Jaime Foxx as Ray Charles

[JSngry]

The advertisements show a stunning resemblace, but if it's a dog script, what difference does it make?

[Jim Alfredson]

From what I've heard, Ray was involved with this movie very intimately. He was on the set almost every day and the film got his blessing, as well as the family's blessing. It was finished quite some time before Ray passed.

That's just what I've heard.

[Guest ariceffron]

the seattle times has a big article about it today comparing points of fact with how the movie changed them into fiction

[Chrome]

From Slate:

It's a Shame About Ray

Why must biopics sentimentalize their subjects?

By David Ritz

Posted Friday, Oct. 22, 2004, at 3:54 AM PT

Foxx stays true to Ray

Ray, the new biopic directed by Taylor Hackford, satisfies in some wonderful ways: Jamie Foxx miraculously embodies Ray's soul; Ray's own musical voice sounds bigger and better than ever; and several of the supporting performances—Sharon Warren as Ray's mom and Regina King as Margie Hendricks—are heartfelt and powerful. The problem, though, is that Ray is a saccharine movie while Ray himself was anything but a saccharine man. He was a raging bull. Sentimentalizing his story may make box office sense, but, to my mind, it trivializes the compelling complexity of his character.

For example, the film focuses on Ray's relationship with his mother, Aretha. Yet the truth is that Ray had two mothers. According to what Ray told me and insisted we include in Brother Ray, an autobiography that I co-authored in 1978, two women dominated his early years: his biological mother, Aretha, and a woman named Mary Jane, one of his father's former wives. "I called Aretha 'Mama' and Mary Jane 'Mother,' " wrote Ray. After her 6-year-old son went blind, Aretha fostered his independence, while Mary Jane indulged him. For the rest of his life Ray was as fiercely self-reliant as he was self-indulgent. Two dynamic women, two radically different approaches to his sightlessness—you can imagine the impact on his character. Ray ignores this phenomenon completely.

Ray tries to explain Ray's blues—the angst in his heart—in heavy-handed Freudian terms. At age 5, Ray helplessly watched his younger brother, George, drown. The film insists that the guilt Ray felt for failing to rescue George is responsible for the dark side of his soul. Once the guilt is lifted, the adult Ray is not only free from his heroin habit but is liberated—in a treacly flashback—from his emotional turmoil. George's death was certainly traumatic for the young Ray, yet the only time Ray suffered what he termed a nervous breakdown had neither to do with the drowning nor the loss of his sight a year later. "It's the death of my mother Aretha," he told me, "that had me reeling. For days I couldn't talk, think, sleep or eat. I was sure-enough going crazy."

That the film fails to dramatize the scene—we learn of Aretha's death in a quick aside from Ray to his wife-to-be—misses the crucial heartbreak of his early life. It happened when Ray was 15, living at a school for the blind 160 miles from home. "I knew my world had ended," he said. The further fact that Ray fails to include a single scene from his extraordinary educational experience is another grievous oversight. It was at that state school where he was taught to read Braille, play Chopin, write arrangements, learn piano and clarinet, start to sing, and discover sex. Ray shows none of that. Such scenes would have been far more illuminating than the unexciting story, which the film does include, of Ray changing managers in midcareer.

The minor characters are another major problem. Take David "Fathead" Newman, the saxophonist who, for over a decade, was Ray's closest musical and personal peer. In Ray, David is portrayed as little more than a loudmouthed junkie. While drugs were part of the bond between David and Ray, the key to their relationship was an extraordinary musical rapport. In real life, David is a soft-spoken, gentle man of few words. As Ray was boisterous, David was shy. Both were brought up on bebop. Like Lester Young/Billie Holiday or Thelonious Monk/Charlie Rouse, they complemented each other in exquisitely sensitive fashion. We neither see nor hear any of this in Ray. And while Hackford features a great number of Ray's hits, he ignores the jazz side of Ray's musical makeup. There's virtually no jazz in Ray, while in real life jazz sat at the center of Ray's soul.

If Fathead is painfully misrepresented, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, owners of Atlantic Records, suffer a similar fate. Among the most colorful characters in the colorful history of the music business, they are reduced to stereotypes. We don't get a glimpse of their quirky sophistication, sharp intellect, or salty wit. Same goes for Mary Ann Fisher, the first female singer to join Ray's band. Mary Ann was an engaging character—sometimes endearing, sometimes infuriating. In Ray she's just a manipulative tart.

