transferring. I transferred to UCEE
Speaker 4: Santa Cruz, which was very hippie dippy. I got a
Speaker 4: degree in poetry, which was even more hippie dippy.
Speaker 5: And then I followed that by going to Cowarts for dance.
Speaker 6: Okay, ground producer might when you're finished with Cowlarts for dance,
Speaker 6: what year are we in nineteen eighty three and you
Speaker 6: graduate from cal Arts?
Speaker 1: Do you pursue a career in dance?
Speaker 5: I did for a second, but then I got pregnant,
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 1: Well, hold on a second, wait a second, assuming that
Speaker 1: baby was born, who is the father of that child?
Speaker 4: The father of the child was a fellow UC Santa
Speaker 4: Cruzian who I ended up marrying and have two kids with,
Speaker 4: and then divorced and then married Stephen Bray, who, by
Speaker 4: the way, thanks you for your colonoscopee piece.
Speaker 1: Well, before we got to Stephen Bray, how long were
Speaker 1: you married to the first husband? Ten years? Ten years?
Speaker 1: And what was he up to? Who is he?
Speaker 3: He's a director, He's a writer director.
Speaker 4: He has a movie now on streaming called I Don't
Speaker 4: Love You Anymore. And he's a writer director. He's a
Speaker 4: fabulous guy. He's my best friend. He got married at
Speaker 4: my house, at me and Stephen's house at our house.
Speaker 4: He lives walking distance from me, and we just made
Speaker 4: a pact when we got divorced that we were always
Speaker 4: going to be friends, and we've stayed friends.
Speaker 1: Then what are your two kids up to?
Speaker 4: My youngest son is Emmy nominated editor for sixteen nineteen.
Speaker 4: He lives in Brooklyn. He's going to Hunter College to
Speaker 4: get a master's in experimental filmmaking.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: And my oldest son is a writer, director, actor from
Speaker 4: He was on Insecure for six years as an actor.
Speaker 4: But he just directed the remake of Don't Tell Mom
Speaker 4: The Babysitters Day. He's also a TV writer and he
Speaker 4: has my two delicious granddaughters.
Speaker 1: Okay, and how do you meet Stephen Bray?
Speaker 5: This was my only blind date?
Speaker 1: Who set you up?
Speaker 4: We got set up by three different people who didn't
Speaker 4: know each other, but who knew us and said you
Speaker 4: guys would be perfect. We met in the middle of
Speaker 4: one of my movies because he was making the color
Speaker 4: Purple on Broadway, and Donald Byrd, who's a very famous
Speaker 4: choreographer who was doing the choreography, said, and who I
Speaker 4: dance with, said, you guys have to meet. We met,
Speaker 4: we had dinner, and we've been together twenty years.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have this parapatetic lifestyle. How do you
Speaker 1: end up in the entertainment business.
Speaker 4: Well, when I was pregnant with my first son, Wade,
Speaker 4: the only thing I knew how to do was read.
Speaker 4: And then I heard there was a job called reader,
Speaker 4: and I thought, perfect, I'm a reader.
Speaker 3: I can read.
Speaker 4: And my first job was at CIA in the story department.
Speaker 4: So I read books and then wrote up.
Speaker 1: Robert, Let's start a little erway. How'd you get the
Speaker 1: job at CIA?
Speaker 4: I knew one person in the movie business, my first
Speaker 4: husband's father's friend, Mike Glick, who was a line producer,
Speaker 4: and I don't know. He said, well, there is a
Speaker 4: story department. He called. I had to call every other
Speaker 4: week for three or four months to get that job,
Speaker 4: until finally they were like, okay, stop calling.
Speaker 3: Take the job. It was the best job ever because.
Speaker 4: I learned how the written word gets looked at by
Speaker 4: a reader, which is what I was, and broken down
Speaker 4: into the possibilities of being a film So and this
Speaker 4: is when there were no computers, there were typewriters. So
Speaker 4: I'd read a book, I'd go into the writing room
Speaker 4: and just bang out the synopsis in the comments and
Speaker 4: then walk it upstairs to Mike Ovitz or you know,
Speaker 4: Rick Mesita or whoever was you know, requesting my coverage.
Speaker 5: And I was quite good at it.
Speaker 4: So the next step, the next step is I went
Speaker 4: from that job to being a professional story analyst at
Speaker 4: twentieth Century Fox. And my mentor person who I credit
Speaker 4: with really opening the doors was Amy Pascal, and Amy
Speaker 4: Pascal hired me when she went to work for Dawn
Speaker 4: at Warner Brothers. Was Warner Brothers, Yeah, And I went
Speaker 4: along as a reader. And then when I read for
Speaker 4: a year, they promoted Dawn promoted me to a creative executive,
Speaker 4: and five months later I was reading to replace myself
Speaker 4: in the story department with a young guy named John
Speaker 4: Singleton who really didn't want the job. He really just
Speaker 4: wanted to talk about this script he'd written, Boys in
Speaker 4: the Hood.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear from my audience, What does
Speaker 1: the story analysts do?
Speaker 4: A story analyst is basically a reader, a reader of books,
Speaker 4: of articles, of screenplays, and then once you read it,
Speaker 4: you condense it down.
Speaker 3: To a two or three page book report.
Speaker 4: Basically it's a synopsis and then a page of comments
Speaker 4: how well will this translate into a movie or television show?
Speaker 1: So how does John Singleton walk in the door?
Speaker 4: John Singleton is a senior at USC and he already
Speaker 4: had an agent, believe it or not, a CAA agent,
Speaker 4: Brad Smith. And because he had won the Nicholson screenwriting
Speaker 4: competition two years in a row, and the one that
Speaker 4: he had just won for was Boys in the Hood,
Speaker 4: So he was you know, USC is a school in town.
Speaker 4: They matriculate folks and really try to place them and
Speaker 4: find jobs. He'd heard that, you know, we were looking
Speaker 4: for a reader position through some friend of his, and
Speaker 4: showed up in my office because I was tasked with
Speaker 4: replacing myself in the story department.
Speaker 1: So how did Boys in the Hood get made? Boys?
Speaker 5: And the hook got made?
Speaker 4: Because once I read it, I flipped out and I
Speaker 4: had the big Oprah Winfrey aha moment and it was like,
Speaker 4: this is why I am here. It was just very
Speaker 4: clear to me that I had to get this movie made.
Speaker 4: So I went to every single executive at the time.
Speaker 4: It was like Michael Nathanson and Lorenzo Debana Ventura. It
Speaker 4: was all in dawn, and I said, we have to
Speaker 4: make this movie. And then one week later the company
Speaker 4: was sold down, was fired.
Speaker 5: John and Peter came in.
Speaker 4: We moved all the way from Warner Brothers, where we
Speaker 4: were sharing the lot with Warner Brothers, to Culver City and.
Speaker 5: Frank Price was in charge.
Speaker 4: This all happened within like a month, and so I
Speaker 4: finally waited until everybody had read it. I put it
Speaker 4: on Weekend Read and the next day I came into
Speaker 4: that room where everybody promised they were going to be supportive,
Speaker 4: and they all trashed it except for Amy and Frank.
Speaker 4: And Frank said, we're going to make it, and we
Speaker 4: any did and I said, oh, but by the way,
Speaker 4: John's going to direct it. And John had never really
Speaker 4: directed anything except for a terrible music video, which I'm
Speaker 4: sure Paris would have borne apart. I said, we're not
Speaker 4: showing this to anybody, We're just saying you're directing.
Speaker 1: Okay. There are many steps between a good idea and
Speaker 1: a good story and a good screenplay to a good movie.
Speaker 1: So that movie came out lauded everywhere, successful commercially. Was
Speaker 1: it like your first time and this looked easy or exactly?
Speaker 3: Bob, I was like, this shit is easy. I'm just
Speaker 3: going to do this again. I've never had.
Speaker 4: That level of success in a movie that I've I
Speaker 4: mean I've had I've had successes, but never that.
Speaker 5: And that was nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Okay, the thirty five years that have ensued, give us
Speaker 1: your greatest hits, greatest.
Speaker 3: Hits, hustle and flow. Dear White People.
Speaker 4: I produced the Oscars twenty twenty Oscars, which was pretty fabulous.
Speaker 4: I also did the TV show for Dear White People.
Speaker 4: My last movie I love. My last movie is this movie,
Speaker 4: which I love, love, love Billy Preston. But right before that,
Speaker 4: I did a beautiful movie called Exhibiting Forgiveness. So I
Speaker 4: produced twenty thirty I don't know movies and a little
Speaker 4: bit of television and really spent at least a quarter
Speaker 4: of my time working on inclusion and belonging and diversity
Speaker 4: within the industry. Right now, I'm the president of the
Speaker 4: producer's guilt. I've been president for four years. I've been
Speaker 4: on the boards of Women in Film, Film, Independent, Cast
Speaker 4: and Crew. Right now I sit on the board of
Speaker 4: American Cinema Tech. Our mission is to save theaters that
Speaker 4: save that movie experience. So I'm a grandmother mother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mother, she was still alive. She heard all that.
Speaker 1: She would say, well, what else have you done?
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you. I read a children I do
Speaker 3: want to say.
Speaker 4: I wrote a children's book for my granddaughter called Who's
Speaker 4: in Charge About Body Autonomy? And it's it's It's Penguin
Speaker 4: published it. It's doing very well.
Speaker 1: Okay, just so I don't mangle it. How do you
Speaker 1: pronounce your last name?
Speaker 5: Helene?
Speaker 1: That's what I would have said. I'm not good with French,
Speaker 1: but okay, Gene, Am I correct in saying your name
Speaker 1: is Jeene Elphon Festa.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, you're fine. You could call me Jane or Gene.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, wait, why three names?
Speaker 5: Because my my my name is Elfon. I was born
Speaker 5: with Elfon, I married a Festa.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's not a middle name or something.
Speaker 5: So my middle name is Royce.
Speaker 1: So how some people use you know, both names other
Speaker 1: people don't. How did you decide to use it?
Speaker 5: Because my parents were so influential in my life in
Speaker 5: a very very positive way, you know, even this film,
Speaker 5: how this film came about. They were both very, very
Speaker 5: big into music and had a massive record collection. They
Speaker 5: are they, you know, really from relatively meager beginnings, from
Speaker 5: both from Brooklyn, uh in a very My mom lived
Speaker 5: in a tenement building and my dad lived in forty
Speaker 5: second forty second in Utrecht. I hope I had that
Speaker 5: correct my Brooklyn nights. And they dreamed big and they
Speaker 5: pushed me out. I was I was a stutter growing up.
Speaker 5: They pushed me out into just living what I wanted
Speaker 5: to live, and it was very I was very lucky.
Speaker 5: I'm the youngest of three kids, and I was very lucky.
Speaker 1: Okay, you say they came from humble beginnings. What did
Speaker 1: they end up doing for money?
Speaker 5: My dad wanted to be a saxophone flair, but he
Speaker 5: ended up going to med school and became a p
Speaker 5: diatrist and a quite well known one in Pacific Palisades
Speaker 5: when Pacific Palisades was like Mayberry RFD. And they bought
Speaker 5: a fourteen hundred square foot house and actually They started
Speaker 5: in apartments and then eventually bought a fourteen hundred square
Speaker 5: foot house where it would have still be standing had
Speaker 5: the fire not burned the whole town down. But yeah,
Speaker 5: they were, and my mom sold real estate. My mom
Speaker 5: sold real estate before that, she did books. She did that,
Speaker 5: you know, taxes and things like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So were you born in the Palisades or living
Speaker 1: in that area?
Speaker 5: Born in born and raised in Santa Monica. But yes,
Speaker 5: Pacific policies. I am a native Californian.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you go to school, and then where do
Speaker 1: you go to college?
Speaker 5: I went to Wright, went to Pali High. I went
Speaker 5: to the Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising, where I learned
Speaker 5: marketing and factoring and selling friends lines. I wrapped a
Speaker 5: children's clothing line for years called step by Step, which
Speaker 5: was in direct competition with with a Spree. I don't
Speaker 5: know if anyone remembers children's.
