3/31/03 ~ Montreal Fun

I thought you might be interested to know about something I did last week. I was hired by a major film company to recreate "Blue Drag" (1935) and "Minor Swing" (1937) for a movie called Head in the Clouds. The director John Duigan wanted to use the original tracks, but as the scene takes place in Paris in Dec 1936 as present day, the producers felt the fidelity of the originals would sound out of place compared to the dialogue and soundtrack which have modern fidelity. So the idea was to replicate the tracks as close as possible, but with slightly better fidelity and no 78 scratchiness. Originally I was told to put together a budget to do it in Nashville, but then was told I had to do it in Canada for legal reasons. I could bring Andy MacKenzie to play rhythm as he was a UK citizen, but he was the only player I was allowed to bring. It was daunting to think of working with unknown violinists and bassists, but in the end it worked out even though we had to do the parts one at a time due to studio constraints! It was fun and challenging too. I brought my '42 Selmer and an old RCA mike which we ran through a Groove Tubes Vipre mike preamp, and Andy brought his Selmer Classical for some of the rhythm parts. We also tried to copy the ambience of the original room sound with a complex reverb program.

The most fun part though was that the director wanted me to play Django in a scene on camera. They put us in wardrobe referenced by the 1938 London shot of the Quintet in white jackets, dyed my hair, eybrows and moustache, cut my hair like Django's in 1935-6 photos, and made up my hand to look burned and scarred. The 3rd guitarist for the shoot was Francois Rousseau, and the fiddle and bass player were musicians chosen by casting for their look, although they were both good players too. The scene starts on the Quintet playing the last 30 seconds of "Minor Swing," then pulls back to reveal a beautiful 30's club full of dancers, waiters, etc. When the song ends there is applause, then we start "Blue Drag" as the two stars of the film (Penelope Cruz and Charlize Theron) dance seductively thoughout the rest of the song. It should be a really beautiful scene, and a pivotal one to the story too.
         

This was the most fun I have had in a long time, and it was great to get to meet Francois Rousseau and the group of Montreal devotees as well. To top off the 5 days spent in Montreal, we got to go see Bireli Lagrene at a great venue, The Spectrum, play an amazing set to a 1500-plus audience of wildly appreciative fans. After the show Bireli was shocked to see how I looked ( I was still in makeup and all from the shoot, which had ended just in time for us to run to the hotel and drop off our  guitars and get a cab to the venue) and we had a good laugh about that. He was excited to hear about the film too, and as well as being the world's greatest guitarist remains the most gracious, kind person one could want to meet.

As the film is only just being shot now, it is hard to tell exactly when it will be out, but I imagine no earlier than December for sure.

Cheers!
John Jorgenson