THE BIG PICTURE

One too many players in Chess game?
Two new movies focus on the small but influential '50s record label.
By PATRICK GOLDSTEIN = LA Times
October 21, 2008

Back in the day, you weren't anyone in the blues world unless you were signed to Chess Records, the label that made stars out of a generation of rough and tumble musicians, notably Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf.

So when I was at the recent Toronto Film Festival, I made a point of seeing "Who Do You Love," which stars Alessandro Nivola and Jon Abrahams as Leonard and Phil Chess, two hard-nosed immigrant entrepreneurs who ended up creating Chess Records, the 1950s record label that popularized urban blues and later, with the arrival of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, ushered in a brash new form of rock 'n' roll that was adopted by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and thousands of other young white rock artists.

After the screening, I ran into a film executive, who whispered in my ear, "Do you know that there's another one?" Puzzled, I said, "Another what?" He laughed. "Another movie about Chess Records."
I really thought he was joking, but it's true. Against all odds and sound commercial judgment, the same crazy movie business that once made two asteroid movies and two movies about Truman Capote has now made two movies about the obscure icons of 1950s Chicago blues. What are the odds?

The second Chess film, made by Sony BMG Films, is "Cadillac Records," which will be released Dec. 5 through Sony's TriStar Pictures. Produced by Sofia Sondervan and Andy Lack, Sony BMG's former chairman (who just took a new job running Bloomberg's multimedia operations), the film has considerably more star power than its rival, featuring Beyoncé Knowles as Chess' top songstress, Etta James; Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess; Mos Def as Chuck Berry; and Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters.

It's probably a misnomer to call the two pictures rivals, since "Who Do You Love," despite earning some good notices in Toronto, remains a long shot to land a theatrical release. "Cadillac Records" will be out in 800 theaters, with a Beyoncé single and a soundtrack to help attract attention. Still, the question remains: Why would two 1950s blues movies be made at the same time?

The answer, as always, is that making a movie isn't exactly a rational decision -- passion trumps pragmatism. Neither film came out of today's increasingly timid studio system, which wouldn't dream of risking any loot on such obscure subject matter. "Cadillac Records" was championed by Lack, the former head of NBC News who ran Sony Music before being kicked upstairs after its BMG merger. According to Sondervan, Lack's family is from the Mississippi Delta, where he grew up listening to the blues, which gave him a strong interest in the story. "Who Do You Love" was financed by Jonathan Mitchell, a wealthy real estate developer with a love for the blues and directed by Jerry Zaks, who remembers singing to R&B records as a boy in his family basement.

"I was always drawn to black music," recalls Zaks, a four-time Tony Award-winning Broadway theater director. "I think that music had a powerful impact on a whole generation of kids."

But those kids are all nearing retirement age today and not especially regular moviegoers. So who's going to turn out for these films? When I asked Sondervan what made her think a blues movie could make a dent in today's marketplace, she offered an honest answer. "I don't really know," she said. "All I know is that Beyonce has a huge young following and a lot of people will come see the movie just because she's in it." She added that Beyonce has designed a clothing line of dresses inspired by the fashions in the film that is being launched later this fall at Bloomingdale's. "All the young people we've shown the film to really loved it," she says. "The blues is coming back. It's getting played at a lot of trendy restaurants, so there's a lot of new awareness out there."

The real challenge for films that re-create the lives of real characters is: How true to life are they? Sony hasn't screened "Cadillac Records" yet, but the person who knows the story best of all -- Leonard's son, Marshall Chess, who served as a technical consultant on both projects -- says both movies took some dramatic liberties with many of the characters' personal lives.

After an early screening of "Who Do You Love," a pair of women sought out Marshall Chess, whose dad was the driving force behind the label. They were puzzled about one of the key story lines in the film. "Did your mother and father really make up after your father had that torrid affair with that beautiful singer?" one of them asked.

Marshall rolled his eyes. "No, they didn't make up," he said, "because there never was an affair. The filmmakers made that part up."

Marshall knows the story intimately, having been behind the bar at his father's nightclub as a boy, seen his father hustle DJs on road tours and worked at Chess Records as a teenager. He's delighted to see two films dramatizing his family history, but he's ambivalent about the results. "I guess I have a love-hate relationship with the movies," he told me recently. "They capture the spirit and the music wonderfully, but the truth isn't always there." He's especially upset over how "Cadillac Records" cuts Leonard's brother, Phil, the co-founder of the record company, entirely out of the movie.

"It's a horrible distortion of history," says Marshall. "They started the company together. My uncle Phil was there every day. He recorded a lot of the best music we did. It wouldn't have happened without him and it's a real insult to our family. When I asked the producers, they simply said his character didn't work [in the script], so they cut him out."

When it comes to cutting people out of the Chess story, the rival "Who Do You Love" film has its own issues. The biggest-selling artist in Chess history is Chuck Berry, but his character was cut out of the movie. Why? Because the filmmakers couldn't make a deal for the rights to his music. The film's producer, Les Alexander, explains: "We made Chuck a spectacularly generous offer, but he wouldn't let us have anything. Our director, Jerry Zaks, even sent him a genuine fan note, saying how much his music meant to him. But it didn't matter -- the answer was no."

[ Berry, who is still active as a touring act, is notoriously difficult when it comes to business matters. When Taylor Hackford, who directed the wonderful Berry concert film "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll," recently ran into the performer, the first words out of Berry's mouth were, "You still owe me money." Mos Def plays Berry in "Cadillac Records," which managed to acquire some Berry songs that are owned by Marshall Chess. But dealing with Berry was so unbelievably arduous that when I asked the film's producer, Sofia Sondervan, about working with him, she replied in a hushed tone: "I can't talk about it. I can't say anything about Chuck Berry at all]

The "Who Do You Love" filmmakers defend their decision to show Leonard having an affair with a Chess artist who is clearly based on Etta James. "The question you always ask yourself is: Are you illuminating who they were or are you assassinating their character?" says Zaks. "For me, the affair represents part of the seduction of success, which is a big part of the conflict in the movie's story. We did our own research and it seems evident that Leonard was a womanizer. Even his brother Phil says he had numerous affairs."

[The filmmakers had less leeway in portraying Willie Dixon, the now-deceased songwriter (played by Chi McBride) who wrote most of Chess' biggest hits. Producer Les Alexander says, "We were prohibited by his estate as portraying him as someone who drank or smoked or sweared." Nonetheless, the film shows Dixon having two wives, who begrudgingly share his time together. "The estate didn't prohibit that," Alexander says.]

Both films depict Leonard Chess giving his top artists a Cadillac after they had big chart-topping hits. It's a way for the films to capture the back-door way business was handled in the early days of the record industry, since the artists rarely realized that the expense of buying a Cadillac was deducted from their royalty statements.

Marshall Chess says it was a pragmatic way to reward a top artist, noting that few of the bluesmen had bank accounts at the time. "Getting a Cadillac in those days was a top-of-the-line thing to have," he explains. "My father bought a new Cadillac every year too, because he was just like his artists -- he wanted people to know he was a successful man."

Marshall laughs. "I guess he'd be happy to see two movies coming out about him at the same time. He'd definitely consider that a symbol of success too."