Speaker 1: But we took over Slippers roller Disco at Losiena against Sannic.
Speaker 5: Yes they did. I know, it was sad. I remember
Speaker 5: when that happened. And they also took over place here
Speaker 5: in Hollywood that I remember. Yeah, Well, I didn't wrap
Speaker 5: a spray I reapped side by side so and and
Speaker 5: it was it was a really fun time in my
Speaker 5: life creating. And I too got married very young and
Speaker 5: I'm still married. He'll be married forty years this September
Speaker 5: and have two kids. And yeah, so that was that
Speaker 5: part of my life. And then I had another part
Speaker 5: of my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does your husband do for a living?
Speaker 5: He's an insurance agent.
Speaker 1: And how did you meet him? Yep?
Speaker 5: Really, my mom fixed us up on a date when
Speaker 5: I was seventeen, in eleventh grade.
Speaker 1: And it's lasting all this time.
Speaker 5: It's last.
Speaker 1: So what's the keto of forty year relationship?
Speaker 5: You know, forgiveness for sure, and allowing the person to grow,
Speaker 5: just allowing it and know that there be know who
Speaker 5: you are so that you're comfortable.
Speaker 3: That is key.
Speaker 5: And knowing that that person needs to do what they
Speaker 5: need to do and they allow it. And that is
Speaker 5: what we have always done.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you started fit.
Speaker 5: Fit them fashions?
Speaker 1: How does that lead to Billy Preston?
Speaker 5: Well, it was another life. I mean, certainly, factoring is
Speaker 5: very similar to doing do factoring in a movie. You know,
Speaker 5: you're looking at trends, you're looking at what is the
Speaker 5: fact factoring is it's very similar to what we do
Speaker 5: when we're looking at you know, you're like thinking about
Speaker 5: pre selling your film. Maybe not so much as it
Speaker 5: is with jocks, although at the very beginning we did
Speaker 5: want to always test the marketplace to see whether or
Speaker 5: not something would sell. So, Uh, at the beginning when
Speaker 5: of this business, that I learned from Nigel Sinclair Whitehorse Pictures.
Speaker 5: Prior to that he was doing this company, his documentary
Speaker 5: division was Spidfire Pictures that did Bob Dylan, No Direction
Speaker 5: Home and George arsenaling Material World. Uh, that I had learned,
Speaker 5: I took the tools that I learned at the Fashion Institute,
Speaker 5: a design merchandising with me to filmmaking by knowing how
Speaker 5: to market something, knowing what people pullp I guess pulling
Speaker 5: on your heartstrings, and really becoming committed into a project.
Speaker 5: And when I mean committed, it's it's it's a passion.
Speaker 5: And if you don't have have that passion for a project,
Speaker 5: you cannot bring people to it. How else to describe that?
Speaker 1: Okay, just to close this loop is in factory Basically,
Speaker 1: you know, in the fashion business it takes so long
Speaker 1: to get paid if there's a company that will buy
Speaker 1: your receipts at a.
Speaker 5: Discuss exactly exactly. Now, that's not exactly the same thing
Speaker 5: as a business that we're that with film business, but
Speaker 5: you certainly are going to factor in what it is
Speaker 5: that you think that you could sell something for and
Speaker 5: what do you think you could make it. Oh okay,
Speaker 5: so it's still similar.
Speaker 1: How do you get from the clothing business to work
Speaker 1: in the film business.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I had a lot of life in between. I
Speaker 5: had a family, I had kids, I had uh life
Speaker 5: and death. It has a happy ending, but it didn't.
Speaker 5: You know, my my husband was very ill for quite
Speaker 5: some time. When the world became chaotic, I went and
Speaker 5: felt I needed to control things. And I went and thought, well,
Speaker 5: you know what, what's going to help me. I'm going
Speaker 5: to go into stand up comedy. And I went to
Speaker 5: stand up comedy just to give myself a release. I
Speaker 5: ended up meeting a lot of people who actors, started
Speaker 5: taking acting classes, did a couple of commercials, obviously nothing major,
Speaker 5: and and I went to UH to. I actually was
Speaker 5: much better at selling my friends uh you know one
Speaker 5: act shows than I was at anything else. I had
Speaker 5: met a group of players who had a who were
Speaker 5: trying to put on a play. And I produced this
Speaker 5: play for years and tried to get it onto Broadway.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: It was that is really how I came to be.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're selling this play. What's the step after that?
Speaker 5: The step after that was the people that I literally
Speaker 5: brought intooth and nail. One of my friends and neighbors
Speaker 5: was Missus Nigel Sinclair, Pat Sinclair, and they came to
Speaker 5: this play. And in the meantime, I was also doing commercials,
Speaker 5: so I was I was also meeting directors. I brought
Speaker 5: them to the play and I was trying to pitch
Speaker 5: a story about this man, George Moses Horton, who was
Speaker 5: the first African American male whoever was published in the
Speaker 5: United States of America. And I could not get the
Speaker 5: script off the ground. That brought me into a lot
Speaker 5: of rooms, and that is I hopefully can make that
Speaker 5: movie one day. And that is what I have a
Speaker 5: lot of KTA and I pick up phones and just
Speaker 5: call people. And I literally got people like Jimmy Iven
Speaker 5: to show up to this play, and I got, you know,
Speaker 5: a Christiemonian to show up to this play. A lot
Speaker 5: of you know, people at C a. It was quite remarkable.
Speaker 5: I was very proud of myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, that play fizzles, ultimately, it does, So what's your
Speaker 1: next job?
Speaker 5: My next job was putting this action into the into film.
Speaker 5: My Nigel was talking to the Weekend, you know, just
Speaker 5: on the street. I don't remember how it actually came
Speaker 5: to be. I think it was, Oh, I know what
Speaker 5: it was. I was here, I was at the offices
Speaker 5: and and you know it was I was pushing George
Speaker 5: Moses Horton and he had said that Dave Grohl had
Speaker 5: called the office to have them do a documentary about
Speaker 5: the making of the Foo Fighters, and I chimed in
Speaker 5: and literally pushed my way into that project, quite literally,
Speaker 5: and I felt that was that was definitely my my
Speaker 5: shove into the room, and I was brought in on
Speaker 5: that team.
Speaker 1: Okay, approximately three decades ago. Bring us up to today.
Speaker 5: Let's see, after the Food Fighters we rolled into I
Speaker 5: had forgot. I did get a first look deal at
Speaker 5: Exclusive Media. A lot of failed things and a lot
Speaker 5: of great things we did. The Beg's had them mend
Speaker 5: a broken heart. I'm trying to go in order here.
Speaker 5: We did the Beatles eight days a week. I was
Speaker 5: part of that team Pavarotti with Ron Howard directly.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you do all those things. What's your special sauce,
Speaker 1: what do you bring to these projects?
Speaker 5: I think I'm really good at team building at the
Speaker 5: great with client relations, developing trust, that is I think
Speaker 5: a key thing in this world and in this business.
Speaker 5: I organize the the the basic research and and if
Speaker 5: you're able to go on a deep dive, I'm very
Speaker 5: because I'm dyslexic. I think I do these research documents
Speaker 5: that are very easy, easy to deep dive in it,
Speaker 5: you know, with lengths and things, so you can kind
Speaker 5: of go in and out of this of somebody's life
Speaker 5: and not get bored. So I think that's my expertise.
Speaker 5: And of course because that helps engage director.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get back to the Billy Preston movie. Where
Speaker 1: does it start? Now? Everybody's involved, everybody get participate. Where
Speaker 1: does it start?
Speaker 5: Starts with Jeanie. So yeah, it started the first time.
Speaker 5: I mean that I can't It started the first time
Speaker 5: sitting down in the living room when I was a
Speaker 5: young kid and listening to my parents' record collection and
Speaker 5: my dad loved Sam Cook and anything Sam Cook loved
Speaker 5: my dad loved he had Billy Preston's sixteen year old soul.
Speaker 1: And where I grew up in the East Coast, that
Speaker 1: was meaningless on the East Coast. Your father was a
Speaker 1: white guy in Pacific Palisades. How does he even know
Speaker 1: about that record?
Speaker 5: Well, he was a he loved Heartlem and he loved
Speaker 5: you know. When I lost my dad when I was
Speaker 5: like twenty six years old. He was a massive influence
Speaker 5: on my life. And he used to recall me was
Speaker 5: regale us. It was very legendary with stories about him
Speaker 5: taking his saxophone and waiting for musicians to come out
Speaker 5: of the Apollo Theater so he could play with anyone,
Speaker 5: and sometimes he would and sometimes he couldn't. But he
Speaker 5: ended up going to pu Dietary School and doing his
Speaker 5: residency in Heartlem and absolutely loved Harlem. They fell into
Speaker 5: Pacific Palisades. You know, that is a murky story, what
Speaker 5: Pacific Palisades. They were also, you know, very involved in
Speaker 5: theater in their own in their own Jewish group. So
Speaker 5: one of their friends was Virginia Munchin, who was an
Speaker 5: actress and her father, her parents. I'm named after her,
Speaker 5: So that's why I know her name. Her father was
Speaker 5: Royce of Royce Hall. That is my real mental name,
Speaker 5: Geene Royce. She had found this little town called Pacific Palsades,
Speaker 5: rented a tiny apartment for them. They left the same
Speaker 5: year that the Brooklyn Dodgers left four Pacific Palisades. But
Speaker 5: that's how you know fifty I think it was earlier
Speaker 5: than fifty eight.
Speaker 7: Continue whatever, But anyway, anyway, and and you know, then sadly,
Speaker 7: my dad was in the City of Hope because he
Speaker 7: had he had he came down with tuberculosis, so what we.
Speaker 5: Didn't know whether or I was going to live or die.
Speaker 5: But his love for music was incredibly deep. And my
Speaker 5: parents were very, very liberal, very well. Ready you didn't
Speaker 5: know they came from Brooklyn. They really took that accent out.
Speaker 5: They sounded like they were from the Upper West Side.
Speaker 5: They just were you know, my mom looked like June Cleaver,
Speaker 5: but her her politics were incredibly left, very very good.
Speaker 1: Just for one stay second. Do you have any siblings?
Speaker 5: I do?
Speaker 1: How many?
Speaker 5: I have an older sister and older brother. I'm the
Speaker 5: youngest of them.
Speaker 1: You're the youngest, So what are they up to?
Speaker 5: My brother and sister went to Ucla, my sisters in marketing,
Speaker 5: and my brother's a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you grew up with all this music in
Speaker 1: the background. How does that bring us to wanting to
Speaker 1: make a movie about Billie Preston.
Speaker 5: Well, I always loved music, and I've always loved storytelling,
Speaker 5: and I've always loved the movies. And uh, when you know,
Speaker 5: you know, you could ask my business partner here, Nigel Sinclair.
Speaker 5: I loved Billy. I love Billy Preston. His story is
Speaker 5: sad and sweet. And he was an LA native or
Speaker 5: not from when I before I did all the research,
Speaker 5: I thought he was born and born in in in
Speaker 5: LA but he was actually born in Texas. But his
Speaker 5: formative years were here in Los Angeles. So we knew
Speaker 5: about the good stuff and we knew about the not
Speaker 5: so good stuff, the complexities of his life. We uh,
Speaker 5: this was he was always on this list that I've
Speaker 5: got in my head of the artists that I've always
Speaker 5: wanted to tell their story because it's a because it's heartbreaking,
Speaker 5: but it's also beautiful because he did he touched upon
Speaker 5: so many genres in music.
Speaker 1: Is this your job such a that you're always looking
Speaker 1: for material or did you have a special identification with
Speaker 1: Billy Preston from his heyday in the seventies.
Speaker 5: I had a special connection to him because I heard him,
Speaker 5: because it was because of his seeing him on that
Speaker 5: I remember. I remember sitting on the floor watching that
Speaker 5: first SNL and I remember my dad humming nothing from
Speaker 5: nothing means nothing. I just it was ingrained in me
Speaker 5: in a beautiful way.
Speaker 1: Okay, this movie actually got made. The nature of the movie.
