That is not right!” he says, and a handful of actors dressed as policemen bull through the audience, pulling and tugging at the revelers, attempting to return the room to its stratified state. “Cops, you’ve got to go crazy! You see people mixing. As Def works the increasingly integrated crowd into a dancing frenzy, the disembodied voice of first assistant director Jonathan Starch booms over a loudspeaker. (The cast of Chess includes Alessandro Nivola and Robert Randolph.)īut for all the staged pandemonium in Jersey City, the Cadillac Records re-creation of the Berry concert is judged lacking. In addition to Mos Def, the picture stars Beyoncé Knowles, Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, and Emmanuelle Chriqui. The second film, tentatively titled Chess, is directed by Jerry Zaks, best known for his Tony-winning work on Broadway ( House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation), and though the films cover overlapping territory, Cadillac Records can claim bigger star power.
Written and directed by Darnell Martin ( I Like It Like That, Their Eyes Were Watching God) and produced by the film division of record label Sony BMG, Cadillac Records is actually one of two movies filmed this year that depict the rise of the Chicago blues and its musical spawn-rock ’n’ roll and soul-via the lives and loves of the black artists and white record men at one of the most innovative and influential independent labels in modern music history: Chicago-based Chess Records, home to not only Berry but also Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, Bo Diddley, Little Walter, and dozens more. The scene is one of the last to be shot for a film called Cadillac Records, slated to hit cineplexes in the coming months. But this imposed order soon turns to chaos when one particularly enthusiastic white teen near the front of the crowd knocks over part of the barrier (as per the script) and the crowd, whipped into a joyous frenzy by the music and its performer’s snake-hipped showmanship, surges together-blacks and whites mixing and then, scandalously, dancing together to the revolutionary strains of early rock ’n’ roll.
#Cadillac records skin#
Separated by skin color and a double row of velvet-rope-linked brass stanchions, they are meant to represent a concert audience, presumably somewhere in the South in mid-50s pre-civil-rights America. Regally turned out in a maroon-and-black brocade jacket, black button-down shirt, black pants, and a prosthetic pompadour that resembles the brilliantined prow of a cruise ship, Def swivels his narrow hips, bobs his glossy head, and duckwalks across the stage while mock-playing a blond, wide-body 1950 Gibson ES350 to the familiar start-and-stop cadence of Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go.”Īt the foot of the stage, approximately 250 extras dressed in 1950s fashions-bobby socks, saddle shoes, penny loafers, and sweaters-move politely to the music in two distinct groups.
In the auditorium of the Create Charter High School-a room that looks as if it hasn’t been touched since Ike was president-Def (real name: Dante Terrell Smith) glides about the stage channeling rock ’n’ roll’s most influential forefather, Chuck Berry, and doing a pretty spooky job of it.
#Cadillac records movie#
Richard Montgomery (1738-1775), a Revolutionary War hero who led the army into Canada, capturing the city of Montreal he died while attempting to capture Quebec.On a movie set in Jersey City, I am watching the actor and hip-hop artist Mos Def play the part of Chuck Berry in what might be described as a music-history mash-up. Kansas Counties Montgomery County, Kansas Date Established:
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