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 Andre Benjamin in a scene from Idlewild. |
LOS ANGELES -- Hip hop culture is time travelling, in spectacular fashion, back to the 1930s.
The setting is the innovative feature film Idlewild, a musical drama featuring a love story that is combined with a gangster motif and set in a jukejoint in a tiny town in Georgia.
Musically, it is a fusion of hip hop with jazz, ragtime, swing, R&B, blues and shout. For the dance, hip hop moves are melded with lindy hop, jazz, swing, jitterbug and even a Broadway-style ensemble number. Culturally, Idlewild is Roots for American black music and dance.
The genius behind it is writer-director Bryan Barber, the video guru who has been working with the two stars of OutKast since their Atlanta Film School days.
As a result, the stars of Idlewild are, of course, the two OutKast members: Andre Benjamin, known to fans as Andre 3000 but already an established actor, and Antwan Patton, known as Big Boi, in his second film role. Support players include Oscar nominees Terrence Howard and Cicely Tyson as well as Ving Rhames, Macy Gray, Paula Patton and Ben Vereen.
"The fusion was important to me," says Barber, who is making his film directorial debut but shows such technical virtuosity that Idlewild looks like the work of a polished veteran.
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Spike Lee was hanging out at the Four Seasons Hotel during the interviews and, when the Toronto Sun chatted with him on the side, Lee said Barber is one of the most exciting new filmmakers today. "One to watch," Lee enthuses.
Fusion works for Idlewild because it helps to bridge cultural gaps, Barber says. "I wanted the musical to transcend colour lines, even though it is predominantly -- it's all -- African-American characters. But the fusion was important to transport the audience into the 1930s, I believe.
"Especially with this new MTV, reality-TV generation. I think transporting them into the '30s and expecting them to sit comfortably with Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith would have been a little bit tough because it's not something that they're used to."
The trick was using the two OutKast members as actors playing the two lead roles. Patton appears as the flamboyant Rooster, a Jelly Roll Morton type who performs at the jukejoint and runs it behind the scenes. Benjamin appears as a mortician's shy son who works in the funeral parlour by day and plays piano in Rooster's club by night, dreaming of a Cab Calloway kind of showbiz notoriety.
"I wanted contemporary artists performing contemporary songs just to really ground people," Barber says of his unique approach to his period piece. "What I was trying to say by that is that, if you're actually living in the 1930s, Cab Calloway would have been the hottest star. He would have been the OutKast (of his generation). So I knew our fan base was going to be used to OutKast, so I felt that the movie would relate and cross over well. Especially with OutKast. Their delivery has always been this call-respond, feel-good music that makes a connection with the audience. If any act could pull it off, I knew that OutKast could do it.
"Also, it was important that I pay homage to Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith and Jelly Roll Morton, because of their influence on American music. Their music really set the pace for bebop, swing, jazz, blues, eventually rock 'n' roll, hip hop and R&B.
"I think that idea has been kind of lost. My 17-year-old daughter doesn't know who Cab Calloway is. But, after this movie, she might be a little more interested."
After so many years of collaborating on OutKast videos and maintaining a friendship circle, Benjamin and Patton understood Barber's vision, they say. Even if the vision turns Idlewild into one of the riskiest films of the year.
"This is a necessary film," says Benjamin. "It is something that needed to be made. It actually had to be made because all the chips were stacked against us. So, at the end of the day, if no one comes to the threatre, we just know we had a great time doing it and somebody will be influenced by it. And this ain't no bulls--t answer."
The music OutKast created for the movie should sound familiar, Benjamin says, but it also blends into past styles going back to the 1930s, and even earlier to ragtime. "With the music, we knew it was the 1930s, so we kept it in mind, when we were writing and producing, that this was a period piece," Benjamin says.
"At the same time, we're OutKast and we've got a responsibility to live up to our fans, so we had to make sure it was modern as well. When we add some newness to it and we bring it to now, it makes it into something totally different."
Benjamin says that fusing modernity into musicals is crucial to their success, at least in his circle. "I'm not Quentin Tarantino or anything, but in my opinion, I think the reason that musicals don't work as well now is because people (filmmakers) always want to do the music of old. And (audiences) are not listening to that music now. So we want to do a musical of now to make it make sense."
Fusion is familiar to OutKast anyway, Patton says. "That is us -- being influenced by every musical genre and using every aspect of music in our records. That is an advantage we had because we were never biased to one particular type of music. We listened to rock, jazz, blues, pop, country and the whole nine yards. So, to go back and throw a little swing in there (was easy). We just had the chance to do what we wanted to do."
"It's called freakin' it," Benjamin says to Patton, as well as for the benefit of journalists. "That's what you do -- freak that thing!"