Speaker 1: Business people are juggling projects. So what was the next step?
Speaker 1: You had this idea, it was on your list. How'd
Speaker 1: you gain traction?
Speaker 5: Here's what happened. I'm driving home after a really long
Speaker 5: day and I get a phone call from my partner
Speaker 5: coming back from the mclark tunner going through pch And
Speaker 5: and he said, I you won't believe. I just got
Speaker 5: off the phone with our friend Gilly, who got off
Speaker 5: the phone with his friend Daniel Shaw, who wrote this
Speaker 5: book Proposal about Billy Preston. And he reads me the
Speaker 5: first page, which is amazing first page, and I wish
Speaker 5: ahead in front of me, I would have read it
Speaker 5: to you. But it reads like, uh, you know, like
Speaker 5: a Zelig type of character who has been in a
Speaker 5: weaven woven inside all of these woven through all of
Speaker 5: these incredible people, and and uh and I said, okay, great,
Speaker 5: so it's a great book proposal, but I don't have it.
Speaker 5: How are we going to get to the powers that
Speaker 5: be who are running his you know, who are in
Speaker 5: charge of his leg you know his the share that
Speaker 5: people were running his life right And we knew he
Speaker 5: had passed away already. So I didn't know his manager,
Speaker 5: but Daniel did. Daniel wrote this, which I did not
Speaker 5: listen because it takes me three times to hear hear
Speaker 5: something before I, you know, comprehend it. I did not
Speaker 5: hear that Daniel Shaw and Joyce Moore, who is his
Speaker 5: Billy's manager, had written this, this, this book proposal together.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear for those weapons in the movie.
Speaker 1: He is the wife of Sam Moore, of Sam and Day.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now you know there's the manager. What happens then?
Speaker 5: So I we I mean literally the next day we
Speaker 5: spoke to Daniels, We had a phone call with Joyce
Speaker 5: Brett per cursed cursory phone call with Joyce, and then
Speaker 5: I want to build my team. All I'm thinking was
Speaker 5: there's a person that I no shit, this isn't dribble.
Speaker 5: There's a person that I always wanted to work with,
Speaker 5: and when you're building a team, you want to build.
Speaker 5: I just thought this person would be an amazing person.
Speaker 5: And her name was Stephanie Elaine. And we cold called
Speaker 5: Stephanie Elaine with this idea to see what she thought
Speaker 5: of it, and then the connection was just amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's twenty twenty six.
Speaker 5: When was that conversation twenty end of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Relatively recently under the circumstances. So you call Stephanie and
Speaker 1: how does a conversation go?
Speaker 5: It went amazing? It was like it was, it was great.
Speaker 5: I mean, Steph, do you I mean, I just remember
Speaker 5: feeling the first time I spoke to you, feeling like
Speaker 5: you hear me. It was almost like what I can
Speaker 5: get emotional. It was almost like the way Olivia said,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna cry. I never thought of it. That's a
Speaker 5: good question. It was almost the way Olivia said that
Speaker 5: George said of George and Billy, Yeah you saw me,
Speaker 5: Stephanie saw me, and yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, Stephanie, we'd established you don't have much of a
Speaker 1: resume and no one calls you, so you know, people
Speaker 1: are working for you morning the night. What about this problem?
Speaker 1: Jack said that you wanted to give it your attention.
Speaker 4: That's really funny. Nobody calls me. Is this is the
Speaker 4: life I live. Nobody calls me, And the.
Speaker 1: Wait, is it because they email you or they don't
Speaker 1: contact you.
Speaker 4: No, it's because I generate a lot of my own stuff,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. It's and also, like you
Speaker 4: were asking Paris, do you experience you know, racism and
Speaker 4: you said homophobia. Well, sexism is very real in Hollywood, okay,
Speaker 4: And so as a black woman, I am pretty much
Speaker 4: on my own, to be honest. And so I got
Speaker 4: this call from Jeanie and I had met with them before,
Speaker 4: maybe a year before that, because they were trying to
Speaker 4: do something with Billy Holliday, who's also like my all
Speaker 4: time favorite. So when she called me about Billy, first
Speaker 4: of all, I knew their reputation. I knew that White
Speaker 4: Horse was the shous nizzle when it comes to music docs, right,
Speaker 4: And I had never made a doc. I didn't know
Speaker 4: anything about making documentaries. And then you know, Jeanie and
Speaker 4: I have girl crush, so we we just we just
Speaker 4: hit it off. And I was like, and also I
Speaker 4: grew up the same I'm saying Age's Paris. You know,
Speaker 4: I grew up in la in the seventies, dancing in
Speaker 4: the Baldwin Hills basements to his music, right and so,
Speaker 4: but I didn't know his story.
Speaker 5: I don't even think I knew he.
Speaker 4: Was the fifth Beatle until I read Daniel's proposal and
Speaker 4: I saw, wow, there's a lot here, and so you know,
Speaker 4: I said, okay, I'm in. What's the first thing we need?
Speaker 4: And Nije and Jeanie said a director.
Speaker 3: So I was like, okay, wait when he isn't the
Speaker 3: first thing?
Speaker 1: You need money?
Speaker 4: Actually, no, you need the director and the concept to
Speaker 4: go get the money. So we needed a director to sery.
Speaker 1: Okay before we tut time out, before we get to
Speaker 1: the director. Genie, when you contacted Stephanie, what were you
Speaker 1: exactly looking for?
Speaker 5: What was your team mate? Team leader?
Speaker 1: Really? A goal?
Speaker 5: My goal is I everyone you know we've got We did.
Speaker 5: I can't believe I forgot to mention the Apollo Theater.
Speaker 1: We did.
Speaker 5: My partner and I, Cassidy Hartman. We here at white Horse.
Speaker 5: We shepherd this project about the Apollo Theater. The most
Speaker 5: important thing about a subject especially documentaries. Is you need
Speaker 5: to have the right storytellers for the right subject. So
Speaker 5: you can't have bluntly two white girls telling the story
Speaker 5: about the Apollo Theater in Harlem and and and be
Speaker 5: and have it be authentic. You could try it, but
Speaker 5: it's not gonna it's not going to go over well.
Speaker 5: And and I just was a.
Speaker 3: Diversity for sure. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 5: But it's a matter of it's a matter of of
Speaker 5: not it's it's a matter of building the right team.
Speaker 5: And there's no question that you are a team leader, Stephanie.
Speaker 5: You're a team leader. You look at things in they
Speaker 5: in they, You're always looking at positives before anything, and
Speaker 5: you're always pushing people out. You're making your other team
Speaker 5: members better than they than they think they are. And
Speaker 5: that's a unique gift that you have. That's a unique gift.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's why you contact Stephanie. Stephanie established. The next
Speaker 1: step is a director. So, ay, how fast does this
Speaker 1: project moving be? How do you get a director?
Speaker 4: So typically make a list, right, make a list of directors.
Speaker 4: To be honest, Paris was at the top of that list.
Speaker 1: And how wait, wait wait, talking about how did you
Speaker 1: know of Paris?
Speaker 4: I knew Paris because obviously everybody in Hollywood knows Paris.
Speaker 4: He was the you know, he's the most celebrated TV
Speaker 4: director ever. He was the head of the DGA, you know,
Speaker 4: as the head of a guild. You know, you respect.
Speaker 4: That's a big job, you get. You know what that
Speaker 4: means that person is at attention that big job. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a big job. And it's and you do it
Speaker 4: for free, by the way, so you know, it speaks
Speaker 4: to integrity, It speaks to commitment to the whole, you know,
Speaker 4: and in his case, the whole of directors, in my case,
Speaker 4: the whole producers. But and also he'd been hanging out
Speaker 4: with Steven because they were talking about doing some kind
Speaker 4: of Studio fifty four musical at one point, and he
Speaker 4: was already in the studio. I was like, yeah, And
Speaker 4: I knew that he knew music, and I knew that
Speaker 4: he was gay, and I knew that he was smart.
Speaker 4: And so I was like, what about Paris? Since they
Speaker 4: said can you get him? Can you get to him?
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, I think so. So I cold
Speaker 4: called Paris, and you know, typically what happens is you
Speaker 4: meet I said, would you like to meet? He said yes,
Speaker 4: So we sent him some material and then we've set
Speaker 4: this meeting. And typically when you're meeting, you're interviewing, right,
Speaker 4: you're interviewing somebody. And and so we get on the
Speaker 4: phone on the zoom with Paris because now it is
Speaker 4: COVID and we're on the zoom, and he just starts
Speaker 4: talking to us about all the parallels and his connection
Speaker 4: and emotional connection and pretty we're like on the verge
Speaker 4: of tears. And then at the end he goes, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm in and we're like, what wait, what happened just now?
Speaker 5: Did we just get a director?
Speaker 4: Because typically you well like that was great, we'll get
Speaker 4: back to you whatever whatever, But it was so much exactly.
Speaker 4: But it was that kind of meeting that just felt kiss.
Speaker 4: It just felt right, you know. And so we hung
Speaker 4: up and we're like, I think we have a director.
Speaker 4: And that proved to be really auspicious because when we
Speaker 4: then put our package together to go out to raise
Speaker 4: the money, Paris is who they want to hear from.
Speaker 4: And so Paris literally had investors in Tears.
Speaker 5: Oh don't forget chance.
Speaker 3: Oh and Chao.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we brought chaaw in who had also worked with
Speaker 4: but it was really Paris who sold this thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: He he was so honest and so connected to the
Speaker 4: material that literally on the phone, investors were like, I'm in.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, like you Typically they'll say, yeah,
Speaker 4: we'll think about it, we'll talk to our people, but
Speaker 4: we had to say I'm in.
Speaker 1: Okay, how much money were you looking for?
Speaker 4: I think it's typically like a couple of million dollars,
Speaker 4: you know, that's like, yeah, the which are like, okay, a.
Speaker 1: Couple million dollars. Where did you find your list of investors?
Speaker 1: How many were there? How many said yes? Or how
Speaker 1: many said why?
Speaker 5: I love this?
Speaker 4: Because white Horse Pictures knows everybody. So basically like white
Speaker 4: Horse has a list of people that have invested and
Speaker 4: been paid back, you know, like what a notion. So
Speaker 4: they trust white Horse as the as the purveyors of
Speaker 4: excellence in documentaries, especially in music docs, and so we
Speaker 4: just went to their list.
Speaker 5: And by the end of going to the list, we
Speaker 5: had the money.
Speaker 2: And we have it.
Speaker 5: We have usual film funds that we funders that we've
Speaker 5: gone to in the past, and the film funds so
Speaker 5: be roade, and we've got these other film funders. Chicago
Speaker 5: Media Group and uh, Jenny Raskin of don't tell everybody,
Speaker 5: don't tell everybody.
Speaker 3: That's that's right.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, so yeah, that's that's true. You're right, Eric.
Speaker 1: How many of these were individuals and how many were
Speaker 1: consortiums funds?
Speaker 3: It was a mix, right, it was a mix.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a mix. It's a mix, definitely mix, lovely mix,
Speaker 5: really nice mix.
Speaker 1: How much did you get from each since this is
Speaker 1: in the past, Well, like your biggest.
Speaker 4: Adventurer, some people can put in we know a million
Speaker 4: to fifty thousand.
Speaker 5: That was a big mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, it is the film business, I know.
Speaker 5: But it's a documentary film business.
Speaker 1: The right, the type of people who you know were sophisticated.
Speaker 1: No that it's not easy to get your money back.
Speaker 5: It's not.
Speaker 4: This is what it's so crazy, which is and I
Speaker 4: asked Genie this when we're on our stump and you know,
Speaker 4: doing our panels like Bill, why did we think we
Speaker 4: could get the money for Billy when if you say
Speaker 4: Billy Preston, only people of a certain age really know
Speaker 4: who he is. Oh, you know, nobody's like, oh Billy
Speaker 4: presdent eleve him. You've heard Billy Preston so many times
Speaker 4: you don't even know it because you don't know what
Speaker 4: his contribution is. And so we thought we were selling
Speaker 4: it as like the Zeleig of the seventies music scene
Speaker 4: across all genres, you know what I mean, or or
Speaker 4: you know and and that, And it was hard because
Speaker 4: people don't know who he is.