Finally, though, Ray is about Ray, and its attempt to define his character. In many ways, the definition is accurate. Foxx brilliantly captures Ray's energy and contradictions. Yet those contradictions are not allowed to stand. The contradictions must be resolved, Ray must live happily ever after. The finale implies that, for all his promiscuity, he is back with Della, the true love of his life, and that, with his heroin habit behind him, it's smooth sailing ahead. The paradoxical strands of his life are tied up into a neat package, honoring the hackneyed biopic formula with a leave-'em-smiling Hollywood ending.

The truth is far more complex and far more interesting. Ray's womanizing ways continued. His marriage to Della ended in a difficult divorce in 1976. And while he never again got high on heroin, he found, in his own terms, "a different buzz to keep me going." For the rest of his life he unapologetically drank large quantities of gin every day and smoked large quantities of pot every night. While working on his autobiography he told me, "Just like smack never got in the way of my working, same goes for booze and reefer. What I do with my own body is my own business." Ray maintained this attitude until his health deteriorated. In 2003 he told me that he had been diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease and hepatitis C. "If I knew I was going to live this long," he added with an ironic smile, "I would have taken better care of myself." Whatever Ray was—headstrong, joyful, courageous, cranky—he was hardly a spokesman for sobriety.

The producers of Ray make much of the fact that Ray himself endorsed the movie. That's certainly true. He wanted a successful crossover movie to mirror his successful crossover music. He participated and helped in any way he could. In one of our last discussions, Ray reminded me that the process of trying to sell Hollywood began 26 years ago when producer-director Larry Schiller optioned his story. Since then there have been dozens of false starts. It wasn't until his son, Ray Jr., producer Stuart Benjamin, and director Hackford stayed on the case that cameras rolled.

"Hollywood is a cold-blooded motherfucker," said Ray. "It's easier to bone the President's wife than to get a movie made. So I say God bless these cats. God bless Benjamin and Hackford and Ray Jr. Weren't for them, this would never happen. And now that it's happening, maybe I'll have a better chance of being remembered. I can't ask for anything more."

David Ritz is the co-author of Brother Ray with Ray Charles, and Sexual Healing with Marvin Gaye, in addition to memoirs with B.B. King, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and the Neville Brothers.

[Noj]

I saw this the other night thanks to RDK, and I thought it was pretty good. However, after reading Chrome's article here I'm a little turned off by the inaccuracies in both his life story and the poor representations of some of Ray's friends.

At least Jamie Foxx is very believable.

[Dan Gould]

Having heard good things about Fox's performance, I had great interest in the film. Now that I hear how it is a typical Hollywood bio-pic, that interest has been tarnished significantly. But I'll probably see it anyway.

[jazzbo]

Ah go see "I Heart Huckabees" instead!

[bertrand]

The following quote from an interview in today's Washington Post with the director Taylor Hackford has decided me to stay miles away from this film. Apparently Charles was trying to challenge Foxx (who was learning to play piano), first by playing some funk, then some blues, then:

'All of a sudden, Ray breaks into Thelonious Monk. There's no rhyme or reason to Thelonious Monk. People thought Monk was mad'.

I'll tell you what makes me mad - assholes pontificating about jazz who haven't got a clue about the history of the music.

Bertrand.

Edited October 29, 2004 by bertrand

[BruceH]

So, a Hollywood biopic sentimentalized the life of its subject? I'm shocked, SHOCKED...

[RDK]

So Hackford doesn't like Monk - big fucking deal. That's hardly a reason to stay away from a film that has nothing to do with Monk...

Jamie Fox is wonderful in the film; easily the best part of it. Overall, the film is a mixed bag. I found it very enjoyable/entertaining - with that music, how could it not be? - but dramatically it's very uneven. Honestly, I simply don't believe that Ray's story was so unique, unusual, or enlightening to provide the basis for a truly great movie. So, for drama, it relies on the tried-and-true celebrity biopic cliches (whether true/accurate or not): rags-to-riches background, physical disability, marital strife due to being on the road, drug addiction, personal demons, etc. Ray's heroin addiction played a much bigger role in the story than I would have expected, but then there wasn't much else to generate dramatic conflict. It ends up being about that and, of course, about the music - and the music scenes shine imo. For us jazz fans, Fathead Newman plays a pretty significant role and Quincy Jones makes a couple of appearances. Among the supporting characters are Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertigan and Jerry Wexler, which was pretty cool for a record geek like me. I wasn't around in the 1950's, but the film seems to capture the period very well. If you're a music fan who digs Ray Charles, I think you'll enjoy the film. How accurate is it? If you're looking for historical accuracy read a book or spin some vinyl.

[BruceH]

Yeah, I'll probably see it. I'm still waiting for a movie about The Five Royales, though.

[RDK]

  BruceH said:

Yeah, I'll probably see it. I'm still waiting for a movie about The Five Royales, though.

