Monday, March 23, 2009
2120 S.MICHIGAN
Today's movie was the biopic
Somewhere there is a boxed set of Chess records. Maybe Dave has it. Maybe we sold it with the Boston house. The famed estate sale when we left and came west.
It was immense. Too much to listen to.
Fortunately, the story of Chess Records in this movie is slimmed down. It is not your usual "and then I wrote" kind of tale. It shows the producer, Leonard Chess,* at the center, rounding up five artists They move from situation to situation, hit to hit, until they are big enough to have their work stolen by such as the Beach Boys.
There is also a parallel story of race relations. There is a moment where Chuck Berry is performing with a velvet rope down the middle of the theater. Whites on one side, blacks on the other. Some white kids take down the rope and move to the other side. End of segregated shows. Another moment when Alan Freid, at a loss of what to call his new Berry record (he had, as payola, 1/3 interest in the royalties), calls it "rock and roll" instead of race music.
Adrien Brody is good as Leonard Chess and the singers/actors play true to form and mostly sing their own sides.
The music is great. Listen to it on earphones.
They do not avoid all the bioflick clichés but they do a great job of moving the thing along and focusing on the energy of the period.
The title comes from Chess' practice of buying his artists gift Caddies (with their own money) when they got a hit. What a parade of beautiful cars!
I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.
* There were actually two brothers. Like I said, it is slimmed down.