Speaker 3: But it's by association.
Speaker 4: It's almost like Billy's life, you know, it's by association
Speaker 4: that we I think we're able to persevere, you know,
Speaker 4: m Yeah, and.
Speaker 5: You know, of course we got you know this before
Speaker 5: you even do well, before I even would have called
Speaker 5: Stephan your called parasift to make sure that there's enough archive,
Speaker 5: that there's enough tools to tell the story. So you know,
Speaker 5: that is it. That's a that's a you know, discovery.
Speaker 1: Okay, since you've made a number of films, what percentage
Speaker 1: do the people get their money back?
Speaker 5: We are people get their money back in all of
Speaker 5: our films?
Speaker 1: Wow for us? Wow was right? So the money participation,
Speaker 1: what percent of the one hundred percent does the money.
Speaker 5: Get I really don't I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 5: that answer, but they they every what's the percentage of
Speaker 5: the people who get say, that asked me the question
Speaker 5: one we're taking.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say the film cost a million dollars. Let's
Speaker 1: say it made the money back. There are other profit
Speaker 1: participants besides the money. Okay, well what you recoup? How's
Speaker 1: the money split?
Speaker 5: Water It's very trans Yeah, it's a waterfall. It's very transparent.
Speaker 5: It's like a you know, it goes into an ascraal account.
Speaker 5: Everybody sees everything. It's very you know, camera. So it's
Speaker 5: very very transparent.
Speaker 1: Let me put it this way. I put five dollars
Speaker 1: into your movie. The movie is recouped. I got my
Speaker 1: five dollars back, okay, and I'm looking for profit participation. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a director, there's this that the other they're all
Speaker 1: gett ignored slice.
Speaker 4: Typically investors own fifty percent and filmmaker's own fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Okay, that goes there. Okay, so now you got your money.
Speaker 1: What's the next step.
Speaker 5: We got to make our list?
Speaker 1: Well, we got to make the movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, we got to make out this between research and
Speaker 4: actually making that list of people that we feel will
Speaker 4: deliver the story, we'll tell the story. And what's crazy
Speaker 4: is you don't even know what the story is until
Speaker 4: you start doing the research and talking to people, and.
Speaker 1: Okay, there was a lot revealed in the movie that
Speaker 1: I didn't know all They had lines if you live
Speaker 1: through that in your fan your no, Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: started the movie with this Daniel shaw a book, what
Speaker 1: percentage of the information was in that book?
Speaker 2: Honestly, I went back to the original sort of treatment
Speaker 2: we did really just based in the book, and I'd
Speaker 2: say seventy five percent of the story was there. Would't
Speaker 2: you guys agree about seventy five percent? But it's the
Speaker 2: twenty five percent that came out of the interviews that
Speaker 2: surprised us. That David Flesh and the bones that made
Speaker 2: it real.
Speaker 4: We thought, or I thought, at one point we were
Speaker 4: telling the story of a closeted gay man who when
Speaker 4: he got to be a certain age, came into his
Speaker 4: identity and authenticity. But then we went back and everybody's like,
Speaker 4: oh no, he was gay, like everybody knew it. So
Speaker 4: he wasn't really closeted in his personal life. He was
Speaker 4: more closeted in his professional life. And that was that
Speaker 4: was very interesting that there were so many people that
Speaker 4: loved him, knew him, knew he was gay, and didn't
Speaker 4: have like Olivia says, wasn't a big nobody.
Speaker 6: Nobody thought about it, Okay, but the film says that
Speaker 6: he was tortured about it.
Speaker 1: But before we go that far, you have seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of the information you have the money. Tell me
Speaker 1: about the process of gaining the additional information and how
Speaker 1: you're going to tell the story. Well, first we oh, sorry.
Speaker 5: The first first thing that we do so so that
Speaker 5: our directors prepared and our writers prepared, is we do
Speaker 5: a little interviews on a zoom and we just talked
Speaker 5: to people and just just say. It's almost like it
Speaker 5: puts a pre interview before we put them on camera.
Speaker 5: And you interview a lot more people than you end
Speaker 5: up using in your in your movie. I mean, Pavaratti,
Speaker 5: it was like, you know, sixty five people we interviewed,
Speaker 5: we had twenty if we had fifteen maybe, And with
Speaker 5: same with Billy Preston, you know we had we interviewed
Speaker 5: fifty some odd people and we had.
Speaker 1: Okay, where did the list of fifty people come from?
Speaker 1: We made it up?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know the research.
Speaker 1: Okay, Billying Preston's been gone for twenty odd years, but
Speaker 1: everybody involved is not young. How hard was it to
Speaker 1: track these people down and were they reluctant or not
Speaker 1: to go on camera and tell their story.
Speaker 2: Most everybody was not reluctant. Most everybody wanted to do
Speaker 2: it because there's just so much luck. So it's not
Speaker 2: a struggle to get Soundra Crouch to talk about Billy
Speaker 2: Preston and she becomes a key witness in the whole thing.
Speaker 2: You know, Bobby Watson and Manny Kellogg that he played
Speaker 2: with back in the day, they're there. It was a
Speaker 2: lot of work to get Eric Clapton, and we were
Speaker 2: lucky that it because Eric doesn't give a ton of interviews.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I basically had to beg him with the letter, and
Speaker 2: then Jonathan Clyde, our producer in the head of Apple,
Speaker 2: got to interview him. And they knew each other for
Speaker 2: a long time, and so that interview was done by
Speaker 2: Jonathan Clyde beautifully and becomes a pivotal, you know, a
Speaker 2: pivotal interview.
Speaker 1: In the whole movie.
Speaker 2: So you just you work it and you work it
Speaker 2: like you know, a drag queen on the runway until
Speaker 2: all your sequence fall up.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you got these fifty people, you get the
Speaker 1: interviews as Stephanie said, you know, you think you have
Speaker 1: one thing, but as you get deeper into the information,
Speaker 1: you finally have something else. So just just to reestablish,
Speaker 1: from the time that Genee contacts Stephanie, how long until
Speaker 1: the money is locked up?
Speaker 4: A few months?
Speaker 1: I think very quickly. Yeah, okay, well.
Speaker 5: To quickly doesn't always happen.
Speaker 1: When you have the money. Do you have a target
Speaker 1: date to start? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean, as I remember, once we got the money,
Speaker 4: then you can actually make the plan. Then you can
Speaker 4: build the team out. Then you can hire your cinematographer.
Speaker 4: Then you can decide which cities you're going to shoot in,
Speaker 4: what how much money do you have, Where are your
Speaker 4: key witnesses going to be? You know, so it becomes
Speaker 4: like a beautiful The first is like a detective work
Speaker 4: to figure out who to talk to and how to
Speaker 4: find them, you know, which.
Speaker 3: Is super fun, you know. And then it's like then.
Speaker 4: We talk to them and go, okay, they're going to
Speaker 4: be a good witness, and so you you know, you
Speaker 4: try to guide those questions back to the park that
Speaker 4: you liked that they said before, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And it was just it's such a different way of
Speaker 4: working from having a script and just trying to realize
Speaker 4: that script on the screen. You know, because it's very amorphous,
Speaker 4: you're just pulling things together, and also because our team
Speaker 4: is experiencing all of this information together but also separately,
Speaker 4: you know, so we all have to get on the
Speaker 4: same page. It's a lot.
Speaker 5: It's like Jess, you know, you got we're playing off
Speaker 5: of each other, and you know that is It's a
Speaker 5: lot like a jazz song.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, is this in segments? Is it compartmentalize or
Speaker 1: are you still researching when you're assembling the movie.
Speaker 2: We're still researching. I mean we're still finding out more
Speaker 2: people are leading us to other people that we want
Speaker 2: to talk to. You know, it just continues to expand
Speaker 2: and rarely contracts. And then when we end up ready
Speaker 2: to go in the editing room, we just have too much,
Speaker 2: which is a blessing. I mean, you really do want
Speaker 2: to have too much. And then we just started trimming
Speaker 2: it down. We just started saying what can we do without?
Speaker 2: Who can tell the story better? And you know, it
Speaker 2: all starts to sort of go through the sieve that
Speaker 2: is the editorial process.
Speaker 4: And as you're thinking and as you're hearing certain witnesses
Speaker 4: testify you're also thinking about well, I was thinking about
Speaker 4: a three act structure like you have in a regular
Speaker 4: narrative movie, like how how do you how do you
Speaker 4: lay this out so it has the same effect that
Speaker 4: watching you know, a narrative does, which is an emotional
Speaker 4: heart string tale that has, you know, a beginning, a
Speaker 4: big middle, and a and a and a in an
Speaker 4: ending of the second act that feels very dark, and
Speaker 4: then a redemption. And thinking of it in that way
Speaker 4: was very helpful to me because it it just reminded
Speaker 4: me that we're still watching a too, you know, one
Speaker 4: and a half to two hour movie, and and these
Speaker 4: things apply.
Speaker 3: They have always applied.
Speaker 4: I used to teach Cassidy at USC and I talked
Speaker 4: about Aristotle, I talked about Poetics, which is the very
Speaker 4: first compilation of what does a two hour entertainment look like,
Speaker 4: feel like? And what does it need to be successful?
Speaker 4: And those things have never changed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember saying it has to we have to
Speaker 5: have a MacGuffin at the end of that second mid
Speaker 5: second act because and there always is in our in
Speaker 5: one life, you know, there is something and Billie's was
Speaker 5: they you know, the rests and what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, Parish, you're the director, Ultimately you're in control. How
Speaker 1: did your vision of what you wanted it to be evolve? Well,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: It was helped because each of my partners here brings
Speaker 2: a different point of view and a different skill set
Speaker 2: to it, which adds to the whole thing, which is
Speaker 2: why I was so glad I worked in advertising, because
Speaker 2: advertising was very much about building the collaboration and getting
Speaker 2: the best from everyone. So Jeanie's there, and she's she's
Speaker 2: a lot. She's great with the details and everything else,
Speaker 2: but she's also all hard and she's also a lot
Speaker 2: of emotion, as you've seen in this interview, and that's
Speaker 2: a wonderful thing. She's a great test of material and
Speaker 2: what really moves her we know. And Stephanie's got that
Speaker 2: story background that she just talked about, which is not
Speaker 2: necessarily the way I look at it because I've never
Speaker 2: been a story reader. I'm more into the ride and
Speaker 2: what's the ride like? But then that helps you shape
Speaker 2: the project. And my point of view is basically what
Speaker 2: I learned back in college from my playwriting and screenwriting teacher,
Speaker 2: William Alfred, who said I think. On the very first day, said,
Speaker 2: if you're going to ask for two hours out of
Speaker 2: someone's life, you have to think about what you're going
Speaker 2: to give. What is the gift of the project you're making.
Speaker 2: It can't just take away time for their family or
Speaker 2: their kids or things they want to do. It's two
Speaker 2: hours of their life, So what is the gift? And
Speaker 2: I've always been driven by that. I don't want to
Speaker 2: waste people's time. I want to make sure that there's
Speaker 2: something that they can take away from this that is valuable.
Speaker 2: And with Billy Preston's story and with the witnesses, we
Speaker 2: found that. With the witnesses testimony, we found a gift
Speaker 2: to the audience, a gift that sort of points them
Speaker 2: in a new direction, which I think is really wonderful.
Speaker 2: That's what makes it all worthwhile to me. And that's
Speaker 2: what I didn't really quite expect. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: the gift would be. I didn't know what would be
Speaker 2: in the end of this movie. The feeling that made
Speaker 2: people a little bit different from when the story began.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you're a fan of music from that era,
Speaker 1: you know Billy Preston's story, you may not remember that
Speaker 1: he was a band leader on a TV show for
Speaker 1: a while, but you know that. Yeah, he played on
Speaker 1: Abbey Road and he worked with the Beatles and then
Speaker 1: he was a concert for Bangladesh and he you know,
Speaker 1: he had hit records in the seventies. But the Genesis
Speaker 1: you didn't know that. You didn't know that he went
Speaker 1: on the road as a teenager. Where did you find
Speaker 1: all about footage? And how did you get that information?
