THE REAL CHESS BROTHERS

ADRIEN: Leonard brought Phil into the business and they kind of took over Aristocrat Records and were very successful, especially by having Muddy as their artist. Phil really was out there helping Leonard get other artists and really running the day to day operations.

ON THE SCRIPT CUT.

ADRIEN: Unfortunately poor Phil’s history and involvement in the story is limited in this film. I think fortunately or unfortunately it had to be that way to tell this full story and to tell it from this perspective. It’s not necessarily a story on Chess Records, for instance. It’s really about the life and time of these artists and the complexity of their characters. So it wasn’t that there was material in the script that was omitted, but obviously there’s a lot of material that was not integrated into the script.

THE ART OF BIOPIC ACTING

ADRIEN: The more well known the character or person you’re playing is, the more pressure there is on the actor to embody that and those qualities and do them justice. For me, there was a little bit of leeway because although the history of Leonard Chess and his family and his upbringing, there’s a lot of documentation on it, there isn’t that much of him out in the media. I think that when a character has to sing and play all the music, there are additional challenges there. In this case it was probably less pressure for me and I would say that a greater pressure fell on Jeffrey [Wright’s] shoulders and these guys.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING FRIENDS

ADRIEN: I tried to be true to what I felt the essence of Leonard was which was this guy who was very forceful and a hardened individual, but also he probably had compassion. There is a certain level of manipulation that I believe exists in all of these business relationships between artists and their bosses, in a way, because it’s just ripe for that. I think it becomes more complex with the issue of race and the coming out of segregation and the lack of education. Muddy was illiterate. So there were all these elements that not only play into the reality of that, but the sensitivity to that, of an individual being manipulated. So all of that was fascinating and that’s what I wanted to play, the emotional truth of that dynamic as well as the friendship and trying to go beyond that. That’s what was interesting to me.

FIRST LOVE

ADRIEN: I actually had a tremendous connection to hip hop. I grew up in Queens during the birth of hip-hop. I found a profound connection to the music and that’s affected me deeply. That’s part of what shaped me as a man. I love music in general, and I love classical music. I’ve gained a tremendous appreciation for it. Hip hop was the first music that spoke to me, and that was it for a long time.

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE CIRCA 1940’s

ADRIEN: I believe it was a time when there was a big movement, a big blues movement. There were a lot of artists coming up from the south into Chicago. So it was very present in that community, but there is something undeniably soulful, for lack of a better word, about the blues and what it stands for and the hardships that people are singing about and the truth and what it stems from, the transcending of pain and suffering, which is not uncommon to Jewish people and impoverished people. I think it was just something that touched him. He had an appreciation for it. It just kind of evolved from that.

ON CO-STARS AND THE HILARITY OF ON-SET IMPROV

ADRIEN: We had to do this scene where Little Walter wanted a bottle of gin. He’s like, ‘Can I get some gin? Bring me a bottle of gin.’ They had this extra there, this day player there who was real cool and he kind of like moseyed all the way down over to him to bring the gin and Muddy goes, ‘Damn, motherf*cker walking so slow it looks like he's walking backwards.’ That wasn’t in the script and it was so funny. So funny. That’s that truth, that organic thing that is just so wonderful and honest too. It wasn't even playing around. It was in character and it was perfect. Unfortunately moments like that aren’t all in the movie either, but what that does is creates a real sense of community and joy and truth that we all vibe off of. It was a very difficult shoot. It was extremely, extremely tough to shoot so many musical pieces as well in such a limited timeframe. So when there’s room for humor it really just helps.

*******

Jeffrey Wright speaks. Keep in mind of his incredible modesty. This is, shall we not forget, an actor that has disappeared – with his incredible craft – into other biopic roles in “Basquiat” (1996), “Ali” (2001) and “W.” (2008).

FICTION VS. NON-FICTION CHARACTERS

JEFFREY: I’ve done a fair amount of nonfictional characters, biographical characters. I think it’s because I lack imagination. I’m too literal or something. They each have their individual challenges. There is a standard that you're trying to achieve obviously with a character that's known. There are different pressures. For example, with “Basquiat,” Basquiat was known in a much smaller circle than he is known now. The Powell piece in “W.” recently was a different impetus. That was an opportunity to use the work to add my two cents worth to the political discourse at the time. It was an opportunity to be relevant to these extraordinary days that we're just beginning. Each role, whether it's fictional or biographical has its own challenges, its own reasons for doing.

MUSICIANS OF EARLY R&B AS PIONEERS AND SUPERHEROES

JEFFREY: I do think the guys were as large as life. If artists can be heroes than these guys are it. They did everything but put on the cape and mask. They were superheroes. Because they had nothing. They were denied basic freedoms of dignity and humanity, but there was such authenticity to the way that they expressed themselves. Muddy Waters was illiterate, a sharecropper, but sitting on his porch, he had half of the western history of music in his back pocket.

PREPPING ON MUDDY WATERS

JEFFREY: I had to research all the lawsuits! I was listening to Led Zeppelin, and it was like, that's Muddy’s lyric and riff. After doing this movie, I hear so many Muddy Waters references that I hadn’t heard before. It’s unbelievable how he and they [the Chess Records musicians] influenced modern music, but the extent [to which they influenced music] was new to me. Have you heard Elvis Presley’s “Trouble” from King Creole? [He starts to sing, “If you're looking for trouble...” and apes the guitar riff.] It's a direct rip-off of ‘Hoochie Coochie Man.’

THE KEY: FINDING THE MUSIC

JEFFREY: On Muddy, there’s a couple biographies, several documentaries based on those biographies but mainly, there’s this library of music. For me, the intriguing way into the character was through the music. There is a specific cultural and historical place that the music comes from and it's also specific to personality. Not a lot of affectation. Folks aren’t out there in the middle of the fields in Mississippi under that midday sun putting on airs. It's an expression of their experience and it's coming through relative to community but as I said, also relative to the personality so there really is a lot of information encoded in the music.

Muddy is a musician so just finding the music and finding his voice and listening and not only the way he expresses himself musically through the music, but also through his language and the way he speaks because the music as well, one of the things I really adore about the blues is it’s a celebration of the language of the black American south, a language that I grew up with. My grandparents were from southern Virginia and North Carolina so I’ve always had a deep, deep love for the language and the sounds and the music as expressed through that.

ROCK N’ ROLL CULTURAL IMPACT

JEFFREY: If you look at the 60s, the sound[waves] to the Cultural Revolution, redefining freedom, was rock and roll. In the late 80s and early 90s, the Berlin Wall fell to rock and roll. It was the soundtrack to freedom, and it had its roots in a specific kind of freedom, based on what these people were singing about. They were talking about the social issues and economic issues in the post-slavery world. These folks weren’t putting on airs, and their music was equally authentic, and all that they had. It created a social space where the world could find freedom. It wasn't an accident.