James Brown biopic “Get On Up” starring Chadwick Boseman hits theaters this Friday, August 1.
The film is produced by Rolling Stones legend Mick Jagger. Nelsan Ellis, Jill Scott, Director Tate Taylor, Chadwick Boseman, Octavia Spencer, Mick Jagger, Brian Grazer and Dan Aykroyd all participated in a fascinating and intimate press conference in New York.
The legendary Mick Jagger reflected on how he came to produce the film. “I was asked by a business associate and friend Peter Afterman if I would make a documentary about James Brown. I woke up and said, ‘lets do a feature,’ but of course being in Hollywood there’s always a feature … Then I learned of the script and I learned of Brian’s previous involvement, so that’s the short version of how I got involved. Actually, in Hollywood terms, from the beginning of my involvement to this point of having the premiere of the movie on August 1, it’s been a relatively short time. Since we started on the second part of the journey, Brian had done all this hard work in the beginning, but since we started the second part of the journey, in hollywood terms its been really quick.”
Q: Mr. Jagger, can I ask you about your personal recount when you followed James Brown, how that played out and how did this experience influence you as a performer?
Jagger: About 50 years ago … it was a very exciting show … there were many people at the show that were interesting to me, for the first time. I’d never met Marvin Gaye before, for instance. I got the opportunity to chat with him. There was a lot of us on the show. It was a pretty crazy day. I’d seen James Brown before one time, at the Apollo, and the experience was James was a bit annoyed about not being the last on the show, and as I was the only one that met him before, of all the people working on the show, including the producers of the show, whoever they were. I have no idea who they were. I was the fall guy, because I was like 20 or something so they said “you go talk to him, you know him, you go call him out”. And when you’re 20 you say “sure”. Now it’s, “that’s not my job, that’s your job”. When you’re 20 you go, “sure”. Of course it didn’t work. It might have somewhat assuaged him, but it played out and it was what it was. He did this amazing performance and we went on after, but in the end I don’t think it really mattered. We had to work harder, and he worked harder, and maybe it was a better show because of it.
Q: How do you go on after that? Did it influence your stage performance?
Jagger: He influenced me a lot. Amongst a lot of other people, he influenced me in lots of ways. I could never do the dance routines like James, and I never spent the time and effort that Chad had to do to do the fantastic job that he does in this movie of doing that, because I didn’t want to be an imitator of that. But the thing about him that impressed me, as with other people that I was influenced by at the time, little Richard being the other one, who is in this movie as well. Both of them from very similar parts of the world, and that, how to interact with an audience, the most important thing. And I’m sure that Chad got into some of that into making of this movie because it’s all about, James was all about interacting with the audience, it wasn’t just your performance. It’s about their performance too. It’s about how they perform and they react and you react to them, the interplay.
Q: Ms. Boseman. Were there any challenges in portraying Mr. Brown?
Chadwick Boseman: The entire thing was a challenge. When I looked at the role, the reason I was a bit … scared, was there was no part of it that was just straight-forward, easy, you’ve done that before. A lot of people will say “well you’re from, South Carolina” but he’s from the low country of South Carolina, it’s different. It’s not the same thing. And I’ve spent quite a bit of time out of South Carolina, so it was important to me, we went down to Augusta to meet the family, and stayed because Augusta is pretty much on the border, between Georgia and South Carolina, I stayed down there a little bit longer, and just drove around, saw the family and soaked up as much of it as I could before we started. This was right before we started. There was no part that was easy to do. 60% of my fear was from the dancing. 30% was just the caricatures that have been projected of him and trying to get past what people think they know, but I don’t think there was any easy part.
Q: Being that James had an entrepreneurial spirit what is one business that James had created that surprised you both?
Chadwick Boseman: The most surprising venture was the James brown fruit stand. I don’t know if you all know about that one. It was part of him wanting to recycle money within the black community before it goes outside of the community to build. It actually was a genius idea. It obviously is not still around, but that was the thing that was the most surprising for me.
Dan Aykroyd: I would say nothing that James did entrepreneurially would surprise me. He was just so broad ranging in terms of his understanding of business, how to handle people, how to handle money, how to balance a book, how to make a tour more profitable than any other artist, and he extended it into the radio stations and the merchandising. He just got it, and he got it from a very early age.