Speaker 1: It was shocking because you know, I think people sent
Speaker 1: me these documentaries all the time, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these people, you know, I don't want to diss some documentaries,
Speaker 1: but like in the Nicky Hopkins, they don't have any footage,
Speaker 1: and in this movie there's so much.
Speaker 2: But in his mind blow you should speak to that
Speaker 2: because you've got the research department of the Angel there.
Speaker 5: So yeah, we do we have. I mean, Patrick Ryan
Speaker 5: is our archival producer and he is he is a gift.
Speaker 5: He is a gift and he is incredibly uh you know,
Speaker 5: he just knows where where everything is. I don't know
Speaker 5: how he does it. You know, we work with Global
Speaker 5: Images g I W. Chris Robertson, Jessica Berman, Bogden. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know that team out of New York. We work
Speaker 5: with a team called Archival Ninja. We work with that.
Speaker 5: Our long standing relationship is with Reeland in the Years,
Speaker 5: David Pax Reelan in the years. He's a co producer
Speaker 5: of this film. He is archival Library is absolutely uncanny,
Speaker 5: and he's like a He's like an oracle. I always
Speaker 5: called I was whenever I'm thinking about doing a doc
Speaker 5: and we usually call him up obi Wan. I ask
Speaker 5: him for like what he have? What what we have?
Speaker 5: Enough archive? So there's certain tests and litmus tests that
Speaker 5: you go through before you before you then go dip
Speaker 5: into your your very loyal you know, investors. So you
Speaker 5: have to have the tools and the colors on the
Speaker 5: palette of which to paint with.
Speaker 4: And we also had Olivia Harrison. Oh yeah, Olivia Harrison
Speaker 4: was a fountain of information, photographs of.
Speaker 3: Music that he had boarded. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: She helped us get to Peter Jackson and helped us,
Speaker 2: you know, basically get footage, not just the footage that
Speaker 2: was in Get Back, but some outtakes and Peter Jackson
Speaker 2: was generous enough to share those with us, which allowed
Speaker 2: us to tell that story from Billy's perspective which people
Speaker 2: have seen get back really kind of enjoy that because
Speaker 2: it's buried in the eight hours and it's only fragmentary.
Speaker 2: But when we just put it together in front of them,
Speaker 2: focused on Billy, it's very very effective for our purposes.
Speaker 2: So we couldn't have done that without Peter Jackson and
Speaker 2: Apple Ringo.
Speaker 4: Who I got to interview because Paris and Jail were
Speaker 4: gone that day we were shooting.
Speaker 1: I have a busy career. Yeah, Okay, is this anomaloust
Speaker 1: that there's so much footage about Billy or if you
Speaker 1: have the means in the connections, does there tend to
Speaker 1: be all this footage of people from that era.
Speaker 2: I think it's different with Billy. I think Billy was
Speaker 2: so all over. I mean, Billy is on Shindig. You know,
Speaker 2: Billy is in a movie when he's you know, ten
Speaker 2: years old. You know that not every artist is on
Speaker 2: the Netkin Cole ship the.
Speaker 4: Zones are recording their concerts.
Speaker 3: He is the Zelig like where we you Go?
Speaker 2: So I think he's somewhat unusual. I don't think if
Speaker 2: you picked anyone out of the hat, you know that
Speaker 2: you could find this kind of material because he had
Speaker 2: so much hair, so many different hairs processed, afro your
Speaker 2: short and they are all these different time periods, and
Speaker 2: we had footage, but there are limitations to that. For instance,
Speaker 2: we wanted to say more about Waretha Franklin. There's Harry's
Speaker 2: little footage of Billy with Franklin and that's a thirty
Speaker 2: year relationship that some people noted that it is not
Speaker 2: paid a great attention to in the film. But because
Speaker 2: we didn't have the movie, we didn't have anything to
Speaker 2: show you. We could only play the music and maybe
Speaker 2: show some stills of Beretha Franklin. That wasn't how we
Speaker 2: were crumpeted, you know, that wasn't how this thing was gone.
Speaker 1: So it's unfortunate there were some holes there.
Speaker 2: In Billy's life that we couldn't get to just because
Speaker 2: we didn't have the stuff to show you.
Speaker 5: Very true and we have those, you know, we did
Speaker 5: have his his actual you know, book of memories. He
Speaker 5: had his whole, that whole and we.
Speaker 2: Start with Billy's actual scrap book. Billy in his scrap
Speaker 2: book even kept articles about his assault, his in his
Speaker 2: scrap books. So when you're seeing those in the movie,
Speaker 2: those are coming out of Billy's scrap book, which I
Speaker 2: thought was fascint.
Speaker 5: You know, you're we're lucky when you find things like that.
Speaker 5: Part of my part of that's, you know, when when
Speaker 5: when we were when I was doing research for Lucy
Speaker 5: and DESI and I went to Luciernez's house for example.
Speaker 5: You know, people can say, oh, I put everything here,
Speaker 5: this is where I put everything in these two rooms
Speaker 5: or something, and you're you and this happened at Lucy
Speaker 5: Ernez's home. I literally was stretching my back and I
Speaker 5: looked up. I was literally bending my back like that,
Speaker 5: and I said, Hey, there's a something that looks like
Speaker 5: a lock box that's up on this top shelf. Does
Speaker 5: you think that's anything? And she said, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I think you're going to really love this. I forgot
Speaker 5: I put that up there, and we pulled it down
Speaker 5: and this is the lock box at the very very
Speaker 5: beginning of the movie that has recordings that no one
Speaker 5: has ever heard. You know, it's so these are it
Speaker 5: was it was a gift, like all these recordings that
Speaker 5: and what was so great and what we could what
Speaker 5: we do for a lot of what we've did, we
Speaker 5: helped Olivia organize, help her organize her, you know, with
Speaker 5: with with that George Harrison Mature World, and and you
Speaker 5: could help people wantit. What you don't use in your film,
Speaker 5: you can monetize for them later, you know. So Lucy Arnez,
Speaker 5: for example, came out with this book about the love
Speaker 5: letters because she took out this giant I couldn't believe
Speaker 5: it and started opening up these love letters from Desi Arnez.
Speaker 5: And she was like, don't you want to open them up?
Speaker 5: And I said, I do, but I don't want to
Speaker 5: touch them. I don't want to break them. So let's
Speaker 5: go to a professional and have somebody, you know, photograph
Speaker 5: these properly, which she did, and that movie could have
Speaker 5: been like, you know, two parts as well, Les, this
Speaker 5: could have so, yeah, those are the yummy and delicious
Speaker 5: things you find when you're going through an archive.
Speaker 1: Okay, Billy goes on the road to England at a
Speaker 1: young age. To what degree do you think that change
Speaker 1: his identity personality as opposed to someone who had just
Speaker 1: been living in their neighborhood going to high school.
Speaker 2: Well, he was fifteen when he originally started traveling with
Speaker 2: Little Richard and as Tony Jones says in the movie,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things going on there that maybe
Speaker 2: a fifteen year old isn't ready to see. And even
Speaker 2: though he's with the band, he's with the band that's
Speaker 2: you know, guys a bit older and they're quite probably active.
Speaker 2: And so if Billy Preshm were my son at the time,
Speaker 2: you know, I would probably say no. But his mother
Speaker 2: said yes. It was a great opportunity for him, and
Speaker 2: sure enough it opened his horizons. And he says the
Speaker 2: first time he played rock and roll, but also probably
Speaker 2: it was a lot more than a young person should
Speaker 2: have to handle at that point. And I think that
Speaker 2: is certainly somebody that affected.
Speaker 4: And I also think any you know, I remember the
Speaker 4: first time I went to Europe. I was nineteen or something.
Speaker 4: It's it's mind opening.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I think that beyond whatever was happening or whatever, you're
Speaker 4: in a different country, you're out of your neighborhood, you're
Speaker 4: in a different world.
Speaker 3: It's got to affect you, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, being on the road and rock and roll. It
Speaker 1: is sex drug in rock and roll. Yes, in the
Speaker 1: era of that really applies if you're a gay guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're doing that in some in sports. Another
Speaker 1: occasional sports guy comes out and says, yes, I'm gay.
Speaker 1: Most of them retired, but when we go back to
Speaker 1: this era, no one's going to come out. It must
Speaker 1: have been really hard for Billy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just not possible. And you know, as we've
Speaker 2: talked about it, because we love Billy Press so much,
Speaker 2: we understand, you know, I get it. I get that
Speaker 2: he wasn't able to do what I was able to do.
Speaker 2: It is I mean, you know, pretty much out in
Speaker 2: my adult life and certainly out in the industry at
Speaker 2: a very early age, you couldn't do that. Then, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's not he wanted to have a career. You know, Yes,
Speaker 2: the Beatles probably, you know, we certainly knew that he
Speaker 2: was gay, but they didn't have to make it an issue.
Speaker 2: But not every band is going to be there, and
Speaker 2: not every musician is going to want to play with you,
Speaker 2: and not every record company is going to want to
Speaker 2: have you on their lad And so it's sadly the
Speaker 2: shrewdest thing that Billy Preston could have done is by
Speaker 2: just staying in the closet. But there's a cost, you know,
Speaker 2: the closet has a cost, and you can be open
Speaker 2: with your friends, but when you're not authentic and it's
Speaker 2: all hidden in your songs, like he writes songs about
Speaker 2: keep it to yourself and don't let anybody get on
Speaker 2: the inside story of your love affair. But he doesn't
Speaker 2: actually be able. He isn't able to be his authentic self.
Speaker 2: There is a price, and that's a price that I
Speaker 2: think at the end was, you know, part of his
Speaker 2: unduel the mother.
Speaker 1: It's established and it's well known there might not have
Speaker 1: been many opportunities for black people in those circumstances. But
Speaker 1: do you think the mother acted appropriately or.
Speaker 2: She was out of touch? Ladies, what do you think?
Speaker 2: That's a tough question. I think she was taking that
Speaker 2: Billy was a star. She knew Billy was a star.
Speaker 2: He was on TV when he was five or six
Speaker 2: conducting the choir. You know, he had so many opportunities.
Speaker 2: She thought, this is what's best for Billy. You know,
Speaker 2: let's let this star blossom and grow. And you know,
Speaker 2: as one of the coaches, I forget who says, we
Speaker 2: were so proud to see that Billy came out first,
Speaker 2: that Billy was the ship before any of us. And
Speaker 2: so there was a certain. I think for her, from
Speaker 2: her perspective, she was just helping her son. She was
Speaker 2: helping her son get to where he dreamed.
Speaker 1: He could be. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean you look at Judy Garland, you know, and
Speaker 5: you could look at any and you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: You could look at any child star and their parents
Speaker 5: did something where you're like, you know, why would you
Speaker 5: give them? You know speed? You know, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. So why you know what I mean? So
Speaker 5: why it didn't and you know, you had this tragic
Speaker 5: ending of Judy Garland. I mean so, and you know
Speaker 5: with with Billy, he's you know you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 5: I it's it's disappointing that his mom wasn't you know,
Speaker 5: but you know, weird, we weren't there. We weren't there.
Speaker 5: You can't if you're not there present at every moment
Speaker 5: you don't know, we weren't there. I can't judge anybody
Speaker 5: because they just don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about his relationship connection with the Wreath
Speaker 1: of Franklin. You know, people who were not in this
Speaker 1: world think that everybody knows everybody, which is untrue. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that is well established in the movie because
Speaker 1: if you lived through Let It Be and Abbey Road
Speaker 1: and all that in nineteen seventy, he looked like an opportunist.
Speaker 1: But it's well established in the movie. They knew him
Speaker 1: from Hamburg whatever. He was just dropping by the studio. Okay,
Speaker 1: So but you talk about all these other people, were
Speaker 1: they tracking him down or because generally speaking, and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of them, the people behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: studio musicians, they're the best networker the ball talk because
Speaker 1: they got to work well. I think it was just
Speaker 1: juggling opportunities.
