{"id":65308,"date":"2018-01-09T16:23:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T22:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=65308"},"modified":"2018-01-17T16:40:14","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T22:40:14","slug":"last-dance-in-the-big-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/last-dance-in-the-big-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Last dance in the Big Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new \u2018funkumentary,\u2019 Do U Want It?<\/em>, is director Josh Freund\u2019s cinematic love letter to the band Papa Grows Funk and the New Orleans music scene.<\/h4>\n

By Morgan Levey<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

For 90 minutes on a winter evening a vortex opened in Chicago\u2019s Davis Theater and the crowd was transported down south, to the land of crawfish boils and funk music. Do U Want It?<\/em>, a feature-length documentary about the former New Orleans-based band Papa Grows Funk, made its Chicago debut as part of the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. Billed as a \u201cfunkumentary,\u201d the film examines the joy of making music in New Orleans, but the hardship of making it big anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Medill Reports sat down with Josh Freund, one of the film\u2019s co-directors and a Medill alum (BSJ 2012), after the movie\u2019s screening.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Medill Reports: Can you tell me the impetus for making Do U Want It?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Josh Freund: I moved to New Orleans in the fall of 2012 basically because I loved New Orleans music. I moved with Sam Radutzky, a friend of mine from college [and the movie\u2019s co-director]. So we started our company making videos for bands, and we just went to a lot of shows. That\u2019s what we were there to do, and that\u2019s what we did. Two to five nights a week we went and saw music.<\/p>\n

Our favorite thing that we saw was Papa Grows Funk, Monday nights at the Maple Leaf. And we would go every Monday night for months. They\u2019d start late and they\u2019d go late. It was so fun and so good, I\u2019d just feel good all week. Like I\u2019d just ride the high from Monday.<\/p>\n

But Papa Grows Funk in January of 2013 made an announcement that they were going to take a hiatus the subsequent June. And they were going to do a final tour \u2014 another six months. So Sam and I approached the band.<\/p>\n

MR: So what did you propose to them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: We asked them, could we make a commemorative thing about you? A 15 to 20 minute video \u2014 film a couple shows, do a couple interviews. They were super down and we met with the manager and with John Gros, the bandleader, and made a little plan. He set us up with interviews with some of the most influential people in New Orleans \u2014 George Porter Jr. and Quint Davis, and other fans and other people that had known the band.<\/p>\n

MR: So how did it turn into a 90-minute film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: The band had been a band for 13 years and we came on in the last year. We didn\u2019t know the history so well. We started doing these interviews and pretty quickly we realized that there was a lot more to the story than we realized at first. We thought it was representative of greater things, nuances of what we thought was a very unique culture and community \u2014 the New Orleans music scene.<\/p>\n

MR: Sounds like you thought the first video was just going to be about their music and making music, and then it turned into a story of them as individuals, as people and as a band.<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: It really turned into a story about New Orleans. And then as representative of like a syndrome of New Orleans, or symptoms of New Orleans. An amazing hotbed for music, but kind of a world unto itself, like a vacuum where no one really gives a s–t about what\u2019s going on outside New Orleans and loves everything that\u2019s happening within New Orleans. It\u2019s this weird, amazing and terrible thing.<\/p>\n

MR: What\u2019s your favorite point of the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: [Long pause] Musically, my favorite point of the movie is during the final tour in Austin when they do the song \u201cFish Eyed Fool,\u201d which is actually written by the bass player, but features like this beautiful gospel organ intro with the sax. And then the drum comes in. In the movie it comes just after we hear something about the guitar player, June, quitting and it\u2019s sad. And then you hear this really moving arrangement and then it turns into a funk jam. That really always moves me.<\/p>\n

And then I also just really love the last bite of the movie. I really fought for that one. The original drummer, Russell Batiste Jr., who is a legend in New Orleans and a maniac, he\u2019s just like, \u201cAll I need in life is to play music in New Orleans for my friends and family and I\u2019m good.\u201d I thought that was a great point that we were trying to give the audience to chew on. Sam and I went back and forth for sure, but I was always felt that\u2019s got to be the last bite.<\/p>\n

MR: That line comes during the song, \u201cWalking to New Orleans,\u201d where you do this montage of New Orleans scenes. How did that come together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: It was very important for Sam not to end on the band. He was like, it\u2019s bigger than the band, it\u2019s about New Orleans. We really wanted to establish throughout the movie that New Orleans was a character in the film, in and of itself. That was this bigger message we wanted to drive home and make sure people knew. It\u2019s not just about the band it\u2019s about greater forces \u2013 the music\u2019s bigger than one band.<\/p>\n

MR: What was it like screening the film in New Orleans?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have a better screening ever than the one we had in New Orleans. We had the biggest theater that they offered of all their venues. We sold out the theater, it was like a 250-seat theater. New Orleans Film Festival told us we sold more tickets than any film in the whole festival.<\/p>\n

ML: And the whole band came?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JF: Four out of five band members came, almost everybody there was local. In the Q&A I asked the crowd how many people have seen the band, and almost every one of the 250 raised their hand. It was just so personal. People were like whooping and hollering and clapping and laughing. It was very energetic. It was like a party.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like seeing your friends in a movie, which again is just such a unique phenomenon of New Orleans. All the local celebrities are your neighbors. It\u2019s like your buddy is a world-class musician and you go see him play.<\/p>\n

Dates for additional screenings of Do U Want It?<\/em> are available at www.douwantitfilm.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Filmmakers (from left) Josh Freund and Sam Radutzky go behind the scenes with the band Papa Grows Funk in the music documentary Do U Want It?<\/em>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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