Yeah, you and, uh, maybe five or six others!

[bertrand]

RDK,

My point is not that Hackford does not like Monk. In fact, he probably has never heard any Monk. He only has heard the old cliches about his music being far out and Monk being crazy, and he chooses to perpetuate these cliches in a major newspaper.

And it does have every thing to do with the film - how on earth can he do a tolerable Ray Charles biopic when he clearly has no understanding of music. He says in the same article that Charles loved jazz the most above all music. Then how can he dismiss Monk and claim that he just made a movie that probes the mind of his subject, if he shows so little respect for something that was important to the subject of his film? It looks like he just did not get Ray at all.

Hope this makes more sense.

Bertrand.

Edited October 29, 2004 by bertrand

[RDK]

Bertrand,

Part of the problem, i think, is that I don't find the statement -

'All of a sudden, Ray breaks into Thelonious Monk. There's no rhyme or reason to Thelonious Monk. People thought Monk was mad'.

- necessarily that "dismissive" of Monk. A lot of people - even jazz people - did think that Monk's music was mad. I happen to love it; some don't. I disagree with the "no rhyme or reason" part, but don't forget that Hackford was doing an interview about Ray Charles - and more specifically about the movie - and that the Monk line was merely a brief digression - a sound bite if you will - used to covey the idea that Ray (at least) had a respect for such "crazy" jazz cats as Monk. Without knowing the quote in context - and even then, Hackford may not have been quoted fully - I don't see it as a diss of Monk. In fact, when I first read it in your above post I interpreted it much differently, thinking that Hackford was almost boasting that Ray could play Monk.

I don't mean to be an apologist for Hackford - he's made some good films and some bad films - but he's known in Hollywood to be rather passionate and knowledgable about music. That doesn't mean he's right about jazz, of course, but to say that he "clearly has no understanding of music" is plain wrong imo. Among his feature films (good or bad) are The Idolmaker (about 50s R&R), La Bamba (Ritchie Valens biopic), and the Chuck Berry doc Hail Hail Rock N Roll.

[JSngry]

So, who plays Fathead?

[Noj]

  JSngry said:

So, who plays Fathead?

Some dude with a funky name that doesn't look like him or act like him, I've come to discover. And here I told RDK I thought the actor was a good choice. Whoops!

[RDK]

  Noj said:

  JSngry said:

So, who plays Fathead?

Some dude with a funky name that doesn't look like him or act like him, I've come to discover. And here I told RDK I thought the actor was a good choice. Whoops!

Damn, Jon stole my joke. I was gonna say "Berigan."

[JSngry]

Ok, it's BOKEEM WOODBINE

Doesn't look at all like Fathead.

[RDK]

If you can get past the shitty flash, there's a better pic of Bokeem "Fathead" Woodbine at the official site...

http://www.raymovie.com/index.php

[bertrand]

Who plays Grachan Moncur III?

Bertrand.

[Jim Alfredson]

I saw this last night with my wife (we're taking full advantage of having her sisters in town for the holidays!) I thought it was good, even if it was "hollywoodize". How could it not be?

Jamie Foxx was amazing. The scenes in Atlantic's "studio" were cool as well. That's how those records were made! Atlantic's first "studio" was their office. At night they pushed all the desks back, stacking them on each other, and recorded! During the day it was an office! It was cool to see Tom Dowd as a character, too, although the guy that played him didn't act like Tom Dowd (he should've watched this movie.

I had to go to the bathroom and must've missed the scene where Ray's mother died. I thought it odd that they didn't include that. I guess it must've been really short, which is strange considering how in every bio I've read of Ray it says the death of his mother hurt him more than anything.

Anyway, it's definitely worth seeing. I'd see it again, just for the music scenes!

Oops, also forgot.... no mention of Marcus Belgrave? Bummer.

[jazzbo]

I thought they mentioned Marcus by name in a scene or two but I don't know for sure.

I thought it was a pretty decent job. Managed to show the womanizing and drugs as bad though I think they could have shown these to be even more gritty and grizzly than they did. Fox did a pretty good job at portraying Charles; you forget pretty quickly you're not looking at the Genius himself. Music was fantastic!

[Dave James]

Does Foxx do his own singing? I've heard he does and then I've heard he doesn't.

Up over and out.

[Noj]

The story I heard is that Foxx could have done the singing since he does a spot on impersonation with the singing too, but Ray is heard in the film.

[Jazzdog]

It does, at least once during the scene in the hotel room with Margie when he starts singing Hit the Road Jack, the scene then intercuts with Foxx lipsynching the rest of the tune live in performance.