Speaker 2: I think they were coming at him, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's just they were looking for that sound, as you know,
Speaker 2: as Eric Clapton says later, when you wanted someone to
Speaker 2: play the B three, you went to Billy Preston. And
Speaker 2: I think people just once they heard him and his
Speaker 2: distinctive sound is something that I think we break down
Speaker 2: pretty well in the film, and people now will hear
Speaker 2: records differently. I hope because of the film, you realize
Speaker 2: that's such a desirable commodity and not everyone has it.
Speaker 2: So they wanted that sauce, they wanted that funk ca
Speaker 2: dethic sound that Billy was providing, and they also knew man.
Speaker 2: He don't need no sheet music. He just shows up
Speaker 2: and kills you know, he does the rich Hot Chili Peppers.
Speaker 2: I think he was in Arizona them. They send him
Speaker 2: the tape and he plays over and he sends it back.
Speaker 2: You know, Billy is just that way. He was such
Speaker 2: a genius that I think when people said we could
Speaker 2: get Billy Preston, let's get Billy Preston. He played on
Speaker 2: the Monkeys first out. You know, everyone knows the Monkeys
Speaker 2: were studio musicians. Did it with Billy Preston.
Speaker 5: Yeah, back there, the early synthesizer stuff like you know what.
Speaker 5: You know what we talked about in the film. Billy
Speaker 5: was able to do that with his organ, playing with
Speaker 5: his the B three that before anyone else can do it.
Speaker 1: We talked about the sex. Let's talk sex drugs, rock
Speaker 1: and roll drugs. Time for the drugs. He gets heavily
Speaker 1: involved in substances. Now that is not uncommon in this world.
Speaker 1: A lot of it has to do with a lifestyle,
Speaker 1: especially if you go on the road. You played a
Speaker 1: ten thousand people, then you're with the same idiots you've
Speaker 1: known for twenty years, and you got to get up
Speaker 1: you don't get enough sleep, and that leads to drugs.
Speaker 1: Why it was Billy who was a church kid, Why
Speaker 1: did he end up falling off the edge with substances.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm the alcoholic expert here, so my theory is
Speaker 2: not everyone becomes an alcoholic or drug because they use
Speaker 2: alcohol and drugs, and not everyone who used it a
Speaker 2: lot necessarily becomes alcoholic or drug act. Billy was probably
Speaker 2: born an alcoholic. His father was an alcoholic. I think
Speaker 2: he had that alcoholic gene and I also have, which
Speaker 2: just excites you. When you get a drink, it does
Speaker 2: something different to your body, and that's part of the
Speaker 2: reason why you start to crave it. And when you
Speaker 2: start to crave it, and when it's then around you
Speaker 2: the way it is, then the addiction becomes a growth
Speaker 2: of that. It also didn't help that he had a
Speaker 2: lot of secrets and part of the reason why you know,
Speaker 2: they always thought about drowning your sorrows. But part of
Speaker 2: the reason why we love drugs and we love alcoholics.
Speaker 2: It lets you forget for that time being. It releases
Speaker 2: you from whatever agony is going on in your mind,
Speaker 2: and if you're not really dealing with that agony, like,
Speaker 2: Billy is not going to therapy, he's not really talking
Speaker 2: to anybody or sharing with his friends what he's going on.
Speaker 2: What he's doing is masking it, and then the masking
Speaker 2: on top of the addiction becomes something that gets out
Speaker 2: of control. Now, he did recognize it later in life,
Speaker 2: and you see in the movie he got over at
Speaker 2: different periods and try to pull himself together. He recognized
Speaker 2: that this was damaging to him, but he wasn't able
Speaker 2: to pull the deep.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is another thing you touched on just now,
Speaker 1: that no one really knew this guy. Okay, being gay
Speaker 1: is one thing, but there were and that's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, but this guy was not a lot coming. Okay,
Speaker 1: why do you think he was so internalized?
Speaker 2: Well, his friends really talk about Billy not wanting to
Speaker 2: go there, and Billy didn't want to go there, and
Speaker 2: he just in interviews, we went through all of his interviews,
Speaker 2: he rarely said anything of any personal nature at all,
Speaker 2: other than to say how much he loved his mother
Speaker 2: and how gratefully he was to God for his talent.
Speaker 2: And it seems like he's someone who's reticent to share that.
Speaker 2: And I think it's because he doesn't want to be vulnerable,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't want to be judged, you know, and
Speaker 2: therefore he is not going to put it out there.
Speaker 2: He didn't recognize that the releasing of it, by releasing
Speaker 2: the secret is empowered, and that message never got to him,
Speaker 2: and so the secrets were safer with him if they
Speaker 2: were hell. And I feel bad for him because I
Speaker 2: think that's something that you know, alcoholics can recover learn,
Speaker 2: you know, when we say you're only as sick as
Speaker 2: your secrets. Billy didn't get that message, and so he
Speaker 2: just kept going. And I think he's naturally reticent, and
Speaker 2: he's naturally but every once in a while he slips.
Speaker 2: Every once in a while, like in that Beatles film
Speaker 2: when in Justic's Hey, there's a piano over there, and
Speaker 2: if you want to sit in, there's one shot at
Speaker 2: billion he does this, guess this great lab of genuine excitement.
Speaker 2: The Beatles have just asked him to play on their album,
Speaker 2: The Biggest Band in the World, and his giggle is
Speaker 2: is as close as he gets to saying, this is
Speaker 2: the most joyful offer I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 2: And that does make him a difficult subject. But if
Speaker 2: you talk to enough people he's talked to, you can
Speaker 2: get a picture it, which is where I think we're
Speaker 2: able to accomplish. We unveiled a bit of the mystery,
Speaker 2: not the total man. We weren't inside of his head,
Speaker 2: but we got as close as we could get with
Speaker 2: the friends and the family that we talked to.
Speaker 1: Okay, the arc of his career once hems successful is
Speaker 1: not uncommon. It's very rare that someone has hits beyond
Speaker 1: their little period. So what makes you know he has
Speaker 1: these gigantic kits in the seventies and then they dry up?
Speaker 1: They try up for everybody? Okay, what makes the aftermath
Speaker 1: of his story different from everybody else's. That's interesting, I.
Speaker 4: Think because I think because and I credit Nigel with
Speaker 4: getting the judge to speak on Billy's behalf, because we're
Speaker 4: always you.
Speaker 3: Know, he he.
Speaker 4: Did something, some not great things, you know, and what
Speaker 4: And I think during the film we hear our director ask,
Speaker 4: how do you square it? You know? How do you
Speaker 4: square all the things that he's done with like how
Speaker 4: much people love him? And I think the ultimate love
Speaker 4: was the guy who sent him to the penitentiary even
Speaker 4: felt something for this man. It was part of the
Speaker 4: thing we heard over and over again from all these
Speaker 4: interviews that he brought joy, and he brought love into
Speaker 4: the room. His love for music was infectious. And I
Speaker 4: forgot the question, but well.
Speaker 1: I do remember. I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: You know a lot about the record business and the
Speaker 2: way that it does work is you do have that
Speaker 2: hot streak. You have those records that come out. They're
Speaker 2: co written with him, with Bruce Fisher, and that was
Speaker 2: a partnership that was working for a time. But then
Speaker 2: when he goes to A and M, he sure leaves
Speaker 2: Bruce behind and he's generating his own material, some of
Speaker 2: which is working and some which isn't, and then he's
Speaker 2: kind of dry. Then he's told the stories he could tell. Now,
Speaker 2: a modern recording artist gets new producers, they find different songwriters,
Speaker 2: and they say this is where I want to be,
Speaker 2: and suddenly they make a change and they can keep
Speaker 2: the same sound, but now they've got another contemporary groove
Speaker 2: going on. They stay fresh. That didn't happen with Billie,
Speaker 2: But they didn't find even at Motown. Well, the example
Speaker 2: is with you on Board again. That's not a song
Speaker 2: he wrote, you know, that's a song that was given
Speaker 2: to him. That was A and R to him by
Speaker 2: Suzanne de pass and it's a hit. He really needed
Speaker 2: at this point to have someone who is really doing
Speaker 2: the A and R work to get him the songs
Speaker 2: that he could kill with that, and then he would
Speaker 2: have extended his career. And he could have still continued
Speaker 2: to write stuff, but that would extended his career.
Speaker 4: I remember what I was going to say, I'll forget again.
Speaker 4: So which is he says, and this is his testimony
Speaker 4: that the best toy you ever had was with Eric
Speaker 4: Clapton after jail. And so the story's different, our stories
Speaker 4: different because he did spiral down, but he came back
Speaker 4: and I think that does not happen that often. And
Speaker 4: from talking with Joyce at length and Sam, those final
Speaker 4: years of his life were really great until you know
Speaker 4: that last moment when he when he apparently went off
Speaker 4: the wagon.
Speaker 3: But but he was.
Speaker 4: Able to redeem himself, I think, And that's what we
Speaker 4: tried to leave the audience with.
Speaker 5: Okay, I was saying for forgiveness.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: A lot of people, a lot of artists, you know,
Speaker 5: they need somebody. It was said in our film actually
Speaker 5: by Sondra Crouch that an artist needs somebody to love
Speaker 5: them and come home to and and and just let
Speaker 5: their hair figuratively, let their hair down. That's what an
Speaker 5: artist needs, and we all do essentially. And I think
Speaker 5: that a lot of this had to do with his
Speaker 5: lack of trust and his lack of ability to let
Speaker 5: his hair down. And I'm saying this figuratively of course,
Speaker 5: and then and the lack of and you know, the
Speaker 5: lack of a good drug prof that you know, AA,
Speaker 5: we didn't have AA alcohol synonymous, and you know, it
Speaker 5: wasn't it wasn't so prevalent, so a lot of people
Speaker 5: didn't know how to help. And you know, Robert marger
Speaker 5: Leaf says that they, you know, we watched a lot
Speaker 5: of people spiral out of control that we didn't know
Speaker 5: how to help. And that had a lot to do
Speaker 5: with that as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so after his hit period and he starts to
Speaker 1: fall off the edge, he burned a lot of people. Okay,
Speaker 1: we experienced this maybe times five or ten with Kanye
Speaker 1: right now, once he's trying to come back, is everybody
Speaker 1: warming fuzzy or are they saying they have to stay
Speaker 1: away from this guy?
Speaker 4: According to Bill Maxwell, Yeah, according to Bill Maxwell, people
Speaker 4: he came and played great, and people people wanted him, wanted.
Speaker 2: And he kept playing with Ringo's All Star Band. He
Speaker 2: kept recording with John Lennon. He kept recording until his
Speaker 2: death with George Harrison. He toured with them and so
Speaker 2: people came back.
Speaker 4: Many people said he was high and he played amazing,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it was his gift.
Speaker 5: Will never missed a show. Yeah, well, Olivia says that.
Speaker 2: He fell his last recording of Here we Go Again
Speaker 2: with Ray Charles. It's the last time he played with
Speaker 2: Ray Charles. That becomes record of the year. You know,
Speaker 2: he's still there. He's still doing the do and he's
Speaker 2: still getting it done, but it's you know, it's less
Speaker 2: frequent and it's not you know, the kind of glory
Speaker 2: hits that he had. Behind the scenes, he's playing Alton
Speaker 2: John's album and he's doing you know, Barbara Streiss and
Speaker 2: Johnny Cash. So he's still doing his thing. It's just
Speaker 2: not as prominently out and solo as it was.
Speaker 1: Okay, film is done. Did you get it?
Speaker 5: What do you mean?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? You got a thing, you
Speaker 1: go in and then when it's done, you say, you know,
Speaker 1: I wish I had a little of this, or I
Speaker 1: wish we could have done that, but you can't.
Speaker 2: Yet.
Speaker 5: We got it. And I'll tell you how I know
Speaker 5: we got it. We got it because to sit to
Speaker 5: watch this film over and over again when you feel, God,
Speaker 5: I wish I had that, you can't watch it again
Speaker 5: and again again. So we and our executives would say
Speaker 5: that that this is a film that we got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the best condensation of everything that was
Speaker 1: given to us. Yeah. And sure, I mean there's never
Speaker 1: been a thing that I've worked on that I haven't felt, Oh,
Speaker 1: I wish I'd done this, I wish I cut the
Speaker 1: air and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: You're always gonna knit it. But emotionally, we were in Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: who was it yesterday? The days fly by yesterday, days ago,
Speaker 2: with the sold out crowd, you know, in tears, clapping
Speaker 2: at the pay of the bell moment that you know
Speaker 2: always brings them down, uh, and just loving the film,
Speaker 2: and we realize what we've made is connected with people.
Speaker 2: It's connected with people so much so that it's still
Speaker 2: the film for him. It was there for three days,
Speaker 2: it's going into his fifth week week that never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So it's awesome that it's actually touching people. So I
Speaker 2: just I have to believe we got something that's a
Speaker 2: value and that people are My inbox is still with
Speaker 2: people we can film with different parts of the world
Speaker 2: is saying this movie is amazing and has taken them
Speaker 2: to a different place.
Speaker 4: That does not happen that often. No, it does, I
Speaker 4: can I can count on one hand.
Speaker 2: Well, definitely, it's happened every single time I've directed a documentary.
Speaker 1: Which is one exactly one hundred percent of the time
Speaker 1: that I've directed to This is great about about it.
Speaker 5: You know what's great about all these q and a's
Speaker 5: that we have is that how many people just have,
Speaker 5: Like Paris said, there it sparks hope, It sparks dialogue,
Speaker 5: It sparks you know, discussing uncomfortable subjects. It sparks you know,
Speaker 5: to the you know, the the bridges that bind us,
Speaker 5: everything that binds us, that brings us together. That's what
Speaker 5: this movie can spark. And it reminds us that we
Speaker 5: have way more in common than we do not, and
Speaker 5: that's very important in these times that we're living in
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 1: Paris, you mentioned knew how to plethora of the material
Speaker 1: had a Winnow down, what are two things you had
Speaker 1: to leave out because they didn't fit the film?
Speaker 2: Well, one thing that comes to mind, I was listening
Speaker 2: to this morning in my car. There's a song Billy
Speaker 2: wrote in two thousand and one called Father Forgive Them Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I wrote down the lyrics here. When you look
Speaker 2: at the church, does it hurt you too, how the
Speaker 2: people of God are representing you? I mean, it's on
Speaker 2: the notes and we just had no place for it.
Speaker 2: It was it was so overtly. I mean, it would
Speaker 2: have been great, but we had no film. And it's
Speaker 2: just sometimes things just don't belong in there, even though
Speaker 2: they are saying somebody that's really interesting. It has to
Speaker 2: be part of the woven texture of what we're doing.
Speaker 2: And I you know, we just stefaniely I especially, I've
Speaker 2: talked about this. We really wish there was a way
Speaker 2: to have this movie be just as long, but even
Speaker 2: more music, because we love hearing Billy Preston play and
Speaker 2: there's so much joy and the seeing the styles change
Speaker 2: and the fact that he can do anything. I would
Speaker 2: love to have had film with him with the Retha playing,
Speaker 2: film with him with Johnny Cash. I'd love to see
Speaker 2: him live with these performers at the time, So it
Speaker 2: could be there could be a whole second, you know,
Speaker 2: second album of just musical performances by Billy Preston, which
Speaker 2: I would certainly watch.
Speaker 1: Okay, people in Hollywood, the unsophisticated sake. Content is king.
Speaker 1: Content is not king. Distribution is king. If people can't
Speaker 1: and see it, doesn't matter how good it is. When
Speaker 1: you get the documentaries, when you get the inny type things.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the endless film festival circuit, then the
Speaker 1: rs you know, the sun Dance which the studios are
Speaker 1: buying less from. The film is done, you're happy with it.
Speaker 1: What is the distribution plan and how do you maximize
Speaker 1: the film such as those who are interested have access
Speaker 1: and can see it.
Speaker 4: That's one word, and that's a brama rama. I mean
Speaker 4: this distribution company led by Carole and I can't pronounce
Speaker 4: his last name, but is I have been so impressed
Speaker 4: with how passionate this team is, how knowledgeable this team is.
Speaker 4: We are in theaters through the end of June. This
Speaker 4: is a this is a black music doc that is
Speaker 4: playing sold out across the country. So many things have
Speaker 4: sold out. We're having to repeat requests like it's coming
Speaker 4: back to LA to the Lenley Theaters because people still
Speaker 4: want to see it, Like you said, this is our
Speaker 4: fifth week in Film Forum.
Speaker 3: It's sold out in Austin. It's going back to Austin.
Speaker 4: So the way that we're unfolding the film gives people
Speaker 4: a chance to see it as they should in a
Speaker 4: theater with other people, Like he was saying, people clap
Speaker 4: after the performances, like you're actually in a live music joint,
Speaker 4: you know, And that's when we know we got them.
Speaker 4: And I think Paris, on the last pass of the
Speaker 4: edit really said, let's let's extend.
Speaker 3: Let's shout out.
Speaker 4: Our amazing editor, sah D Hansen, who elongated the music
Speaker 4: scenes so that you really felt like you were in
Speaker 4: a Billy Preston concert. And I think that's super satisfying
Speaker 4: for people.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a way, I mean, people stiff around it,
Speaker 1: but it's I think it's so.
Speaker 2: Sparred for us. And this wasn't a decision that I made,
Speaker 2: but this came with our producers to just stay in
Speaker 2: theaters and be in theaters as long as we can
Speaker 2: be in theaters and not just jump to you know,
Speaker 2: the distribution on you know, the netflixes and whatnot, and
Speaker 2: then we'll get there at some point. But right now,
Speaker 2: the experience in the theater is so good and I
Speaker 2: just I just encourage everybody to jump out when it
Speaker 2: comes to your town. And I guess you can find
Speaker 2: it on Billy prestonfilm dot com, he said, doing the
Speaker 2: plug you can find out the dates and it keeps changing.
Speaker 2: I'm looking every day, and so now we're in Louisville
Speaker 2: and how we're normal, Yes.
Speaker 1: Assess and Detroit. You know, it's just so much fun.
Speaker 1: You know obvious. We have studio releases in thousands of
Speaker 1: theaters and it's everywhere. They last for ten minutes and
Speaker 1: they're gone. I wrote about the movie and people say, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't see it. I can't find it. No, I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about internet stuff people connecting with
Speaker 1: the information. But what is the plan in terms of distribution,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the strategy there.
Speaker 4: The strategy is to build an audience for the film.
Speaker 4: People these a lot of people come back more than once,
Speaker 4: by the way, because they and the experience of seeing
Speaker 4: in the second time is different because you know where
Speaker 4: you're going. You can relax into the show, you can
Speaker 4: relax into the music. We will sell this, we will
Speaker 4: license this to a streamer, and people will have a
Speaker 4: lot of access. But once that happens, you cut short
Speaker 4: your theatrical run. Because if people know they can just
Speaker 4: go to Netflix, or know they can go to Apple
Speaker 4: or HBO Max, that's what they will do.
Speaker 3: That's the world we're living in.
Speaker 4: So I think the strategy is quite brilliant because it's
Speaker 4: building up the cachet for the film.
Speaker 3: It's building up like the.
Speaker 4: Reviews to I mean, I don't think we've gotten a
Speaker 4: bad review. This is a film that you can't get
Speaker 4: a review in the New York Times. We got three
Speaker 4: articles in the New York Times about this movie. So
Speaker 4: I think it takes to build it up as a
Speaker 4: prestige pick that you should see in theaters and hopefully
Speaker 4: when award season rolls back around, will be in the mix.
Speaker 1: Okay, how many towns or theaters is it playing in simultaneously.
Speaker 2: I think it's about thirty now, yeah, thirty different theaters?
Speaker 5: Yea, yeah, I think it's more.
Speaker 3: I think it's forty yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And like I said, maybe they would be a one
Speaker 4: day stand, but that would sell out so they come
Speaker 4: back and make it three days or four days like
Speaker 4: That's what's happening is that people are telling their friends.
Speaker 4: The word of mouth on this movie is spectacular, amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, film is done. It's playing theatrically. Ultimately you'll be
Speaker 1: on a streamer where it will live forever. All those
Speaker 1: always licensing issues things disappear. What do you want people
Speaker 1: to take from the film and to what degree do
Speaker 1: you think about the legacy of the film.
Speaker 4: Paris?
Speaker 2: I start, well, you know William Alford and my playgrinding
Speaker 2: Teacher says what's the gift? And what I really want
Speaker 2: people to take from the film is, yes, it's an
Speaker 2: expiration of fame, of faith, of you know, family. But
Speaker 2: what I hope you'll take is summarized kind of in
Speaker 2: that very last line in the movie where she says,
Speaker 2: how do we let this boy get away from this?
Speaker 2: And I hope it'll make people think about there are
Speaker 2: other troubled people in your life, and they may not
Speaker 2: be geniuses like Billy Preston, but they're they're having their
Speaker 2: difficulties and ask themselves have they done everything they could?
Speaker 2: You know, so many of the witnesses say I wish
Speaker 2: I could have done this. I wish I would have
Speaker 2: shared this. I wish you would have shared this with me.
Speaker 2: And you know, now Billy's no longer with us, but
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people living and struggling with alcoholism,
Speaker 2: and living and struggling with drug addiction, living and struggling
Speaker 2: with secrets of their past life that they can't they
Speaker 2: can't get passed.
Speaker 1: So now we have no excuse.
Speaker 2: You know, after you see this movie, I've said, boy,
Speaker 2: I would have dealt with Corey Monteeth on Glee a
Speaker 2: lot differently after I made this movie, because I was
Speaker 2: very shy about approaching him, even though you know, he
Speaker 2: was struggling to get to said and everyone knew that
Speaker 2: he had a problem, and I just didn't really step up.
Speaker 2: And I would not do that today. Today I would
Speaker 2: step up. And today this film has sort of inspired
Speaker 2: me to take that chance. As Sandra Krout says in
Speaker 2: the film, you may lose a friend, but save a life.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what I'm hoping people take away,
Speaker 2: not just the joy in the glory that is Billy
Speaker 2: Preston and the music, and get excited about it and
Speaker 2: build your on playlist and do all those things. I
Speaker 2: also think you'll think more about how I can be
Speaker 2: useful and can I be more useful to people that
Speaker 2: I love, and if so, can I extend their the
Speaker 2: joy that they bring to me or to other people
Speaker 2: in the world on earth by just being the key
Speaker 2: that gets them to wellness. So I mean, that's my
Speaker 2: big hope for the film. It's not just that I'll
Speaker 2: be an entertainment, but it also will you help here
Speaker 2: in their save a life?
Speaker 4: And I think now we feel like we got to
Speaker 4: know Billy a little bit, and I am very proud
Speaker 4: of the fact that we are reintroducing Billy to a
Speaker 4: whole new generation of music lovers who also old music
Speaker 4: lovers who didn't even know they were listening to Billy.
Speaker 4: Now they will now you can now when you hear
Speaker 4: that that organ, you go, that's Billy. That's Billy in there,
Speaker 4: you know. And so I think about the legacy of
Speaker 4: Billy and how his very sometimes difficult life has you know,
Speaker 4: transcended in a way, and that his joy and his
Speaker 4: music will live forever.
Speaker 5: So I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 1: Amen. Okay, I think what Paris say is the main takeaway.
Speaker 1: But going to Billy himself. Geenie, you've made a number
Speaker 1: of these movies. A to what degree do you find
Speaker 1: that the subject penetrates the culture at large? Like you said,
Speaker 1: to involve no direction home, I could tell you exactly
Speaker 1: where I saw it. I could tell a different name of.
Speaker 5: It wasn't involved. That's the company that Nigel that was.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll leave it.
Speaker 5: I can't take credit.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you the credit anyway. Okay, White
Speaker 1: Oors Pictures. I mean there was Score's whatever had impact
Speaker 1: when you make these films. To what degree is it
Speaker 1: palpable that it changed the national consciousness or the international
Speaker 1: conscious on the subject.
Speaker 5: Look, I think that I think that it's what in
Speaker 5: the mirror, what what Paris just said, and what I
Speaker 5: said a few mill mimuentes ago that when you confront
Speaker 5: uncomfortable truth in a subject matter, that it reminds us
Speaker 5: that we need we need to reconnect as the human beings.
Speaker 5: We need to reconnect. And I said this earlier. Forgive
Speaker 5: me for pitting myself, but I really, really really believe this.
Speaker 5: It will help build these bridges back that have been faltering.
Speaker 5: And the weird news cycle, I hope it's a cycle
Speaker 5: that we are going through right now, and we need
Speaker 5: to reconnect with each other on a deeper level and
Speaker 5: forgive and love more. Love has got to override it
Speaker 5: and forget it.
Speaker 2: And men and Bob, just to use a Genie example
Speaker 2: that they did work on that changed. You know, I
Speaker 2: know a lot of peoples the Begs documentary how do
Speaker 2: You Help? Can You Mend a Broken Heart? I thought
Speaker 2: I was going to see a story about you know,
Speaker 2: the Saturday Night by you know Fever soundtrack and blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. But what you saw was really a family
Speaker 2: drama and a family that was broken and trying to
Speaker 2: find its way back to love, which transcended the story
Speaker 2: of the music. So the music was there and it
Speaker 2: got you in, but the family made you look at
Speaker 2: your own family and say, oh my god, should I.
Speaker 1: Call my brother?
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a lot of brothers to call,
Speaker 2: but should I reach out to them now? I mean,
Speaker 2: we're they're still here and some of the pain of
Speaker 2: that are not being there, And the Begs is something
Speaker 2: you can take. So I'm hoping that there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of that too. The Fellow challenge people when they
Speaker 2: look at the story and say, how can I write
Speaker 2: my story better, you know, where can I take a
Speaker 2: take a new path? And that's that's really beautiful.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, man, You've lived through this.
Speaker 1: Five or six year project. As Stephanie said, it's not
Speaker 1: like a traditional film everybody goes assuming you're out of town.
Speaker 1: It's like summer camp, long hours and you may never
Speaker 1: see each other again. So you've made this one very
Speaker 1: successful movie. Is the nature of the business that you
Speaker 1: did it or the three of you think, well, this
Speaker 1: was so successful, maybe there's another idea we can work on. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's always another idea.
Speaker 5: There's just another idea. Absolutely, really.
Speaker 4: I mean, we had had a difficult time, we had
Speaker 4: a lovely time, we had a fun time. We had
Speaker 4: COVID time where we're all in masks. You know, when
Speaker 4: you make a movie, you are a family, and you
Speaker 4: do go through familial you know, joys and struggles and
Speaker 4: you come out of it. And I think ultimately the
Speaker 4: plays the thing. The movie's the thing, and we all
Speaker 4: love the movie and we all put our heart into
Speaker 4: this movie and the fact that it's connecting with people
Speaker 4: is a reflection of that connection that we have.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And during this time we were all doing different things.
Speaker 2: I mean, during the making of this movie, I did
Speaker 2: Dahmer and the Menendez and the Watcher and Doctor Odyssey
Speaker 2: and the Night Agent. I mean, we do other jobs
Speaker 2: at the same time, and then we pop back in
Speaker 2: and so part of the reason these take a while
Speaker 2: is because a lot of us are very busy and
Speaker 2: have a lot of other lives to lead. So I
Speaker 2: think it's all to its benefit too. We weren't sort
Speaker 2: of in a hothouse for very long, you know, two
Speaker 2: weeks here, shooting, two weeks here, editorial or just groups
Speaker 2: of times. But mostly we were out in the world
Speaker 2: trying to pull everything together, to keep food on our
Speaker 2: respective tables and keep by boys in college, which is
Speaker 2: Benson very expensive one hundred grand, yeah, one hundred grand
Speaker 2: and no like woof.
Speaker 1: So Paris, I have to ask you, how did you
Speaker 1: end up with the name Paris. Yes, it's a very
Speaker 1: simple story. Uh, it's my mother. She was inspired to
Speaker 1: name me after Paris of Helena Troy than you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm basically named not after the city, which she
Speaker 1: had never been to until I took her to it,
Speaker 1: you know, later in life. But she thought that was
Speaker 1: a really cool name and all my other brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters have nice normal names, William, Robin, Brian, Mark, Monica.
Speaker 1: And in the middle there there's Paris. So I was
Speaker 1: destined for something different. Who whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.
Speaker 1: You're the middle child. Well, I'm close to the middle
Speaker 1: I was actually the third of seven. Okay, I'll leave
Speaker 1: it at that. So as we go forward in the
Speaker 1: immediate future, what's keeping you busy?
Speaker 2: Paris in the immediate future, Oh my gosh, I am
Speaker 2: doing a lot of work with Dan Fogelman, who's the
Speaker 2: producer in the creator of This Is Us and Paradise.
Speaker 2: I just did a new show for him called The Land,
Speaker 2: which won't be out until next year, which is fantastic
Speaker 2: as succession in a football team, the Cleveland Browns. It's
Speaker 2: got Bill Macy edit who is unbelievable, Mandy Moore, and
Speaker 2: Chris Maloney. And then I'm gonna go and do the
Speaker 2: end of Paradise, the final season, a lot of the
Speaker 2: two episodes of that. Yeah, it's been announced that this
Speaker 2: third season will be the last season, so we'll find
Speaker 2: out what Sterling K. Brown can do to save the
Speaker 2: world or even its possible.
Speaker 1: So those are the things that I'm in the middle of.
Speaker 1: And Stephanie, what's keeping you busy?
Speaker 4: I have a movie called Otis and Zelma, which is
Speaker 4: about Otis Redding and his wife Zelma, and it's a
Speaker 4: ghost story.
Speaker 3: It's a love story.
Speaker 4: Otis died at twenty six, she was twenty three, and
Speaker 4: it's really how love kept him alive and keeps him
Speaker 4: alive today. She's an amazing woman. It's Daniel Deadweiler and
Speaker 4: our our Otis is John Boyega. And that'll be my
Speaker 4: next movie. It's a narrative. And and I'm raising my granddaughters,
Speaker 4: which is a new thing because my my grand my
Speaker 4: daughter in law, had a massive stroke and she is covering. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And so I've got a little three and five year
Speaker 4: old that I'm helping raise with my son and the
Speaker 4: village that is the family. It's been quite a life lesson.
Speaker 1: Really, I'm so fortunate to have you guys.
Speaker 5: So I'm fortunate to have them, Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: They're like the joy?
Speaker 5: They are the joy?
Speaker 2: And you didn't mention that Stephen bray Is. I think
Speaker 2: you alluded to the fact that he's one of the
Speaker 2: composers of the color purple, but he also wrote those
Speaker 2: great hits for Madonna back in the day, so he's
Speaker 2: known in the music world, and I'm sure he's busy
Speaker 2: doing something awesome.
Speaker 1: Same.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're actually writing a musical together, a musical, that's right.
Speaker 1: So that I got to ask you if you could
Speaker 1: tell us what's the subject of the musical.
Speaker 4: It's called Vintage, and it's a story of a diva
Speaker 4: who was like a Millie Jackson in her day, and
Speaker 4: she's got a little bit of revived fame because her
Speaker 4: signature song is in an ed commercial and.
Speaker 3: She just wants to come back, but she doesn't have
Speaker 3: much wherewithal so she ends.
Speaker 4: Up going to an old folks home for musicians and
Speaker 4: she she turns the place inside out, so.
Speaker 1: It's like a sister act. Is this legitimate theater or
Speaker 1: is this a movie?
Speaker 5: It's legitimate theater.
Speaker 3: It's a musical.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a musical.
Speaker 1: That's a tough road. Good luck up man. But but
Speaker 1: they're all tough.
Speaker 5: They're all they're all tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah they are.
Speaker 5: Our narrative is tough.
Speaker 1: But musicals are really tough. And Jeanie, what's up with you?
Speaker 5: Well, we've got film that's out right now that we're
Speaker 5: promoting is Lil a fair building on a mystery directed
Speaker 5: by Ali panc And uh, we've got Fleetwood Mac. That's
Speaker 5: U that's gonna that also is coming out probably by
Speaker 5: the end of the year and on Apple. And we
Speaker 5: have got a lot of very very very cool things
Speaker 5: that are that are cooking that aren't announced. And uh,
Speaker 5: and there's a lot of very cool things coming a
Speaker 5: lot of very fun things.
Speaker 1: Little Fear has already played. Weetwood Mac is not out yet.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit my world. I know a little
Speaker 1: bit about it. With an act that universal, that had
Speaker 1: an album that's so old twenty million copies, or in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood thereof what do you do to promote that
Speaker 1: it is a subject. It's unlike Billy Preston, We Are,
Speaker 1: you know, taking the lid off in your looking at
Speaker 1: things that most people don't know. People know a lot
Speaker 1: about Fleetwood Mac. How do you make this into an event.
Speaker 5: Into a one one movie. It's not a two parter.
Speaker 5: That's very difficult to do. That's how very difficult it is.
Speaker 5: We're doing this with Kennedy Marshall. Frank Marshall's directing We Are.
Speaker 5: It's the it is the only film that has been
Speaker 5: authorized by all five members. So we had everybody, you know,
Speaker 5: we had that not pitch this, We had it all
Speaker 5: sign sealed and delivered right before we lost Christine. You know,
Speaker 5: we thought she just had a cold or the flu,
Speaker 5: and sadly she passed away in twenty twenty two, so
Speaker 5: that was a shock and surprise. So it is difficult.
Speaker 5: The answer to your question, It is difficult, just like
Speaker 5: it's difficult to you know, Bob Dylan, No Direction, Home
Speaker 5: and and the Beatles eight days a week. It is
Speaker 5: a difficult subject. Somebody will and even Paul Rotti, you know,
Speaker 5: somebody will say, undoubtedly will say why didn't you cover
Speaker 5: this part? And didn't you know the story? And well,
Speaker 5: we just couldn't fit it into one, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: under two hours. So it's it's difficult, is what it is.
Speaker 5: It is. It is a beautiful piece and well and
Speaker 5: it's not even done yet. So where it's I think
Speaker 5: you're gonna enjoy it?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 5: I hope you're gonna enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Okay, don't you talk about lessons you got from your professor.
Speaker 1: I can't even remember I got this lesson. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to leave the best stuff out that it doesn't
Speaker 1: serve the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, high breaking.
Speaker 1: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for this intellectual conversation about a truly phenomenal movie.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this will spread the word. As I say, it
Speaker 1: is the story of Billy Preston, but as Paris certainly
Speaker 1: went into depth about, it is a story worry about humanity, loss,
Speaker 1: how you should treat people. Even if you know nothing
Speaker 1: about Billy, nothing from nothing, Even if you know nothing
Speaker 1: about Billy Preston, you will enjoy it and you will
Speaker 1: come out of fan. You know a lot of people
Speaker 1: you have to their music is not that accessible. But
Speaker 1: in Billy's case, it was one accessible performance after another.
Speaker 1: And these performances by the three of you have been
Speaker 1: very accessible. And I want to thank you for taking
Speaker 1: the time with my audience.
Speaker 5: Oh thank you.
Speaker 4: Everybody reads you so we're so excited to get on
Speaker 4: your show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: You know how to do this interview? I think, Bob,
Speaker 2: you might want to think about doing it for a living.
Speaker 2: You guys, Yeah, you know, I'm.
Speaker 1: Just going to start. I'm and I answer that because
Speaker 1: it's something and I talk about with my shrink I
Speaker 1: find it relatively fruitless to pursue things, even though I
Speaker 1: know that's the movie business. You got to go out,
Speaker 1: can you hear no more than yes? So I usually
Speaker 1: wait until someone's looking for me, because if they're looking
Speaker 1: for me, they know what the act is. They want me,
Speaker 1: whereas if they're trying to sell it, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: come on, but enough of me, thanks again for doing
Speaker 1: this until next time. This is bombing websites.